Solving the Colorado Springs-area shopping cart situation

Among the trash, debris and other materials you’ll see near homeless camps are large numbers of shopping carts from stores.

Homeless people use the carts to move or store their belongings, but the carts often become eyesores, are damaged or abandoned.

Some are used as fire pits and even barbecue grills.

“We get forced to move around a lot, and we depend on those carts,” said Anthony Lascala, a homeless man. “We’re not taking them just to be robbers. We actually utilize them, and a lot of people bring them back.”

But not enough people are returning them.

“We average 12 lost carts per month at each of our 20 area stores,” said Safeway spokesperson Kris Staff. “Each cart can cost $100 or more.”

That adds up to 240 carts per store, per year; 4,800 in all at just one grocery chain.

However, law enforcement and store owners are limited in their ability to stop the thefts.

“We rarely arrest or cite a violator because the property owner has to file a complaint and many don’t bother to do so,” said Lt. Howard Black of the Colorado Springs Police Department.

A city Parks and Recreation crew was gathering carts Tuesday along the Midland Trail near a tent city.

“We’ll pick up around 20 a month as we’re doing other jobs,” said Kurt Schroeder, the department’s operations manager. “If a cart has someone’s belongings, we’ll leave it. We try to return them to the store owners. If no one claims them, we’ll recycle them.”

Some stores apply devices to carts that lock the wheels if carts are taken a certain distance beyond the store.

“But that’s expensive,” Staaf said.

And not always effective; a cart found burned near one homeless camp had a monitoring device.

Like the homeless shelter situation, the homeless shopping cart theft issue is a growing problem with no easy solutions.