Homelessness

Let’s make the investments needed to systematically reduce homelessness and its impacts.

Far too many of our community members in Boulder are experiencing homelessness. For many of them, this condition is a result of being left out to begin with. And all who are experiencing homelessness are disproportionately vulnerable to violence, crime, and increasingly dangerous weather. Furthermore, those suffering mental health challenges or substance addiction face a steep climb out.

This situation is impacting the whole community. Encampments are encroaching on parks and multi-use paths and are near schools.

Unfortunately, the problem is becoming even more complicated as the housing crisis continues, poverty increases, and the climate grows more hostile–all issues that are part of national trends with regional patterns.

As a member of City Council, I will work to:

• Prevent homelessness in the first place. This means renter protections and assistance, with more abundant affordable housing options overall to prevent people from slipping into homelessness.
• Establish a wider and more accessible network of places for people to go who have been asked to decamp. That means a day shelter with showers, water, laundry, lockers, and a place to sit safely out of the elements. It means accessible places to be during the night, with more shelter beds as well as solutions for safe camping and safe parking.
• Increase the use of non-police responses in our outreach in public spaces, especially to assist people in mental health distress. And ensure the community has the resources needed to immediately respond to threats to public safety.
• Expand the toolkit of critical services for people experiencing a range of challenging life circumstances. This means a more robust system of caseworkers to provide immediate stability with individualized challenges and support to move forward. It means more proactively meeting the needs of “high system utilizers,” the 50 or so people who most frequently cycle from crisis to crisis. It means more local treatment services for mental health and addiction to everyone, regardless of housing status. It means a pipeline to housing, from tiny homes to other paths to permanent homes, with varying levels of supervision and support as needed.
• Invest in shared physical public spaces for everyone by providing resources to keep people healthy and parks clean. Boulder needs more accessible public toilets/port-a-potties, trash and needle disposal locations, access to drinking water, and other amenities to foster hygienic care and to prevent human waste from polluting public spaces.