Thanks to a generous grant from the Manitou Springs Community Foundation, the Bulletin has reported several stories under the banner of Healthy Spaces-Safer Places covering mental health and housing-access resources. This grant funding has made possible a new series, launched in this edition, called “All Our Neighbors.”
In this series, we are following the Colorado Springs Homeless Union, a grassroots group composed mainly of unhoused and formerly unhoused community members, as they harness their collective knowledge and power to achieve specific changes to policies and public perception.
The Bulletin is also following several union members as they work to obtain and maintain stable housing, telling their stories and chronicling their housing journey as it unfolds.
We’ll also talk with nonprofit leaders, police, elected officials, business owners and housed residents to look at how we, as a community, are responding to the crisis of homelessness and housing insecurity. And we’ll examine the larger issues around homelessness affecting communities across the nation, and how these are at play in our own backyard.
About the Homeless Union – I have attended a lot of grassroots movement meetings over the years. And I mean a lot. I’ve shown up as an interested citizen, covered them as a reporter and led them as a passionate volunteer.
Regardless of topic, these meetings can at times be unwieldy. We humans like to get on our soapboxes and talk too long; we speak as if we are experts on subjects we know little of; we repeat what someone else just said. We digress, butt heads, get hung up on details. We spend two hours shoved together around a table, only to reflect that we could have done this in an email.
If we can eventually coalesce and take the next step forward, this is OK. This is people; this is democracy; this is how change happens. But sometimes we get bogged down at the starting line.
What has been notable to me in the handful of Homeless Union meetings I have attended is how very not-bogged-down they are.
We will not paint any group with a broad brush.
The participants are uncommonly focused. They listen to one another. No one gets way off topic or hogs the spotlight. Members have firsthand subject-matter expertise. They know the realities of living unsheltered, and what unmet needs exist in their community. They have practical ideas about solutions. They have a game plan.
They also face a lot of barriers. Accessing food, showers, medical care and other basic services sucks up time and effort daily, especially with limited public transportation options in the city.
They deal with chronic stress from the ever-hovering prospect of eviction from their campsites, of having their belongings stolen, of potential violence. Many carry trauma or have chronic medical issues. They are painfully aware of negative public perception, feeling tarnished by a broad brush that paints all homeless people as a scourge.
Throughout this series, we will not paint any group with a broad brush, including people who are unhoused, police, homeowners, business owners – you name it.
This is an especially important commitment because to talk about homelessness is to talk about a slew of potentially sensitive issues – public policy, law enforcement, shelter options, bathroom access, mental illness, substance use. And that’s just for starters.
Over the coming months, we’ll talk about all of it, and we’ll do it while being candid about the facts, neither sugarcoating nor sensationalizing, always centering on the people most affected: our neighbors experiencing homelessness.
It is a privilege to share these stories with you. Thank you for reading.
If you have a perspective to add to this series, write to me at heila@pikespeakbulletin.org.
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