Step, a long-running, Denver-based residential addiction recovery program for homeless men, will be opening a new location in Colorado Springs in 2025. Renovations begin this month at their 4525 North Park Dr. location, a 50-bed facility near Garden of the Gods Road and Interstate 25.
“Our goal is to serve 160 men in the first year, and at least 800 in the first five years of being open,” says Meghan Shay, Step’s executive director. “We’re really focused on those men who are who are falling through the cracks. We know that 75% of the unsheltered in Colorado Springs, in the Point-in-Time count last year, were men.”
Step will provide housing, food, and addiction recovery counseling while the men go through the four-phase program. “We provide same-day admission, no cost to enter, and we do not go through Medicaid and we do not fill insurance,” says Shay. “When someone is ready and willing, they’re getting in the same day at no cost. All of those barriers that exist for people seeking help, specifically treatment or addiction recovery, they’re going to be immediately brought into their program, and 100% of our program staff are alumni of our program. They’re also being greeted by someone who has made that call themselves who’s walked through the door themselves.”
According to Shay, residents spend the first 30 days in Step’s dorms. “The milestones they’re reaching in that time are getting their I.D.,” explains Shay. “Right now, 30% of the people that come into our program have no I.D. of any kind, so that’s a big goal, and getting a full-time, tax-paying job. Getting a sponsor or mentor outside of our program and a recovery fellowship and starting to work with that person one-on-one outside of our program. That is really critical because no one is cured when they leave our program. Because we’re serving individuals that suffer the disease of addiction, we need them to build community beyond our walls so that when they leave our program, they still have that recovery program that they’re working in a sense of community and connection.”
After the first phase, residents will move into private rooms and spend 60 days in phase two. “That’s where they’re setting SMART [specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound] goals in eight different areas of their life – so employment, finances, family and volunteering, healthy social and recreational activities, mental and physical health,” says Shay. “So they’re setting SMART goals in each of those areas of their life, and they’re working to make progress in those. They’re going through all of this under the guidance of a recovery support manager, and that is a peer coach.”
Residents spend 45 days in phase three, continuing to work on their goals with increased privileges and responsibilities, before moving onto phase four, moving to a sober living house. “The sober living home component will be adding during that first year [in Colorado Springs],” says Shay. “We’ve just got to get this building open first and then we’ll be looking within that first year to open our first sober living home so that the men have the opportunity to transition to the fourth and final phase of our program – that’s community, and that’s where they’re living in a sober living home. Those are five-bedroom homes with five men per home. A lot of sober living homes, you’ll see them putting eight people in a room, and a lot of them are for-profit models and we want them to have a good quality of life, so we do five-bedroom homes with five men per home.”
The hope is that Step’s program will have a positive impact on homelessness in Colorado Springs. “Last year, 96% of the people that we served were homeless at the time of admission, 4% had stable housing,” says Shay. “We are bringing people directly off the streets, in the majority of cases. In some cases, we do have about 40% of the people that we served last year who were not on the streets yet, but they didn’t have an address. They had someone who let them stay on their couch for two nights and then they’d go stay over here for a couple of nights. And it was that kind of thing. So in that regard, we really view our program as prevention because we’re able to bring people into our program before they hit the streets when they’re right on that verge. And so we view ourselves as both intervention and prevention and as it pertains to homelessness.”
Since its founding in 1983, Step has received recognition and support from conservatives across Colorado, including radio personalities like Mike Rosen and Peter Boyles. Step’s expansion into Colorado Springs also comes with significant conservative support. “For the past (4) years, Step has been asked by government officials (namely John Suthers and City Council Members), community leaders (namely Jim Johnson, Steve Schuck, Larry Yonkers, and Bill Cadman), homeless and addiction service providers (namely the Springs Rescue Mission and Homeward Pikes Peak), and private foundations (namely the El Pomar Foundation, the Anschutz Foundation, and the Daniels Fund) to bring the Step model to Colorado Springs to assist in providing services to those in need suffering from addiction and homelessness,” notes Step’s May 8 project statement to the Colorado Springs Planning Commission.
Included in their presentation to the Planning Commission was a letter of support from El Paso County Commissioner Carrie Geitner. “As an elected leader in this community, I believe this program is essential to complement what is already available,” wrote Geitner in her May 6 letter. “Not only will this program enhance our leadership in dealing with addiction and homelessness, it will truly transform individual lives. As a community member who lost a brother to addiction, I believe we must do everything possible to provide this option to those in our community seeking help and recovery from their addiction.”
The support for Step is perhaps surprising from Geitner, who in recent years has used her position on the El Paso County Board of Commissioners to deny grant funding to nonprofits like the Place, which works to address youth homelessness in Colorado Springs, and Peak Education, a mentoring and college access organization. One of the elements of Step’s program that conservatives find appealing is its requirement that residents give up any kind of government assistance to take part in the program.
“[Residents must be] willing to discontinue any third party financial assistance,” explains Shay. “What that means is EBT [food assistance], disability, Social Security disability, money from family and other nonprofits, church. No cash financial assistance. We are giving our men immediately the safety and housing first, right? We call ourselves ‘housing first with accountability,’ so you are coming in and immediately being given a safe place to live. Hygiene items, food, clothing, everything that you could possibly need. We’re getting you out of survival mode and giving you the safety and stability that you need. We are giving you the tools to become self-sufficient and become someone who can take care of yourselves, and we are breaking the cycle of dependency. In doing so, we’re not allowing our men to be receiving benefits.”
Step also does not receive any kind of government funding themselves. “We don’t take any government funding,” says Shay. “We are an independent organization that fundraises from individuals and private foundations so that we can make every decision based on one thing only, which is what’s best for the people that we’re serving. We don’t want to become an organization that is having to make program decisions based on what funding is available and what the new government contract is coming down the pipeline.”
Despite their appeal to conservatives and libertarians, Shay notes that Step itself is not a political organization. “It’s been about 14 years since our former executive director, Bob Coté, passed away and during his tenure as executive director, which was decades, he did so much good for this organization,” says Shay. “He, however, was very vocal politically. Since his passing, we have made a concerted effort to make clear that this is not political. We are not a political organization. We have no political affiliation, nor do we have any political opinions. Actually, this is a human issue. These are human values, and so we have been very intentional in making sure that everyone across the political spectrum finds a place here and feels called to join us in this mission. I’m very grateful to say we’ve been successful in doing that. We have donors who are far to the left and donors who are far to the right, and they all come to the table supporting our men because they believe that they’re capable and deserving of an opportunity.”
Shay says Step’s goal is to have the Colorado Springs facility open by October of 2025.
