Short- and long-term plans to help homeless families in Colorado Springs develop

Sep. 17—Representatives from 23 different homeless-service providers in Colorado Springs, from government agencies to nonprofits, came together last week with one unified goal: find places where parents and children in ComCor Inc.'s shuttering City Hope emergency shelter can live to avoid being on the streets again.

The cohesive effort to help the families move into secure housing is a positive light in a disheartening pattern in the community, said Andy Barton, president and CEO of Catholic Charities of Central Colorado, one of the groups lending assistance.

"What's discouraging is we keep having this situation," he said. "We keep as a community having to look at stopgap measures; we can't get traction on affordable housing."

Two shelters for homeless families are no longer an option. Family Promise closed its New Promise Family Shelter on South Nevada Avenue in July, and City Hope has been given a reprieve and won't shut down until the end of September, instead of the end of August as previously announced, said a caseworker.

Financial issues were cited in both instances.

"It's really expensive and it's complicated to run a family shelter," Barton said.

Lisa West, her daughter and grandchildren are still sharing a room in a former motel on North Nevada Avenue that ComCor converted to City Hope in January.

"We're just waiting to hear on a voucher," West said. "We're waiting for someone to give us a chance."

While pandemic-relief funding for frontline social service organizations is drying up, emergency housing vouchers are still available for clients, Barton said.

But it's been tough to find landlords willing to accept them, he said.

In addition to the short-term scramble to help displaced homeless families caught in the shelter dilemma, long-term visions are materializing to help the Pikes Peak region break out of the cycle of having few opportunities for homeless parents and their minor children.

"It's important to remember at the end of the day, shelter is not the answer; what we need are additional housing opportunities for these families," said Steve Posey, the city of Colorado Springs' community development division manager.

New shelters planned in Colorado Springs from two leading humanitarian organizations.

Catholic Charities wants to purchase the Helen Hunt Campus at 917 E. Moreno Ave., and renovate the original 1901 schoolhouse on the former elementary campus into 24 units of family housing, Barton said.

The campus is owned by the Legacy Institute, a local foundation that funds education and community development projects.

The sale of the property could be finalized in November, Barton said, with families moving in directly from shelters and living in their cars or tents in early 2025.

The defunct school site has housed a collection of nonprofits since being repurposed in 2018, including Catholic Charities, which operates a family assistance office. Six other organizations also reside there.

Some of the two old school buildings are empty, though, Barton said.

If the deal goes through, Catholic Charities' would retain existing tenants, he said, which include Switchback Coffee Roasters, Hillside Connection, a youth mentorship program, and Converge, an events, education and therapy organization.

Catholic Charities' initial goal of funding the estimated $9 million project for purchasing and rehabilitating the property solely from philanthropic donations doesn't seem feasible, Barton said. The organization now is pursuing city, state and federal dollars.

The Housing First approach of getting families a stable roof over their heads before working on other issues, such as drug and alcohol use and employment, will be used, he said.

The societal problem of homelessness is too big for local organizations to be competing with one another, Barton said.

"The solution is not going to be solved with shelters but with housing," he said. "We have to have something change, rather than chasing people from one shelter to the next."

Changing space to families only

More immediately, the Salvation Army in El Paso County is working with city leaders to convert the 232-bed R.J. Montgomery Center, a homeless shelter at 709 S. Sierra Madre St., into a family-only shelter with more intensive casework to help people improve their lives.

The city will fund a portion of the center's $300,000 renovation, said Posey, the community development manager.

"We are working with other stakeholders in the area to raise funds," he said. "The Salvation Army also is working hard to secure funds for the remodel."

The R.J. Montgomery Center currently operates 132 beds for single men, 80 for families and 20 for military veterans.

Instead of the existing setup of large congregate rooms with single men and fathers separated from moms and children, the shelter space will be divided into individual, 350-square-foot units for families with up to six members in each, said Capt. Doug Hanson, who leads the local Salvation Army with his wife, Betzy.

The remodeled shelter would have a total of 176 beds in the non-congregate setting, he said.

"The new model puts households together, and that's the part we're most excited about — to provide a safe place where we're not further traumatizing people," Hanson said.

Renovations will be fast-tracked in order to be completed in December, Hanson said. The building would not close during construction.

After the conversion, single men would be directed to Springs Rescue Mission, the city's largest homeless shelter that's about a half a mile south of the R.J. Montgomery Center. Homeless veterans could be accommodated at the Salvation Army's main headquarters at 908 Yuma St.

The Salvation Army also is working on a long-range plan to build new family housing on undeveloped land on the primary Yuma Street campus.

Apartment-style units would provide transitional housing for families directly from shelters or living the streets to the complexes. Case managers and wraparound services, such as child care and food distribution, would further help families get back on their feet.

"Our goal is not to shelter as many people as we can but process people who are experiencing homelessness into better programs," he said.

A ribbon-cutting on the family units on the Yuma campus is about three years away, Hanson estimates.

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