Homeless complaints from businesses double in Pueblo

PUEBLO, Colo.- If it seems more and more homeless people are moving to the Steel City, you're not wrong and businesses are letting the police department know about the problems some of them are causing.

In 2019, Pueblo PD says they received 109 calls for service from businesses more than double the calls they received in 2018 which was 54.

Gary Jordan the owner of Bob's Paint and Body says he was one of those callers, "I guarantee I've called as many as anybody." His shop has been at the corner of 8th street and Blake in Pueblo for 20 years. It was last year when he spent thousands of dollars on a security system because of the problems transients created for his business.

"We end up with whiskey bottles in the parking lot, beer cans, needles, trash," Jordan says.

His business is right across the street from the temporary homeless shelter, "There's anywhere between 15 and 30 that are hanging out there on most days." He says within the last year, customers have started to complain, "I do get a lot of customers that will tell me, 'is my car safe here with the homeless shelter there?'"

However, it hasn't always been this way. Sergeant Frank Ortega with the Pueblo Police Department says the homeless population wasn't like this a few years ago. "We used to kind of know our players that were homeless now there's new people all the time," Ortega says. Adding some of the problems happen when homeless people living in the Springs move further south.

We're told the temporary shelter on 9th and Blake will be closing by the end of the month with the new permanent shelter on 4th street opening at the same time.