By: Juniper Berry
The City of Colorado Springs recently expanded legislation centered around unhoused people. In early August, after a years-long effort to keep the streets “safe and clean”, the city established a new multi-agency Homeless Response Team and dedicated $458,000 towards private security patrols on the South Nevada corridor.
New Homeless Response Team
The new Homeless Response Team enhances coordination between roughly 12 to 15 city departments to better serve the unhoused community’s needs. The team is “an interagency collaboration”, said Mayor Yemi Mobolade, which allows them to focus their attention on the complex challenge of homelessness. The new team formalized existing relationships between city departments that interact with unhoused residents and added six officers to the Homeless Outreach Team (HOT). HOT is a division of the Colorado Springs Police Department that responds to most 911 calls regarding unhoused residents. However, after a month of operation, HOT does not have a protocol for addressing one of the most common presentations of homelessness in Colorado Springs. When asked about HOT’s plan to address homeless encampments at a Sept. 8 City Council meeting, Amie Cox, the city’s chief housing and homelessness response officer, said, “You can permanently close a camp through fencing or hostile architecture…we do not have a plan.”
HOT is notorious for harassment and abuse, according to the Colorado Springs Homeless Union. The Union organizes unhoused people across the city for mutual aid and political power to end the criminalization of homelessness in Colorado Springs. Local organizers and city officials say HOT removes encampment residents and diverts them to Springs Rescue Mission, the city’s only publicly funded shelter. It’s also located near South Nevada Avenue, within the boundaries of where new security guards are set to patrol.
Colorado Springs Homeless Union organizer Kandy Lewis said, “I have personally seen what I thought was the HOT Team come through at one or two in the morning in an SUV, using only a loudspeaker to tell the homeless people, trying to sleep nearby, that they had an hour to clear out. They threatened that if they were still there when they came back, and they did come back, that they would go to jail.”
Don Briggs, another organizer with the Colorado Springs Homeless Union, said HOT worsens the situation of the individuals they respond to. “The HOT Team destroys people’s tents and makes them more homeless. They take what little the homeless have to protect themselves from the environment. They take food, sleeping bags, everything.”
Briggs acknowledged there are social workers on HOT who work to connect unhoused folks with resources and support. However, harassment and theft by the rest of the team make it difficult for social workers to make referrals and build rapport. Homeless Union organizers maintain that despite its mission of interagency collaboration to address homelessness, the new HOT will only reproduce and expand its existing harm.
Private Security
In addition to expanding the Homeless Outreach Team, the city of Colorado Springs also approved $458,000 for private security along South Nevada Avenue. The new plan allocates money generated through marijuana taxes intended for public safety and mental health services. The Urban Renewal Authority brought the plan forward under its Keep it Clean & Safe COS (KICAS) initiative. Per the organization’s website, KICAS aims to create “safe and welcoming” commercial areas for “residents and visitors” by maintaining public spaces that “reflect community pride.” The increased security aims to “crack down on loitering and crime” along the South Nevada corridor. A team of six unarmed private security guards will monitor the area seven days a week, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. in three shifts. The team will also use a drone to locate and deter “undesirable activity” in the area.
In the last year, violent crime in the area has remained roughly consistent while property crime and disturbances have increased. Many of these property violations and disturbance laws are targeted to criminalize unhoused residents of the area, with ordinances banning camping on public property, sitting or lying on public rights-of-way or loitering in public spaces.
The Urban Renewal Authority has consistently focused KICAS efforts along the South Nevada corridor in response to an increase in business owner complaints about an uptick in criminal activity and homelessness. The city hopes that increased security and law enforcement along the South Nevada corridor will help direct the unhoused community towards services and shelters.
Dieter Schnakenberg, owner of Edelweiss German Restaurant, said he thinks homelessness deters business activity. “I know that I wouldn’t want to visit a business where you’ve got somebody panhandling out front,” he said.
The Springs Rescue Mission (SRM) is located just two blocks off of South Nevada Avenue. Travis Williams, the shelter’s CEO, also supports the plan for added security, noting that there are usually open, unused beds. For Williams, SRM’s overall goal is “healthy people, thriving businesses and a safe South Nevada corridor.” Many unhoused people prefer not to stay or are prevented from accessing SRM, citing medical discrimination, harassment, surveillance and paternalistic policies in a newsletter produced by the union.
Don Briggs, for example, recalls a friend being thrown out of SRM because he suffers from seizures under the justification that they are “unable to take care of your medical needs.” Now, his friend sleeps near Dorchester Park, where it is “a crime to sleep.”
In the same newsletter, Homeless Union organizers assert that Colorado Springs’ response to homelessness is “broken.” One community member said that the outreach teams in California operate “with humanity, supplies and referrals to real services” and were much more effective at actually addressing the real cost of homelessness.
Another organizer suggests “all that money that we spend [on] jail when we’re incarcerated could go to services that have proven to get people into housing.” The new Homeless Response Team and private security patrol on South Nevada Avenue serve to criminalize and eliminate unhoused people, simply for the crime of experiencing housing insecurity.