Durango residents are divided over a La Plata County plan to create a new managed camp for the unhoused on the west side of the city.
Residents of the Crestview neighborhood and Ella Vita Court voiced their displeasure with La Plata County’s proposed site for a managed camp near the Durango Tech Center, while other residents expressed their support for moving the unhoused community.
Members of the public were invited to share their views Monday night during a meeting with La Plata County staff members.
“It’s a very clear divide: The people who live in this community versus the people who don’t,” Erika Stensen said.
“If you live in this neighborhood, you know the problems, you know the interactions you’ve had in the past, you know the impacts on your family,” she said.
Many residents close to the proposed camp argued the county ought to look elsewhere for a site after Crestview and Ella Vita Court were affected by dispersed camping around the landfill from 2015 to 2018.
“There’s nothing that the city or the county can do to prevent our neighborhood from becoming the homeless highway again,” said Rob Middleton, an Ella Vita resident.
Other Durango community members supported the development as a necessary step in the city and county’s efforts to tackle the housing and homelessness situation.
“This really means that we’re choosing to move forward with a culture that’s more generous, more compassionate and just (a) more logical way of caring for our neighbors,” said Joel Birdie, a social work intern with Mercy Hospital.
“Having been in this for the last 15 years, it’s time to stop looking for a better site,” said Sarada Leavenworth, senior director of strategy and development with Axis Health System, the service provider for the new permanent supportive housing at Espero Apartments. “We’ve got to put a period at the end of that sentence. It’s time to stop looking for a better site and move forward with the site that has been identified because the looking has taken a lot of energy and a lot of time.”
More than 100 people attended the Zoom meeting led by County Manager Chuck Stevens.
The meeting was the first step in a lengthy process to construct the managed camp as an alternative to Purple Cliffs.
“The reason why we’re here tonight really comes down to the status of Purple Cliffs and the status of dispersed camping in our community,” Stevens said.
“The situation at Purple Cliffs or at the Tech Center from 2015 to 2018 is unacceptable,” he said. “There’s no accountability. There’s no rules. There’s no regulations. The dispersed camping model cannot continue in our community.”
The decision to create a managed camp comes after consultants The Athena Group released the city’s and the county’s Strategic Plan on Homelessness in January 2020.
The report identified a managed camp as one of the priorities for tackling homelessness in Durango and La Plata County.
After years of working together, La Plata County took the lead finding a site earlier this year after the city and county could not find another suitable location.
The county commissioners directed Stevens in August 2021 to look at county-owned properties within a 3-mile radius of the Department of Human Services, Manna soup kitchen, the Durango Community Shelter and Espero Apartments on the west side of Durango.
“We know if we put a homeless camp in Breen, it’s probably not going to get used. It’s too far away from services,” Stevens said.
In addition to county properties, the commissioners also gave Stevens permission to look at properties for sale for a potential site.
Stevens solicited property owners willing to sell land for the managed camp, but after a month with no responses turned to the plot north of the Tech Center near the landfill where the city used to store its mulch pile.
“Reviewing county-owned properties, there’s really only one viable candidate,” Stevens said.
The county counted 80 to 83 tents at Purple Cliffs during the summer peak, Stevens said. An estimated 115 to 120 people live in the dispersed camp.
The managed camp would host about 35 tents for people who are trying to move out of homelessness and into housing, he said.
While the county owns the land, it will not operate the managed camp.
If the county moves forward with the plan, it will request proposals from nonprofits and service providers who would manage the camp, Stevens said.
Many of the residents who spoke in opposition to the project said they felt unsafe in their neighborhoods when the homeless camp near the landfill was active from 2015 to 2018.
“My concern is primarily about safety,” Stensen said. “I have a young family, and when the camp was previously in Ella Vita, we had multiple bad experiences with the people living in the camp.”
Stevens tried to assuage any concerns about safety, noting that among the managed camp, the Southwest Safehouse run by the Volunteers of America, the community shelter and Espero Apartments, the county would have the capacity to help the homeless community.
With a designated place for the unhoused to go, the county and the Sheriff’s Office would begin enforcing camping regulations and land-use codes.
“With the managed camp, we believe that there is sufficient opportunity for the homeless community to find safe, outdoor sheltering, which would allow us to do law enforcement,” Stevens said.
The county aims to have a managed camp in place and residents of Purple Cliffs moved before next winter, he said.
“Local government has always been reactive. We’ve never been proactive,” he said. “We’re trying to flip the script.
“We have always allowed the homeless population to dictate where they are and where they’re camping. They’ve always selected the land without input from the community, without input from neighbors, without input from local government,” Stevens said. “We’ve never gone through a land-use process, and that’s why we have all the negative impacts that we do.”
Durango residents can visit La Plata County’s Managed Homeless Camp page for more information or to provide public comment.
ahannon@durangoherald.com
