El Pomar kicks in another $50k to help Springs homeless
A program to provide a motel room, social services and job assistance for homeless campers will likely last into October, thanks to an additional $50,000 grant from the El Pomar Foundation and $50,000 in federal funds contributed by the city.
Earlier this year, El Pomar gave a $100,000 grant to Homeward Pikes Peak to help house homeless campers who were about to be uprooted from their tent sites because of a new ordinance prohibiting camping on public property.
Homeward Pikes Peak went through the money quickly as hundreds of campers accepted the offer for a room at the Express Inn and other motels around town, with the understanding that they would have to go into case management and look for jobs.
Without the extra money from El Pomar and the city, Homeward Pikes Peak executive director Bob Holmes said the program might have ended this month. But now, he said, he has almost enough to reach his goal of keeping the program going into the fall.
"At the end of the program, which I’m thinking will be early October, we will have served and hopefully moved on to self-sufficiency about two-thirds of the homeless tent campers -- 360 to 370 people," Holmes said. "That will be a success for me."
Holmes estimates that the city had 550 tent campers before the ordinance took effect in March. Dan McCormack of the Police Department's Homeless Outreach Team said last week he believes that about 75 campers remain, mostly in areas where officers have yet to start enforcing the ordinance.
As of Wednesday, 93 campers were in area motels, Holmes said. Twenty campers have entered substance abuse treatment programs, 105 have left town through a program that provides bus tickets, 42 are in federally funded housing and 45 have moved into private housing and are paying their own way.
Among those who have gotten off the streets through the program, 86 have found jobs, primarily in construction and landscaping.
"And they’re all still working," Holmes said. "Nobody has been terminated."
Another 134 campers entered the program, only to be kicked out for rules violations, most of them tied to drug use, Holmes said. McCormack said the HOT officers have yet to see any of those familiar faces back in the camps, and he and Holmes surmise they may be camping in remote places or on private property, or couch surfing at friends' homes.
As he talked about the new $50,000 grant Tuesday, El Pomar Chairman William Hybl said the foundation's trustees were willing to provide the money because they believed there was a strong need for it.
"The trustees felt that if the city were to have an anti-camping ordinance and already said they didn't have funds to place the people, the humanitarian side was to try to make sure that there would be the ability to house and feed these individuals," Hybl said.
He said Holmes' program has been a "great success."
"That's really incredible, when you think of programs that cost tens of millions of dollars and achieve very little in the service area," Hybl said.
Holmes is hoping to get another $50,000 infusion, perhaps from El Paso County. He made a similar pitch to the city, which tapped into a pot of federal funds that had not been designated for specific purposes.
"If we reach our goal of $250,000 and if we serve 360 people, that’s a bit less than $700 apiece, which is incredibly inexpensive and it’s probably one of the best investments that any funder could make," Holmes said.
