Over the past 35 years, our nation’s homelessness increased in rural/urban areas (up 4 percent in Colorado in 2017). Nearly 100 individuals and children camp in the hills west of downtown Durango. In La Plata County, the unhoused consists of 84 students, 170 families, and 300 (survey of University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work – Burnes Center on Poverty and Homelessness).
Eighty to 85 percent of America’s homelessness are invisible: women with children escaping domestic violence, persons ashamed of mental illness, unaccompanied youth (one out of 18 are under age 6), part-time employees, parolees, veterans, people with bad credit, and Americans with disabilities.
They sleep in vehicles, share a room, couch-surf or hide, making it difficult to accurately count.
People in homelessness make wrong choices, while more “housed” people have drug and alcohol dependencies.
Community leaders should consider temporary, unconventional shelters to provide housing for most local homelessness. Sanctioned tent encampment is a way to control where they sleep; it does not reduce or end homelessness.
One Hawaii senator/ER physician is telling emergency room doctors to prescribe “house” when they release the homeless. Innovative, safe alternatives to traditional constructed shelters should be explored and given consideration to reduce and end homelessness.
“Among renters, close to one-quarter of households spend more than half their income on rent, putting them one paycheck away from homelessness; of extremely low-income renters, 71 percent pay more than half their income in rent.” This is true in La Plata County. Time to talk about temporary, innovative, affordable housing.
Donna Mae Baukat
Durango
