In Grand Junction, City Council debates role in homeless solution, problem shelter

By Lindy Browning | Contributor, Rocky Mountain Voice

After months of appealing to the Grand Junction City Council to do something about the criminal element that has worsened since the Homeless Day Center was located in their neighborhood, business owners and downtown residents are beginning to see progress.

At the City Council workshop on Nov. 4,  Interim City manager Andrea Phillips told the Council that they had held meetings with the public as directed by Council two weeks ago, that there were approximately 45 people in attendance and all the people that came to the meeting wanted the Day Center closed immediately.

She said their concerns were valid and that there were concerns generally related to the location of the Day Center.

More specific concerns included safety for employee and customers, an escalation of illegal drug activity, prostitution, assaults, trash, human waste, trespassing, and having employees afraid to work alone because of threats from some of the homeless population who they say are either mentally ill or on drugs.

After her report, Councilwoman Anna Stout asked if any of the homeless people attended the meeting.  When Phillips said there were not, Stout said, “We need to have a listening session with the un-housed population.”

Phillips reported that staff had also met with Homeward Bound who runs the Day Center and with United Way.  “I think that we are all aware that the Center isn’t going to work where it’s at and we are going to need to find an alternative location.”

To that point, Phillips and staff have been looking for an appropriate alternate site and exploring all the options to either lease or purchase. She reported they were in conversations with a commercial real estate professional about potential properties that may be available.

She also discussed concerns over closing the facility during the winter.  Her preference is that if the Center was going to be temporarily closed for a reset period – perhaps two weeks, it should happen now as opposed to when the temperatures get dangerously cold.

“It would be nice to be able to tell the businesses that by spring 2025 the Center could be moved. We are looking at something that has the room that we need not only for the number of people that we are trying to serve, but that is large enough so that our mutual aid partners who distribute food, and other services, can continue to do that on site,” she continued.

Criteria that have been defined for a future site include significant reduction in impact to businesses, lower public visibility that doesn’t impact downtown foot traffic or tourism, and near public transit.

Interim plans were identified that could potentially lessen the impact to the community until a new location can be found to include more staffing and more staff training, keeping the gate closed and mandate a check in and check out for people using the facility, having and enforcing a code of conduct, rules for behavior that are enforced, and having a pet area. “At one point in time there were 15 dogs in the center and they were causing unsafe and unsanitary conditions,” Phillips said.

The Council discussed that they had concerns about safety, not just in the area around the Day Center, but the wider downtown area.  Both businesses and the city staff have been in discussions with the police department concerning safety design strategies that include hardening businesses, lighting and pruning trees to increase visibility, and more security cameras. 

They also discussed neighborhood watch programs, adequate police staffing and stepping up the “broken windows theory”; meaning that if an area is allowed to be vandalized, full of trash, and run down, then it will get worse and draw the wrong element.  Taking care of issues when they are small is easier than allowing the issue to become big.

“I have regret for the business owners and residents. This is having an impact on important people in our community. I think (moving the Center) in the spring makes sense to me if we have an interim plan,” said Councilman Randall Reitz.

Councilman Cody Davis told the group that he thought that it was imperative that until the center is relocated that the scope of services at the facility should be pared down significantly. He advocated for shorter hours, but that still allowed for the mutual aid partners full scope of operations on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

Stout voiced her hesitation to immediate changes to the operations of the center. “We don’t have enough data to show the resource center is causing this (problem). A two-week closure may give us that information. We have heard from the study that we had conducted last year that we need more, not less, of these places.”

“Is this acting as a magnet to the homeless population,” asked Mayor Abe Herman.  He noted there was a 45-percent increase in the homeless population since 2019.

Referencing an email written to the Council, sent by Catholic Outreach, Stout said, “I disagree with the email that services are adequate here, clearly they aren’t.  Things would get worse if we close the center. This is a moral conundrum for me.”

Councilman Scott Beilfuss said with some degree of frustration, “In July, I brought up needing to relocate this and here we are in an emergency situation. There are threats to the community. A lady pulled a gun on one of the homeless people in fear. I don’t think councils should be making these decisions on this, I think the (MAP) providers should.”

Simpson said, “We are facing terrible options. We didn’t know it at the time, but this was a big mistake, I think.”

Herman fired back, “I don’t think this was a mistake. We don’t have people coming in from somewhere else. These are all good people from Grand Junction.”  The attendees in the audience gasped out loud in outrage with Herman’s assertion of facts.  Herman snapped a response to the reaction of the attendees and said, “We have decorum here, if you want to speak, come to the meeting,” he said in rebuke.

Kennedy refuted Herman’s statement by saying, “Mesa County Public Health told me that there is a significant increase in people coming from Denver as a result of an influx of illegal immigrants in Denver.”

Beilfuss wondered out loud if it was even the city’s role to take on solving the issue of the homeless and their needs,  He said that most places have mutual aid partners that handle these issues (with the help of funding from local governments). “We have to be talking to the MAP groups, they’re the Marines in the valley. There are 5 groups that belong to the MAP and more than could come together.”

 During one of the breaks in the nearly four-hour meeting, attendees could be heard discussing among themselves that they had tried to tell Council a year ago that all of this would happen if they put the Day Center in the downtown area.  

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