AURORA | More temporary housing for Aurora’s homeless population was completed at two Salvation Army sites this week, offering a shot at stability for some of those displaced during homeless camp sweeps.
The 30 new Pallet shelters — individual, prefabricated housing units measuring 8 feet by 8 feet — are being reserved specifically to those impacted by sweeps.
The shelters will be able to accommodate a relatively small number of the city’s 600-plus homeless residents and only a fraction of those on the waitlist for the Pallet shelters set up earlier this year and last year, though the waitlist for the new units will be managed separately.
Sponsors of the shelters say they’re an island of stability, where people can feel comfortable getting their feet underneath them before moving on to permanent housing.
“A good portion of the folks we’ve been talking to have been really excited about it and have already expressed interest in wanting to come and stay at these Pallet shelters,” said Emma Knight, the manager of Aurora’s homelessness division, during a tour of some of the new shelters on Friday.
City Council members who argued for stepping up sweeps earlier this year said a camping ban would help push the homeless toward established shelter and resources.
While the ban on homeless camping went into effect in mid-May and dozens of campsites have been swept since then, just three people have accepted the city’s offer of shelter at Comitis Crisis Center, according to city spokesman Michael Brannen.
Bob Dorshimer, CEO of the organization that runs Comitis, has also said that displaced campers are simply setting up camp in other areas of the city, rather than moving on to neighboring cities or finding permanent housing.
At the same time, Salvation Army program manager Emily Fuller said the waitlist for Pallet shelters has swelled under the ban — from 86 people in late April to 167 as of Friday.
“We definitely saw our waitlist go up pretty exponentially,” said Austin Foote with the Salvation Army, adding that many homeless people find “very little privacy and dignity” in group shelter, which is the only kind of shelter offered to swept campers through Comitis.
Josh Kerns — public relations manager for the company that makes the small, prefabricated housing units — said they’ve also seen demand increase as more cities adopt camping bans.
“And if you’re going to do that, where are those people going to go?,” he asked. “The problem is so many people don’t want to come into congregate shelter, I would argue, for understandable reasons. You have no privacy. You have to leave every night. You can’t have a dog. You can’t have your family. Zero possessions. And so what’s evolving is this sort of transitional model.”
Salvation Army manages close to 100 Pallet shelters in Aurora, split between its warehouse on Peoria Street and Restoration Christian Ministries on East Sixth Avenue.
A resident of the Pallet shelters at Restoration Christian Ministries since March, Tim Mackay, said the stability and help offered through the program were essential to him securing a housing voucher. After three years of living on the streets in Colorado, Mackay hopes to move into an apartment in a matter of weeks.
“It was a really good invitation to come out here, to have a chance to get a little bit of whatever serenity or whatever peace of mind I could have,” he said. “This has given me the hope that when I do get into my apartment, I will already be geared, because I’ve had the ability to be out here.”
In January, city staffers reported that the average stay at Salvation Army’s Peoria Street community was 80-90 days, with more than one in four finding employment during that time and one in 10 exiting into permanent housing.
Unlike the other Pallet shelters, an individual’s stay in the 30 new shelters will be limited to one week, or up to one month, if that person is engaging with outreach workers, Knight said.
Knight also said the city hopes the new shelters will be a more attractive shelter option than Comitis. She mentioned Salvation Army’s waitlist as proof of the level of interest in the tiny shelters, which can accommodate individuals or couples.
She also said a significant number of homeless campers contacted by the city had expressed interest in staying in a Pallet shelter.
“Definitely more than three people,” she said. “I think having the Pallet shelters will really open up a space that a lot of people want to come to.”
