On Saturday, July 25th, along with Board member Leanne Wheeler, I visited the Fort Lyon Supportive Residential Community, where residents stay long term to overcome the issues that found them homeless. For most at this facility, it is addiction and mental illness--not the leading causes of homelessness, but definitely prevalent for people who are at risk of dying and who are chronically homeless. 
    Fort Lyon is the brainchild of former DPD officer Phil Harrington (who hosted us on our visit) and his friend and colleague, James Ginsburg, who is the community’s director. When the property became available, they visited with several other interested parties, putting forth their idea of turning the property into a resident recovery program for those at the end of their rope. Their continued visits and proposals were never met with a no, and when private investors failed to materialize, the state stepped in and provided the necessary funding. Phil shares that the people who come there are survivors, having lived through a life that too many of their cohort on the streets died from. The project is managed by the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless .
    It was an amazing visit. I saw the results of the work the community of residents are doing there, including reclaiming many of the historic buildings through their construction and decorating efforts. The profound observation I experienced is that, given the support to simply live in a drug free environment without having to face the struggle for survival, these wonderful people are thriving and working. The work was both on their own health and recovery, and on making the community the best it can be through their ownership of what they do. They make most of the decisions on how things are run, including what projects to work on. Their significant efforts fly in the face of the common belief that people who are homeless are lazy and are looking for a hand out and for a way to score their next drink or drug. Once given a safe space, away from the rat race of simply surviving and the lure of drugs and alcohol use with fellow unhoused community members, they are showing that thriving means living in harmony and staying busy, working as a group.
    I'm extremely grateful to Leanne and Phil for the great amount of time they devoted to sharing the day with me, and to all the great residents of Fort Lyon that I met. I'm also happy to say that I found a friend from the streets of Boulder, who, now there for nearly a year, is in college, getting straight A's, working her ass off for recovery. Peace is there, and I enjoyed it for half a day.

For more information about this program,
 contact Colorado Coalition for the Homeless 
at (303) 293-2217.
Darren O’Connor is an electrical engineer at CU Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, where he is currently working on an instrument that will go to Jupiter's moon, Europa, looking for signs of life. His activism centers around foreclosure justice, homeless rights, banking fraud and exposing the racism inherent in and fundamental to our social, economic and justice systems.

Although flawless counts are impossible to come by – the transient nature of homeless populations presents a major difficulty – the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimates that 49,933 veterans are homeless on any given night.

The following demographics are taken from the website of The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (NCHV):

     12% of the homeless adult population are veterans
     20% of the male homeless population are veterans
     68% reside in principal cities
     32% reside in suburban/rural areas
     51% of individual homeless veterans have disabilities
     50% have serious mental illness
     70% have substance abuse problems
     51% are white males, compared to 38% of non-veterans
     50% are age 51 or older, compared to 19% of non-veterans

What is being done for veterans who find themselves living without a home?
    The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Veterans Administration (VA) have a special Section 8 housing voucher program called VASH (Veterans Administration Supported Housing), or HUD-VASH, which gives out a certain number of Section 8 subsidized housing vouchers to eligible homeless and otherwise vulnerable US armed forces veterans. The HUD-VASH program has shown success in housing many homeless veterans.
    In 2012, Veterans Affairs introduced the Supportive Services for Veteran Families program, with the parallel goals of preventing veteran homelessness and rapidly re-housing veterans and veteran families who do fall into homelessness. The program provides a variety of time-limited services and financial assistance. In its first two years, the SSVF program aided almost 100,000 individuals in over 61,000 households, spending $2,480 per household.
    There are other resources for assisting veterans in a housing crisis as well. The Grant and Per Diem transitional housing program and Domiciliary Care programs funded through the Veterans Health Administration offer temporary assistance to veterans as bridge or crisis housing. The Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program under the Department of Labor assists homeless veterans with employment skills and job searches.
    The list could continue. If you are a veteran and don't currently have housing or are at risk of losing your housing please seek assistance.

While services are available at several locations throughout the Denver metro area, the central providers for veterans are as follows: 

Community Resource and Referral Center
3030 Downing St
Denver, Colorado 80205
(303) 294-5600

VOA Bill Daniels Veterans Service Center
1247 Santa Fe Drive
Denver, Colorado
(720) 501-3367

If you do not live near downtown Denver, feel free to call either of these locations for information about services near you.

by Walkerasurus

    So what do you do at Wal3am when your stomach gurgles, your bowels roll and you know you are going to have to hurry or there will be an unwanted mess in the pants? If you are homeless and stuck outside, just what are your options? Honestly you have none. Welcome to the land of bushes and alleys. Just surrender your dignity and go where you can.
    On July 13th a group of homeless advocates mourned the death of human dignity in Denver Colorado. If you are wondering what they mean by this... Think bathrooms... It is all about the bathrooms. The lack of access to public bathrooms. If you are homeless (and therefore have no toilet of your own) and need to answer a call of nature and there are no public bathrooms available or you are not allowed to use a nearby businesses bathrooms... your dignity dies.
    For the homeless community, this is a real concern. Public bathrooms have become less and less available in Denver, especially after dark, a time when the homeless community is most vulnerable to this issue. A little piece of one’s dignity dies each time you answer a call of nature behind a bush, or in an alleyway. And what of those times when one has a need while suffering from diarrhea? Eating second hand food from donations does not always assure the best of freshness. Eating bravely or not, your body will respond. This is especially true when it becomes too hard to come by perishables like fruits and vegetables. On occasion it is natural to get a touch of the runs for most of us anyway. Add to that that sleeping in the elements which is hard on the body and that will lead to more illnesses. Personal dignity is bound to be sacrificed at some point along the way.
    Too often “public” bathrooms are locked and unavailable. Businesses for the most part are unwilling to be helpful for fear of being taken advantage of. So in response to the severe lack of available facilities for those who are without housing, DHOL held a vigil they called the Death of Human Dignity.
    The vigil--complete with a casket, mourners, flowers, a eulogy performed by a local pastor, and testimonials from victims of the call of nature--was attended by about 20 people and covered by local public radio. The unavailability of proper facilities was mourned right in front of some locked public bathrooms at a local park. If you rent the ball field for softball the city will unlock them for you, but other than that these public bathrooms (like so many others) remain locked all the time. 
    The more unwelcoming Denver becomes to the poorest of its citizens, the more the dignity of the city dies as well. In a modern city in a modern world, opportunities for basic acts of survival (sleeping, eating, and calls of nature) should be able to occur without attention from the police and with a little common dignity.
    Denver, like many cities across the nation, has used access (or rather the lack of it) to public facilities and public spaces as a way to manage the movement and location of its homeless communities. But Denver has gone too far. Access to public bathrooms is so restricted that in Denver tourists, housed residents and more have been complaining to City Council to take action. It has become an issue of great concern in the downtown area, leading to a series of “stakeholders” meeting with City Council members where people from various organizations are complaining to the city for access to bathrooms.
    Way to go Denver … your dignity has died.
    And now your are full of...S--- 
     because there is no place to put it.

DHOL Staff

If you were given $2,000, how would you use it? To get Denver folks excited about a tiny homes village for houseless people! That was what the Denver Homeless Out Loud (DHOL) Tiny Homes Working Group decided to do after being awarded a grant to participate in the Biennial of the Americas celebration in July.  According to its website, the Biennial Festival - a city-wide event - aims to “bring the most inspiring artists, innovators, leaders and experts from the Denver metro area and from North, South and Central America and the Caribbean together around the most pressing issues of our time.”
    The resulting “Struggle for Space” series of events that the DHOL group produced was a spectacular mix of events which left unhoused and housed neighbors eager to learn more about tiny homes.
    The events began with the display on the 16th Street Mall of 'The Mesa House', a tiny home that a group of students from Mesa Middle School in Castle Rock had built in the last few months, with the help of DHOLers. Friends at Good Thieves Press helped produce the 60-page book, “The Struggle for Space: Homelessness and the Politics of Dys-appearance in American Cities,” which featured the essay, “Homelessness, Dys-Appearance andResistance," by University of Colorado Denver Associate Professor of Philosophy Chad Kautzer. The book also included a history of the use of public space in Denver, information supporting the use of tiny homes for houseless people, and art work by houseless community members who participate in the Reach Studio of RedLine art gallery. The booklet can be read at denverhomelessoutloud.org.
    On July 18th the community was amazed to see a group of tiny homes enthusiasts construct a 12 foot x 7 foot Conestoga Hut in two hours at Eddie Maestas (formerly Triangle) Park (see story on page 3). This spectacle was followed by a tour of six different tiny homes.  In the evening the group presented the event “The Struggle for Space” at the Platte Forum, which featured artwork, presentations by the writers and artists in the book, guests from Right 2 Dream Too/Right to Survive of Portland, Oregon, music by friends Laura Goldhammer and Bonifhyde, food catered by Same Cafe, and much more.
    Other contributing partners to the events include The Denver Foundation, Mayday Experiment, and Michelle Christiance.  The Little Denver Tiny Home Village Concept.  Based on what we’ve heard people need and want, Denver Homeless Out Loud is proposing to partner with other organizations to build “Little Denver: A Tiny Home Village.” While the structure, governance and other aspects of the community will be established by those who choose to live there, here are some things we heard when we asked people in our community forums and outreach to say what they wanted in a tiny homes village:
    "A place to be safe” -“A garden”- “A place for me and my partner” - “Workspace”- “A dog run”- “Bees”-“Community”- “Choices” -“A door”- “A place for couples”-“A farmer’s market”- “Community”- “A lounge area” - “A bathroom” - “A patio” - “A roof” - “A community kitchen” - “Gazebo” - “Meeting house” - “Chickens” - “A place for pets” - “A sink” - “Nothing much” - “A toothbrush, sink” - “Tiny ‘me’ space’” - “Underwear drawer”- “Natural light” - “A front porch” - “Privacy, respect and choices” -“Something to contribute to” - “To grow food” - “A tiny home I built” - “A bike rack” -“A co-operative business” - “Power to make decisions” - “To design the houses” - “Friends” - “A place to hold meetings and have a block party” - “Neighbors” 
    Chad Kautzer, Philosophy Professor at University of Colorado/Denver and author of  the essay "Homelessness, Dys-Appearance and Resistance”:

 “When your privilege is invisible to you, you attribute all of your successes to yourself. You don’t see how city resources have been marshaled for your projects...built around your projects, while excluding others. You don’t see how the city is an extension of your privilege... The simple answer is Housing First, housing for everyone... Why this doesn’t resonate with (people with power and privilege) is because they think people who have privilege earned it...that everyone that lost their home after the recent recession, it’s their fault...that being born into a wealthy family, being born white is somehow your individual accomplishment. We need to undermine that belief that people get what they deserve--they do not!”

    Supporters of quality-of-life ordinances, which prohibit panhandling, sleeping, lying down, etc. in public places, view the survival activities of the unhoused as obstacles to their leisurely use of such spaces. The privileged associate public spaces such as public parks and squares with their recreational activities, because social conditions have enabled them to carry out necessary activities, such as sleeping, elsewhere…. When we switch our perspective from that of the privileged to that of the excluded, the unhoused, and the dys- appeared, we find that the current distributions and regulations of city spaces are obstructions to survival and human dignity….
    When the suffering of others is merely moral—and most often a one-dimensional moral response of pity for an individual—the experience of the suffering calls for charity rather than social and urban transformation.   Only organized resistance can transform physical, legal, and social conditions of exclusion to ensure that city spaces and resources enable everyone’s bodies and satisfy everyone’s needs.”

    A strange thing happened on July 18th of this year. For the first time in over a year, hundreds of unhoused citizens gathered at the Triangle Gardens (aka The Triangle, aka Eddie Maestas Garden). This gathering was made possible by the Tiny Homes Working Group of Denver Homeless Out Loud. This park had been a frequent gathering place for many of Denver’s unhoused population, even though they were hassled several times a day by the DPD, “Denver’s finest.”  A little over a year ago this small oasis, across Lawrence Street from Samaritan House and across Park Ave West from the Denver Rescue Mission, was fenced off and converted into a community garden in a successful effort to force the unhoused folks who gathered there to move along.  This day, however, thanks in large part to the Tiny Homes Working Group, these unhoused people were once again welcomed into the park. They were there to witness the construction of a Conestoga shelter. 
    This was just the start of a daylong demonstration of the livability of Tiny Homes by a coalition of groups that presented “The Struggle for Space” portion of the Biennial of the Americas event in Denver. Later in the day there was a tiny home open house, presentation and party at the Platte forum--with music and food for all.  
    To get back to the Triangle though, we were amazed at the simplicity and ingenuity of the Conestoga shelter. It is based on the wagons that many of the early settlers used in their western migration across North America. This simple, inexpensive ($1,000 for materials) shelter was designed by a group from Eugene, Oregon called “Community Supported Shelters.” We were all impressed with the unique way that a small piece of land could be quickly and inexpensively converted into a comfortable living area for people to find shelter from the elements.
    The concept of tiny homes is nothing new, but as a result of stagnant wages and rising housing cost in many cities, including Denver, it is gaining popularity with the working poor. This popularity however is not shared by most of the governing bodies of many of our American cities, including Denver. Here in Denver, despite having completed several tiny homes which houseless people could be living in, the group’s plans to move forward with a tiny home village are being held up by zoning, code, and permitting red tape.
    This foot dragging by Denver’s mayor and city council is hard for me to understand. We have a large and growing population of unhoused people, many of them the working poor. So far the only response to this problem on the part of the city has been to criminalize simple acts of survival performed by people who, because of their lack of housing, are forced to live in public. Not only is this not a solution to a growing problem, but it makes a bad situation worse, and cost the taxpayers a bunch of money, including for police, courts, jails, ER, and hospitals.
    A tiny homes village in Denver is just one viable solution to the so called homeless problem in our fair city. We just have to convince the City Fathers of that fact.    You see, most politicians are not leaders, they are followers. They are usually way behind the general population when it comes to new strategies or concepts. This is because most politicians spend much of their time seeking two things, money and votes. If you can guarantee to deliver either of these two things, then you are going to get them to listen to your ideas. If not, then you may get a polite hearing, but your advice will be promptly ignored. We have been there.
    Most of us who want to build a tiny home village in Denver do not have a lot of money to throw at these guys, so we have to show them that we can deliver the votes they need to stay in office. This is why the Tiny Homes Working Group is circulating a petition telling our city officials we want tiny homes. Please sign it and together we can lead the politicians of this city into allowing us to build a tiny home village in Denver.  Don’t stop there though. We must continue to call and pester our own council members and His Honor, The Mayor, until they allow us to pursue our Dream, if for no other reason than to get us to shut up. They can only hope…