Homelessness discussed

ALAMOSA — Homelessness is a complicated situation that will require as many solutions as it has sources, community members discovered as they addressed the topic this week during a community forum at the Alamosa city hall.

The city sponsored the meeting, which was held as a listening session for the city council and was moderated by City Manager Heather Brooks and Center for Restorative Programs Executive Director Luke Yoder. Brooks told the audience, which packed the city council chambers Wednesday night, that this was only the beginning, and the city council plans to continue discussions to arrive at problems surrounding homelessness in Alamosa.

Numerous area residents spoke during the session, with comments ranging from fearfulness and frustration over criminal activity attributed to the homeless population to offers of hope and help from organizations with resources to assist the homeless and others in need in the community.

Although some of the discussions revolved around Alamosa’s homeless shelter, La Puente, the group also addressed broader issues around the topic as well.

‘Victims within our community’

Several south-side residents living near to the shelter shared concerns about activities they attributed to folks staying at the shelter or hanging out in the general neighborhood of the State Avenue shelter.

“We are victims within our community,” said Jolene Trujillo, who lives near the shelter. She and other neighbors said they wanted homeless people to have a safe place to stay, but they also wanted to feel safe in their neighborhood.

Some of the neighborhood concerns included littering, loitering, panhandling, animal and human waste in their yards, drug use/distribution and threats.

“This is where I live, and I see it every day,” said one resident who said she was concerned about having her grandchildren play in her yard because she has found drugs in her yard. She said she did not condemn homeless people but was concerned about the behavior she was seeing in her neighborhood where the homeless shelter is located.

Alamosa native Scott White, who lives on the south side and has property near the shelter, said the volume has grown, and with more people there is more activity both good and bad. He said he has trouble renting his property because people are concerned about transients coming up to their door or camping in the driveway. His property values have also decreased, he said.

Patrick Ortiz, who grew up in that part of town, said the homeless issue is not just centered around the shelter home. He said currently several people are camping by the river. He said his organization is working on connecting the city of Alamosa to the Alamosa wildlife refuge, using the levee and river corridor. “We want to create safe access to public lands for recreation,” he said.

Ruthie Brown, owner of the Green Spot for nearly 20 years, said the neighborhood has changed. Her store has been broken into and trash left on her property, she said. She said she especially likes to help people with special needs, and folks with special needs that lived down the street used to come down to her store to visit, but they are afraid to now because of what they have to pass to get there. She said people who receive free lunches should so something for them.

Pam Soapes, who has owned property at Ninth and State since 1977, before La Puente bought the property down the street, said she had to close her business there because customers were uncomfortable coming into the business. She and her husband moved to raise their children where they could let them safely play in their yard, and now they are selling their property at Ninth and State and everything with it on June 11.

Sustainable solutions

Some participants in a sustainability center talked about the range of “homelessness,” which includes people who might not have a permanent address but choose to be nomadic. Rocky Mountain Sustainability Center board member Chloe Everhart (www.rockymountainsustainabilitycenter.org), for example, cautioned against blaming people in categories.

Also involved with the sustainable community, Michael Morris (Facebook, Humans on the Ground) offered sustainable communities in which people can garden and reuse, renew and recycle as a way to help people find purpose and a place and become contributing members of the society.

Susan Hamilton said she has been on both sides, having been homeless herself due to negative circumstances in her life, and now being a resident who has concerns about some of the transient population currently in the area. She said when she needed help several years ago, La Puente assisted her.

“There are no easy solutions,” she said. “La Puente is trying. I think they could be assisted.”

Sandra Goodwin, Ascension Counseling, said in her work she sometimes sees scary things, but they are all over Alamosa, not in just one neighborhood.

“We have a drug and alcohol problem and people are doing criminal things. I see that every day. A lot of people don’t want to be homeless.”

Goodwin is involved in an effort to build a rehabilitation center here, and the property is already secured, but funding is needed. She encouraged others to step up to help.

Likewise, counselor Ramona Smith said she is assisting women with transitional and sober living housing and believed vocational rehabilitation and retraining are crucial to helping women coming out of difficult situations like domestic violence. She said statistically the longer someone is homeless, the more likely that person will remain homeless, so it is important to act rapidly to help people regain stability.

Rowena Martinez shared her experiences of trying to help people she met who were homeless including a recent encounter with a veteran with three children whose disability was taken away, and when they could not find help otherwise the VFW members helped the man pay his rent. She said she would love to have a list of contacts she could share with people in need.

Dawn Melgares, executive director for the SLV Housing Coalition (SLVHC.com, 587-8907), said her program is one of the solutions to affordable housing, and she has been trying to get the word out so other organizations know about what the coalition can offer such as down payment assistance and loans.

She said she has connected with La Puente and helped several homeless people find housing in the last year. She has also connected with Tu Casa and helped their clients find housing.

“The key is going to be communication,” she said.

Some of those present Wednesday who were representing advocacy organizations shared their contact information, and Brooks said the city would post a synopsis on the city web site.

Homelessness and veterans

Anna Cornelius, who operates the Alamosa field office for the Support Services for Veteran Families (www.voacolorado.org/gethelp-denvermetro-veterans-ssvf), said she had to hire more case managers because of the great need she is encountering.

“This is a community issue,” she said.

Tom Bobicki, whose family has been in business in Alamosa for 77 years, shared concerns both about and for the homeless. He said he has seen people eating out of the trashcans at his car wash business. He has also lost business because people are afraid to go there. A veteran himself, he also expressed concern over the veterans who are homeless. “If it wasn’t for these guys and women who gave their lives, we probably wouldn’t be here tonight,” he said.

“This is a tough, tough situation.”

Veteran Kent Mitchell added, “This problem is like an elephant. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Everyone needs to come together, get organized, who has what … The sooner we work as a team, the better we are all going to be.”

Veterans Coalition of the SLV President Richard Nagley (www.vcslv.info) said the coalition has several projects to help local veterans with the various challenges they face. He mentioned, for example, that the suicide rate among veterans is twice as high as the suicide rate in the San Luis Valley, which is twice as high as the suicide rate in Colorado, which has the seventh highest suicide rate in the country.

‘Empathetic to your concerns’

Douglas Camp, who is very involved with La Puente, said homelessness is an issue everywhere, even in wealthy communities like Austin, Texas, where he spends part of his time. He said he was empathetic to the neighborhood concerns and appreciated that the neighbors were expressing their concerns in a positive way.

“We are as empathetic to your concerns as we are to the homeless people we try to serve as an organization,” he said. “We are not going to fix anything overnight … We have to figure how we live together as a community.”

A volunteer director for La Puente said she appreciated that people were trying to work out problems together as a community, not an “us” versus “them” situation.

Another La Puente staff member, who is an AmeriCorps volunteer with La Puente, said while people were focusing only on the shelter, they were missing the many other programs operated through La Puente such as its outreach, prevention, food bank, Adelante and other programs. “There’s so much more to La Puente we haven’t addressed here tonight,” she said.

La Puente can be reached at 589-5909. The behavioral health center can be reached at 589-3671 (www.slvbhg.org/) The Alamosa Housing Authority can be reached at 589-6694.

Elise Rudolph said a shelter does not create homelessness, nor does a soup kitchen create hunger or a methadone clinic create opioid or heroin use. “There are root causes … We need to address the root causes in our society.”

Caption: It was a packed house Wednesday night at the Alamosa city hall where community members gathered to discuss the issue of homelessness. Alamosa city councilors were present to listen including David Broyles, left./Courier photo by Ruth Heide