New ideas planned to address homelessness in El Paso County
The lingering homeless issue in El Paso County has led the sheriff and a homeless advocate to try different strategies to address the matter.
The two approaches come as an illegal homeless camp has been established for the third time in five months, coming after two previous evictions and cleanups, under and near a bridge at the intersection of 31st Street and Colorado Avenue in west Colorado Springs.
Sheriff Bill Elder said he plans to send a team of officials to Seattle, to study how that city deals with its homeless issues. He gave no timetable.
“They seem to have some successes in their approach,” he said. “I want to send a city person and a county person. We just started talking about it last week. I think a lot of the problem is dealing with mental illness. We still need a community solution.”
Elder said he remains opposed to establishing a legally sanctioned campground for the homeless.
“We’ve got to figure out what motivates homeless people to stay homeless,” he said. “Where can we put them? A campground scare me to death because of issues related to crime and violence.”
But a setting similar to a campground is what homeless advocate Juliette Parker, founder of the newly-formed Meaningful Empowerment through New Development and Art (MENDA), wants to see.
“We need a community of those tiny homes that have become popular,” she said. “The homeless would be away from the creeks, have drug and alcohol counseling, and we’d have the resources to actually solve the problem, rather than just chasing them around in this big, giant game that nobody wins.”
Parker said she likes the idea of a community for nearly 200 homeless veterans in the area.
“Several cities have done similar projects and they can reduce homelessness by 60 percent to 80 percent,” she said. “That would free up shelter space. We’d save the $250,000 cost of cleaning up each camp, and the $6 million every year to put homeless people in jail for trespassing and other violations.”
Housing local homeless veterans in their own community would cost around $500,000 and require a plot of land to build it, Parker said.
“There’s a lot of interest in doing it,” she said. “And if we can do it, we can expand it to the homeless in general. I’m hoping we can do something by winter.”
As for the camp under the bridge at 31st and Colorado, Elder said it will be cleared out and cleaned up soon.
“We’re also going to seize some marijuana plants that are being grown there,” he said.
A second bridge in the area, which connects to an RV park and also has previously been used as a homeless camp, is being rebuilt and is no longer accessible for the homeless.
