[This guest column was written in response to the Pikes Peak Bulletin article “Now it’s gone: Homeless say CSPD destroys belongings” in our Oct. 25 edition. — ed]
Consider CSPD’s official process for retrieving confiscated belongings. According to CSPD Public Relations Manager Ira Cronin, “It’s easiest if they have a state-issued ID,” and they “prefer they call first and make an appointment.” This policy perfectly illustrates how solutions designed by housed individuals fail to account for the realities of homelessness.
The circular logic is staggering: To reclaim your ID or other identifying information that was taken in a CSPD Homeless Outreach Team sweep, you need to present … an ID. The irony is stark: The HOT team often disposes of the very documentation needed to retrieve important belongings. Birth certificates, social security cards and other vital documents – necessary for obtaining the ID required to reclaim confiscated items – are frequently lost in these sweeps. The suggestion to “call first” presumes access to a phone and the ability to keep it charged. Even the location of the evidence unit at 224 Rio Grande St. presents transportation challenges for many unhoused individuals.
While CSPD maintains they provide “reasonable notice” before camp sweeps, the reality on the ground tells a different story. The destruction of personal property continues despite official claims of careful preservation. This isn’t just about lost belongings – it’s about lost opportunities to escape homelessness.
The environmental health paradox
Our current policies create a series of impossible contradictions that most housed residents never see.
Restroom Access
• Close public restrooms to prevent vandalism
• Force people to use streams and public spaces
• Express outrage about environmental contamination
• Use that contamination to justify further restrictions
• Make it impossible to maintain basic hygiene for job interviews
• Repeat
Trash Management
• Provide insufficient trash receptacles
• Don’t maintain existing receptacles
• Condemn resulting litter
• Use litter to justify camp sweeps
• Ignore requests from homeless individuals for more comprehensive and effective trash services
• Repeat
The hidden professional impact
Few housed residents realize how a single HOT team sweep creates ripple effects across every system designed to help. Ask any social worker, probation officer, public defender or case manager about these cascading failures:
Court System Impact:
• Missed appearances due to lost documentation
• New warrants issued for non-compliance
• Additional hearings scheduled
• Extended timelines for case resolution
• Increased system costs
• Growing client hopelessness
Treatment Provider Impact:
• Interrupted medication schedules
• Missed appointments while securing basic needs
• Lost progress and momentum
• Increased substance use from trauma
• Withdrawal from services and erosion of trust between the unhoused and social service professionals
• Repeated intake processes
Child Welfare Impact:
• Missed parent-child visits
• Extended foster care stays
• Delayed reunification
• Increased trauma for children
• Higher system costs
• Frustrated foster families
The cycle of hopelessness often leads to or exacerbates substance use and mental health crises, making them even less likely to maintain contact with their support team. When they do reconnect, the process starts again – until the next sweep.
The shelter solution myth
During the recent Colorado Springs City Council’s Budget Town Hall, a council member suggested that criticism of the HOT team stems merely from their enforcement role, arguing that if the fire department were tasked with camping ban enforcement, they would face similar resentment. This reductive analysis misses crucial distinctions in approach, engagement, and fundamental understanding of unhoused individuals’ needs.
The suggestion that the Springs Rescue Mission solves these issues ignores numerous practical barriers:
• Work conflicts: Shelter schedules often make maintaining employment impossible
• Storage limitations: Lack of secure storage forces impossible choices about what to keep
• Safety concerns: Communal living spaces can be particularly challenging for those with trauma or mental health issues
• Family separation: Policies that separate partners or family units
• Accessibility: Transportation barriers and limited operating hours
• Documentation requirements: The circular problem of needing documentation that may have been lost in sweeps
The frequently cited $500,000 allocation to Springs Rescue Mission exemplifies our community’s misunderstanding of the issue. At the recent Budget Town Hall, a council member challenged an unhoused individual’s lived experience based on what he had seen during a scheduled guided tour, the equivalent of believing the promotional video over an expert product review.
The reality of survival
Being homeless is the antithesis of laziness. It’s a full-time job, especially when forced into a maddening cycle of regathering essentials necessary for basic survival. The more we take from them, the more desperate they become, which actually increases the likelihood of criminal activity necessary to once again reobtain basic survival items removed by the well-funded HOT team. In sum, we’re allocating a tremendous amount of taxpayer dollars to fund a program that systematically removes items the unhoused need to survive, increasing the likelihood of criminal activity driven by the desperate need to replace basic survival resources that are necessary prerequisites to obtaining stability and bandwidth to inch closer to stable housing.
The real cost to taxpayers
Each time the HOT team destroys a camp, the following breakdown outlines a close approximation of the cost to our tax dollars at work:
• Hours of caseworker time reordering documents ($200+ per incident)
• Rescheduled court hearings ($500+ per hearing)
• Repeated treatment intakes ($300+ per incident)
• Additional attorney hours ($150+ per hour)
• Lost progress toward stability (incalculable)
When housed individuals face crises – illness, family emergencies, mental health challenges – they generally receive understanding and accommodation. Yet we expect unhoused individuals to:
• Navigate complex bureaucratic processes
• Maintain perfect appointment attendance
• Appear clean and professional for interviews
• Store and organize important documents
• All while fighting daily for basic survival
Moving forward
Real solutions require:
1. Acknowledging that current policies often sabotage professional efforts to help
2. Understanding that homelessness itself is a full-time job of survival
3. Recognizing that solutions designed by housed people for unhoused people will fail
4. Accepting that punitive approaches increase costs while reducing effectiveness
The millions spent on the HOT team’s “cleanup” efforts could instead fund:
• Multiple 24/7 public restroom facilities with attendants throughout our city
• Increased and consistent trash collection services
• Secure document storage facilities
• Housing-first initiatives, backed by extensive peer-reviewed research demonstrating their superior cost-effectiveness and sustainability compared to Colorado Springs’ current approach of zero-tolerance policies that prioritize hiding homelessness over addressing its root causes
• Lower barrier transportation access and assistance
• Expanded support for ID and document replacement
• Mobile health services and showers
As our community grapples with these issues, we must ask: Are we truly interested in solutions, or just in making homelessness less visible? The answer will determine whether we continue funding failed approaches or begin investing in real change.
Our current approach brings to mind the ancient myth of Sisyphus, condemned to eternally push a boulder up a mountain, only to watch it roll back down each time he neared the top. Like Sisyphus, our unhoused neighbors are trapped in an endless cycle: gathering documents, finding resources, making progress toward stability, only to have everything destroyed in a sweep, forcing them to start again from the bottom. Unlike Sisyphus, though, this is not a punishment from the gods – it’s a system we’ve created and continue to fund with our tax dollars.
Kris Molinari serves as a contracted legal investigator for the Colorado Office of Respondent Parents’ Counsel, where her work frequently takes her into homeless camps to locate parents who have lost contact with their court-appointed attorneys. This direct engagement with the unhoused community, combined with her background as a former child welfare caseworker and MST (Multisystemic Therapy) supervisor, provides unique insight into how current city policies impact those experiencing homelessness. She currently contributes to state initiatives on youth homelessness prevention and provides case consultation for Guardian Ad Litems in child welfare cases.
