How the city of Durango should address homelessness has been a common question at Durango City Council candidate forums. The Neighbors in Need Alliance took the conversation one step further last week at a forum dedicated solely to the subject.
Candidates Olivier Bosmans, Shirley Gonzales and Jessika Buell attended the forum at Christ the King Lutheran Church across Florida Road from Chapman Hill.
Candidate Kip Koso was out of town on a prescheduled trip. Candidate Chris Elias called out sick.
Durango resident and social worker Joel Berdie asked the candidates whether they would support a managed camp in Durango.
Bosmans answered with one word: “Yes,” he said.
Gonzales said she would rather focus on housing first, although if there were overwhelming support for a camp, she wouldn’t necessarily be opposed.
Buell said the last time City Council discussed opening a low-barrier managed camp, it looked at 10 different lots. Each time a realtor or a landowner found out why the city was interested in a property, they pulled out, she said.
She said community partners told the city they were unsure a managed camp could be adequately staffed. Where to get funding was another unanswered question.
She didn’t rule out exploring the subject again. But she said the recipe for success is a good proposal and a successful partnership.
Councilors were asked how to best advocate for the unhoused.
Bosmans said addressing homelessness starts with prevention. He said he’s annoyed by how the city handles people experiencing homelessness – clearing out camps during the winter with nowhere else for the unhoused to go.
There are organizations in place that can help in various ways, such as Manna soup kitchen, he said. But there is an “immense list of obstacles” the unhoused must overcome. The city could still do better, he said.
Gonzales said unhoused individuals require individualized treatments. She suggested that homelessness used to be considered an effect of substance abuse, but perhaps mental illness is the root cause that leads to substance abuse, and so a focus on mental health is needed.
“I hesitate to have some suggestions about things we can do, but I feel like it really does have to be one, one by one by one,” she said. “It's hard as policymakers for us to say we're going to do this and that's going to fix it. … We're all human, and we're not that easy to figure out.”
Buell said the city can contribute to solutions through creative partnerships. She cited Municipal Judge Matt Margeson’s specialty court program as a way of connecting municipal offenders, often associated with homelessness, to resources and services.
Another question asked candidates to describe their ideas and experiences in community engagement with specific neighborhoods, given previous efforts for transitional housing, managed camps, shelters and repurposed motels faced serious backlash.
Gonzales said once a site for a project like transitional housing is identified, the very first action has to be to engage with residents and neighbors. People deserve to feel safe in their neighborhoods, she said.
The most successful efforts always include informed residents who know what to expect from a project. She said small-scale efforts focusing on 10 or fewer residents are the way to go. Those efforts could start with a focus on a specific group, such as women with children.
Buell said NIMBY-ism (Not In My Backyard-ism) is alive and well in Durango. The city previously reached out to churches for help supporting the unhoused, and each church declined.
Given NIMBY-ism, councilors must be willing and able to have hard conversations and to work with each other and with community partners toward solutions.
She said the community needs city councilors who can find common ground and bring their colleagues on board, and she said she knows how to do that.
“I know how to get people on board for something, and if I can't get that person on board, I know how to work with them,” she said.
Bosmans said there are many good ideas about how to address homelessness and work with other organizations, but none of them have come from City Council.
He suggested identifying several properties across town to use as managed shelters to give people a safe place to spend nights. The shelters would be open temporarily before shifting to another identified site.
He said such a program would sate NIMBY’s because the shelters wouldn’t have long-term impacts, although the city would be making long-term investments into the properties and eventually repurpose the shelter buildings to new causes like low-income housing.
cburney@durangoherald.com
