Homelessness Proposals
Ensure that there are enough indoor spaces for every person to sleep at night. On any given night there are somewhere between 250-500 people sleeping outdoors in the City of Boulder. All Roads has on average between 0-10 beds available on any given night, and has turned away close to 2,000 people so far this year. Haven Ridge has on average 0-2 beds available on any given night, and a long wait list for clients. Therefore on any night, even if every available bed in every homeless shelter in the City of Boulder is filled, there would still be around 200-500 people sleeping outdoors. There is simply nowhere for them to go.
What problem(s) does this proposal aim to solve?
We need to do some combination of the following things: increase the numbers of beds available in the existing shelters, implement an additional high-capacity shelter, implement additional non-shelter options like Safe Outdoor Spaces and Safe Parking, increase the number of transitional housing beds, sobriety service beds, mental health support beds, and respite beds.
If we want people to stop camping in public spaces, and we want to remove all tents, sleeping bags, and temporary shelter spaces from our multiuse paths, parks, and open space, we must first have some place for people to go.
Ticketing people for sleeping outdoors when they have no place else to go is an ethical and logistical failure.
No amount of policing or legal punishment will put someone into housing or treatment.
All people in Boulder want members of our unhoused community to move off of our public spaces, creating pathways for them to do so in a rare win-win.
When there are enough bed spaces for everyone who needs them, the number of people who will require intervention from our CARE team, social workers, SAMPS staff, or police intervention will drop drastically, saving the city money and resources.