GUEST COLUMN: A different perspective on Homeward Pikes Peak and the city

I think Wayne Laugesen and I have a fundamental difference in the concept of responsibility. I believe that taking a far-right or a far-left stance politically, as you so frequently do, frees one from the task of thoughtfully and thoroughly analyzing complex problems.

Homeward Pikes Peak, founded in 2002, has been supported, in part, by the city since 2005. I appreciated the support and appreciated a paradigm where I could reciprocate, as needed, by performing services for the city. Homeward Pikes Peak has never been a charity in Laugesen’s context. I was doing work that usually a city employee would perform. I managed the Continuum of Care and worked on yearly HUD grants that have brought over $15 million  into the city over the past nine years. During this period the support from the city to HPP totaled about $300,000. In addition, I served as a pro bono consultant for homeless service agencies, ran an annual conference, the annual Project Connect, monthly educational meetings for homeless services agencies, and any other duties that the mayor or city council requested.

I do this as a one-person agency. Pikes Peak united Way graciously provides accounting, financial and computer services, but I book my own appointments, answer my own phone and do my own typing.

Last July I demonstrated to the mayor that with the $80,000 from the city, I was working for about one-half of what it would cost for a city employee to do the same work. A good, cost-efficient deal for everyone, I had believed for the past nine years.

And, by the way, in 2005 and 2006 I coordinated the Gulf Coast Hurricane Relief Program, serving 2,054 evacuees. And In 2009 I took over a failing Housing First Program, turned it around for 26 months and returned it to the original organization, doubled in size and financially sound.

Finally, there were the tent campers, 610 of them, that camped along our interstate and in our downtown areas. El Pomar took the lead in funding me to work with the campers in conjunction with volunteers and the Homeless Outreach Team Officers. (The city later reluctantly funded about 20 percent of the cost for the first six months.) Our population of chronically homeless continues to be only one-third of what it was in 2009.

Then things suddenly changed last spring. I seem to have irritated the mayor because I tried unsuccessfully for months to have a short meeting with him to apprise him of some facts about the homeless situation in Colorado Springs. I felt a meeting was critically necessary when I heard about thoughts of moving the soup kitchen and “getting rid of the homeless” to improve the ambience of downtown Colorado Springs. So I sent him an email, copied to his top staff and city council, expressing both my ideas and my frustration over my inability to communicate with him. That email was leaked to the media and here we are.

Now I’m trying to figure out if my funding was cut because the city says we can’t afford what i do, which has been the official version; or if the mayor cut my funding because he thinks i earn too much money, as he seems to have told Laugesen.

Truthfully, the salary issue seems a bit bogus, since I make a base salary of $105,000, a generous compensation, but one scaled to 40 years of an excellent service record in the public sector, and certainly well below that of many city employees, including members of the mayor’s cabinet. (And, again, I am my own secretary.)

Did I mention the Homeless Outreach Program, which grew from the program for the homeless tent campers? I continue to run that program pro bono, taking no administrative fees or compensation. I do have 2.4 case managers that work for me in that program. We serve, on average, 80 homeless women and kids, with a few dads in the mix. We have served 1,680 homeless in two years, as a cost of $7 per person, per night, or half of what the closest emergency facility utilizes. The program budget is slightly over $200,000 per year and I raise this through the generosity of local foundations, faith-based organizations and individuals.

We can document 223 jobs in this program in the past two years. If the clients make $8 per hour and spend one-third of their money on sales-taxable items, they put over $90,000 back into city coffers yearly in sales taxes. The city invested $50,000 in this program in 2010. Not a bad ROI in any person’s portfolio.

Homeward Pikes Peak, in the purest context, is not a charity. We work for the city and give good value for the city’s yearly contribution. The Homeless Outreach Program, on the other hand, is a charity, and we get no city funding.

Life is complicated, more complicated than can be seen from the far right of the political spectrum. Enjoy your view, but please don’t inflict it on us all.

Robert Holmes is Executive Director of Homeward Pikes Peak.