Volunteers mobilized this week for a count and survey of Durango’s and La Plata County’s unhoused population.
Volunteers will be active through Monday, said Julia Conley, a volunteer.
The tally is for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s biennial Point-in-Time Count, which HUD describes as a “count of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January.”
Every odd-numbered year, the program inventories Continuum of Care programs that provide beds and units for the unhoused and permanent housing projects that people enter when they are homeless, according to HUD. That includes emergency shelters, transitional housing, rapid rehousing, safe havens and permanent supportive housing. The data is submitted to HUD.
The number of homeless people in Durango mid-count was not immediately available on Wednesday. Conley said five groups of two to three people were in the field Wednesday morning, but she didn’t know how many total people had been counted so far.
According to the Colorado Department of Local Affairs’ 2023 sheltered and unsheltered count, 109 homeless people were counted that January, with men representing the majority of those surveyed.
Manna soup kitchen Co-Executive Director Chris Andrews said there are fewer homeless people in Durango during the winter than the summer. Including people temporarily living in hotels, cars or in other less common situations, he guessed about 120 to 130 homeless people are living in the city during wintertime.
“Conditions are pretty harsh here. So there are some folks that’ll find somewhere else throughout the winter and then come back in the spring,” he said.
Manna is participating in the Point-in-Time Count.
Manna Co-Executive Director Marissa Hunt said the soup kitchen provides numbers about the homeless population gathered through state-funded programs such as transitional housing assistance.
An accurate count of the homeless population is difficult to achieve, Conley said. People who are in jail, hospitalized or couchsurfing and laying low aren’t counted. Some people also make temporary housing arrangements they might not otherwise attempt, such as staying with an abuser in his or her home or moving to a warmer community to escape the cold.
Increased U.S. Customs and Immigration activity and a “general fear around surveillance” also result in fewer people being open to the survey or identifying themselves as unhoused, she said.
Even when a person is counted because their tent or campsite is observed, other important details such as their age, race, veteran and disability status, mental health, and whether they are fleeing domestic violence, remain unknown, she said.
But even an undercount is valuable, both to organizations that provide services and to the unhoused.
“It’s important to really know who these people are and where they're at and what they need in our community. I think so often the unhoused in Durango are not seen as part of our community,” she said.
Getting an accurate count is not made any easier by holding HUD’s Point-in-Time Count in January, Colorado’s coldest month of the year on average, she said.
On Wednesday, Conley hiked around the Tech Center in west Durango, which she said was enjoyable. But she thought about how people camping on the hillsides, some who are elderly or of poor health, aren’t hiking for the fun of it.
“We see it snow and (people) are like, sliding around and trying to get to town just to pick up prescriptions or hit the City Market,” she said. “I'm like, ‘Oh, this is a fight,’ even with having food and having clothes.”
She said Durango is a “cool town” where food and cold weather gear are made available by organizations – Summit Church recently distributed portable heaters. Conley and other volunteers gave out gloves, hand warmers and beanies supplied by the state DOLA’s Balance of State Continuum of Care, and Dunkin’ Donuts donated coffee and doughnuts for Wednesday’s tally.
But as long as the housing inventory remains low and police continue to sweep homeless camps and force people from one site to another, it will get harder to support the unhoused population, she said.
“I feel a lot of heaviness and sadness today,” she said.“There's not much out there for these folks who are either disabled or having mental health challenges or for whatever reason, can't have a job that meets the rental costs. It's definitely disheartening.”
cburney@durangoherald.com