 And welcome to the Backstory. My name is Tim Waters. And as a volunteer for a Longmont public media, I get to host this program, which gives me an opportunity to interview people in Longmont who you're going to want to get to know. And I can guarantee you, we have a panel tonight, you're going to want to get to know and have the privilege to hear from. We have a chance on a regular basis to do some storytelling through the Backstory. And tonight, the Backstory is on Annie and Millie's Place, a new nonprofit in Longmont, part of homeless outreach with a particular focus and mission. It's a powerful story. And here to tell the story tonight are three personalities who if you don't know, you're going to want to get to know them better. Kirsten Baltram is the founder and director of Millie's Place, Annie and Millie's Place, sorry. Lesley, you're mine. Correctly pronounced, Lesley. Is a faculty member at CU. She's a professor of sociology. And Joe Schwartz? And Andy Schwartz. I'm, I should look to my dog. So let's start this all over again. Andy Schwartz, I apologize, Andy. Who is the? I say that to people at the time. Just don't call me late for dinner, right? I apologize, Andy. So wrapped up in this. But it's live, it's live television. We don't get to do a do over here. So Andy is the director of outreach. He's the outreach and volunteer manager for Hope for Longmont. So my apologies again. But welcome to all three of you. I'm thrilled that you're here. And we get a chance to share this story with the residents of Longmont. So I think a place to start is to learn more about both your names and your backgrounds. So why don't we, we'll start, and you start. Just a bit about you and what people should know about your work. And then we'll talk about how you connect and we'll drill down on the story. I'll say it. My name is Andy as we established. So I work for Hope. I run our outreach program, our volunteer program. We are here in Longmont 365 days a year. We work with our homeless community, people experiencing homeless here across the entire stage of homelessness from newly homeless to conically homeless. We work with, I think my last count was 13 churches and 10 other community partners here. So without getting too deep into the homeless situation, it is a community issue. It is a community that helps it. Of course, any millies based place is a big piece of that. I have been volunteering for homeless organizations since the late 80s. So it's been a lifetime commitment for me on the volunteer side. And it just over the last six years has been in Longmont I've been able to work much more directly with that community and loving it. All right. Thanks for your work. Thanks for being here tonight and to all three of you. In fact, thanks so much for your hour tonight. And more and more, thanks for what you do day in and day out in this community. Leslie, talk about you and your background. Thanks, Tim. As you said, I'm a professor of sociology at CU Boulder. I also direct the animals and society certificate program. I also serve on the board of the Indian Millies place. And through my work at CU Boulder, I'm the author of a book called My Dog Always Eats First, which studied homeless pet owners in five U.S. cities. So as a result of writing that book, I became very interested in advocacy and supporting organizations with research. And then within the past year, Kristen and I were able to cross-pad as show exploring. And so I've been able to help right in the Longmont community. Yeah, well, I want to know what brought you all together, but that'll be the second question in this interview. Sure, sure. Introduce yourself and this work and then we'll take it from there. I'm Kristen Baltram. I had spent about two and a half plus decades in Christian public leadership as a youth minister working in a number of different congregations, a couple of which were here in Longmont. And through that work in youth ministry connected the service organizations like Hope for Longmont and helping to change hearts and minds of kids and just create some compassion in our world. But I came into working specifically in this world of homelessness and homeless services through my own personal story of walking alongside my sister Annie as she experienced homelessness with her dog, Millie. Yeah, well, we're gonna drill down on Annie and Millie and in that whole story. Talk a little bit about how did you three connect? You two were working together apparently before founding Annie and Millie's place. Well, I knew about Hope. The congregation I was working for at the time had done lots of work to support the work of Hope and some other organizations right here in Longmont. So I knew some of those touchstones. But then when I dove deeper, I retired from the youth ministry world and when I dove deeper into what resources are actually out there here in my community for people experiencing homelessness with an animal companion, I reached out just to some of the contacts and Andy was the first conversation I had and he was very open and welcoming and I was so thankful for everything I learned from him immediately about the deeper system that is resourcing and also in need of more resources to service people. And then Leslie and I got connected because of a news article that came out when Annie and Millie's place was first incorporated. We were highlighted in a news article that the journalist who wrote that article looked up some of Leslie's research and so as soon as the article came out, I was like, there's a book about that? And then jumped right in, bought the book, read the book and then it was shortly after that we were at a ribbon cutting for a small business here in Longmont and we crossed paths and she's like, I know you, I'm like, who are you? It's just like I wrote the book and I immediately went, I'll fangirl and yeah. So we just got connected to have us right here at this table, it's been a real gap. Well, Leslie, every author, especially academic author just waits for someone to come along and say, I read your book and here's how it's changing my life or the meaning, I'm talking a little bit about that in this connection. Well, I've been kind of helping homeless organizations but at a distance, you know, I would give a talk at a conference or something I would be called in to speak to a specific issue but when I heard about any of those things from the reporter, contacted me and said, could you give us the background on the issue? I was just like, wow, this is happening right in my day. Yeah, yeah, that's great. That's fun to get that call, I know. I shouldn't have said this from the top before I screwed up Andy's name. But we do have a studio audience here tonight and we're in beautiful downtown Longmont in the Longmont Public Media Studios and the audience members know that if any of them have a question, about 40 minutes or so into this hour, they're gonna stand right over there where I can get an eye on them and invite them to participate in this interview as well. So we've talked a bit about the kind of the storylines that we wanna share and there may be some additions to that that come to us from the audience. So let's start gonna, we'll start at the 30,000 foot level and then kind of drill down. For sure. You start at the 30,000 foot level. Who was Annie and who was Millie and how did this whole thing unfold? Sure, well our overall mission at Annie and Millie's place is to help keep people and pets who are experiencing homelessness together, help them stay together by evolving pet friendly solutions programs and resources. And that came out of my story, my family story because Annie was my older sister and Millie was her dog and together they were homeless for about seven months and they could not get the services they needed. Annie was not able to go into a shelter and have Millie alongside her so she chose not to be sheltered instead even in the winter months. So it was through Annie and Millie's story that our family had to make some real hard decisions about what could we do, what couldn't we do, all of that stuff. And ultimately Annie exited her journey and when we sat and said, well, what could we do to change this? That's when I dove into the conversation and tried to figure out even though Annie and Millie were not experiencing homelessness here in Longmont, I lived in Longmont and the only thing that I could do is start with where I was and that's what started the conversations here. So began looking for more and more resources and was just finding out that there really wasn't a ton of resources. There are services doing things for people and there are services doing things for pets but sometimes it's a matter of connecting those dots. So what we tried to do even though we're not a physical space right now like Annie and Millie's place is currently a heart place that we hold in order to connect the dots between the people who have the need, the people who have the resources and the people who provide the services and try to become an avenue that speaks on behalf of family members and of people to be an advocate like Leslie was talking about to allow these people who are having a tough time navigating life to stay together with their animal companion. So I won't push out any more details. Sure. Millie, is Millie still around? We don't know. Okay. We don't know. When we found out, so Annie died and when we found out that she had passed we, I actually was in Wyoming, Annie died in Indiana, some of her family was here in Colorado, some of her family was in Kentucky, some of her family is in Illinois. The person who's on the phone said you have 24 hours to come get the dog. It was like there's no way that we're gonna rally and come get the dog. So our hope is that Millie found a forever home somewhere was adopted by a very loving family and has given everything that she needs right now. That is our hope, but we don't have your story. So we got all kinds of things we can talk about here in terms of homeless outreach and the work you're doing. What would you, for this is for all three of you, what would you like to see happening? What do we need to see in this community and communities across the country, specifically with this population of the unhoused and those with animals, right? And we were talking prior to we went on the air, how people view this and let's unpack some of that as well from your experiences. I know, I learned so much from working with Annie in Millie's place, before I kind of viewed and I think a lot of people that viewed somebody as having been homeless and having an animal or any kind of pet as a burden to them moving forward and it's really changed my whole perspective that it's not that they have a burden, we need to find a way to work around the obstacle to get them connected to the right services and moving towards housing. Just the pet serve such an important need that there's a long list of things that provide for somebody who is experiencing homelessness and obviously the companionship needs, but protection, this need for a human to nurture a being, this friendship, there's such a long list of needs that that animal can fill. It's mostly dogs, we have come across a few cats, this is before you, but it was one of my favorite outreach stories is there was a woman living in a tent and we had to tuck her and her cats in the vent at night and sleep, that's what the cats would escape. So there's a real need for it and it's sort of changed at least in my conversation and in my mind that the animal has just as much need as we do in the middle of the day. They really do provide a symbiotic purpose and care and love and I know for Annie, Millie kept her warm when she chose not to be sheltered in order to stay with Millie. I am convinced that Millie kept her warm at night and I'm convinced that Millie gave Annie purpose and that they needed each other. Well, I like any relationship, right? Well, you love someone or something and that's a reason to get up in the morning. Lester, you've studied this phenomena of unhoused population and their animals and that's the title of your book. What should the rest of us know based on what you learned? I can give you three takeaways from the research. Not my own included, but not limited to my own. First, there's this bond that Andy and Kristen have been talking about. The relationship between homeless people in there and most is very, very strong. The relationship between people who are housed and their animals is very strong too. So it's no different with them and that deserves respect and care. Second, because of the strength of that relationship, homeless people will sacrifice for their animals. The title of my book, My Dog Always Eats First, tells you that they will go without food. They will go without shelter. They'll sleep on the street. They'll sleep in a vehicle. They can't ride public transportation in most places. They can't go into the library to use a computer to find a job because they have their pets with them. Third, they will also put their own health and safety at risk for their animals because of that bond. So they will deprive themselves of mental health service, physical health services, things that they need to end substance abuse to get into rehab or treatment. So this bond is so tight and so important to them that it's not just something where you could say, oh, just don't have a pet and you can solve your problem. That will introduce a whole domino effect of other problems. You know, as I'm listening, I'm thinking about the numbers of examples that we've heard about, whether it was the Marshall fire or other wildline fires or other catastrophes, hurricanes, events, weather events or those kinds of things where people drop everything to go back for their pet. They're willing to risk their lives. These are housed folks, affluent or whatever, to go back and rescue their animals at great potential risk to themselves and value that above other assets that they might have been after. So are there other initiatives like this anywhere in the country that you're aware of? There's a couple other initiatives. First I want to give a shout out to a national organization named My Dog Is My Home. They are doing high level advocacy and education through a lot of storytelling and lots and lots of work to advocate for more and more, what'd you call them, which is more and more resources and more and more policy change to allow things like shelters that are providing for co-sheltering, which is the human and the animal together. So through a lot of their work, I have learned about other organizations. There's Grace Marketplace in Gainesville, Florida, just opened its first co-sheltering. It's the only pro-sheltering opportunity in the entire region and that it just started out in Florida. I know that the Los Angeles Housing and Human Services whole network is looking at how to create co-sheltering spaces. As we know, Los Angeles has a huge homeless population with lots of great things happening, but trying to figure out how to reach into that. There's also great efforts happening in New York around their homeless population and trying to address the situation up there. So there's pockets where some of this work is being done, but it's not being done here in Colorado as far as we have found. If it's out there, let us know. We want to get involved. But it's really sort of the next cutting edge in homeless and human services is this recognition of the human-animal bond and what it does for both the benefit of the animal and the benefit of the human being. Like when I think of Annie and Millie, our family, there's also the stigma when you see somebody flying a silence when they have the, anything helps a sign, like oh, they can't take care of themselves, why did they have the animal with them, or why doesn't their family just bring them in? And that's the voice that I feel we have at Annie and Millie's places, we have been that family and we have sat in that seat and we have had to draw hard lines that were, and by hard lines, I mean really difficult lines for us to draw. And we're counting on other services to be able to provide that work for us because of our own connectedness to that person. We also have to draw our own space with that person as well. Otherwise, the whole ship goes down, you know? So counting out other places like that, that this is really just starting to be recognized as a need and being able to step in at this place to build the need locally here and learn from places like Parace Marketplace in Florida and what is happening in LA and New York and be able to hopefully bring some of that work here. Well, we are seeing, though, and hope is one of them is the safe lot program is for people that are used to here. For us, if somebody's recently unhoused and living on their vehicle, we allow their pets to come with them in the program and we've had some interesting pets, but mostly dogs, we've seen cats, birds. I think we had sparrots. Do you have a rabbit or a snake? Sparrots are good car animals. So, you know, if they become unhoused, they're not leaving there like you just talked about. They don't leave their pets behind. So, I think most safe lots are pet friendly as well. And those are opening up more and more across the country. Let's stay on the, I'm sorry, wait. It's worth adding that the unsung heroes in this story are veterinarians who provide care for the pets of the homeless, whether it's through pop-up clinics in a parking lot of a church or through sliding scale or low cost or no cost services in their own clinics. But doing what it takes to allow a pet to be licensed to be protected from rabies, protected from other diseases, from protected from parasites and making sure that if something happens to that person and that animal ends up in a shelter that the two can be reunited. Veterinarians are key people. We have a wonderful street dog coalition, the clinic, the service based out of Fort Collins started by John Geller doing miraculous. Incredible work. Any of that in Lamont? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they, we've been so fortunate to be able to host one of their clinics with more partners like with Hope and with the congregations, Bethlehem Lutheran Church hosted the parking lot space and both Hope and our center connected us with the people who had the client interactions. Like I said, we become the dot connectors to be able to pull these services together. But the street dog coalition started in Fort Collins and they are expanding all over the place. They even just opened a team, a Boulder team that is really gonna be focusing on Boulder and Lamont and we're able to walk alongside them as they reach out as well. So we do have in Lamont and in the front range, vets who are leaning into this and participating. It's probably a little early. The idea of research is one thing. Evaluation studies, what are best practices and how do we report that? Is this far enough along from an academic standpoint to be able to document what are emerging best practices that others can learn from? Well, that's one thing we're hoping to do and my dog is my home has done some of that. Ideally, you know, you'd wanna have pixie dust and be able to put millions of dollars in a sort of wonderful facility. But I think Kristen's idea to connect the existing resources that don't know what's out there and fill these gaps is probably the most effective and efficient way to go. Well, this clearly is a gap in your figuring out how to fill it. Yeah, I wanna go back just for a minute. Andy, you mentioned safe lots. I think it's worth spending a little bit of time in this interview for folks who may or may not know what's going on with safe lots or have heard about safe lots. Talk about, cause I think there's a particular segment of our unhoused population for whom this fills a really important need. Talk about what's going on with safe lots and who hosts or manages them. Sure, so Hope manages the one here in Lamont. There is an organization, Colorado Safe Park Initiative, which I think operates up and down the front range. And at least our safe lot is set up for people that are recently unhoused. And most people that recently unhoused due to rents going up too much, could be loss of a job. They're just things that come across in life that make things people stumble. So we are able to provide them with some casework, place to sleep, a place to regroup. This year, I think we're around 55 people re-housed through the safe lot program, which stops the following into much more chronic homelessness. It's a newer program. And I think it's starting to really catch on across the country. We're really very, very proud of it. And that was one of the ways we've really increased our collaboration with Annie in most cases through that program. Cause it becomes, that's not a barrier, right? You're talking about a safe lot and people living on their car. For housing right now, it's becoming pretty easy to get a doctor to sign off that they're emotional support animals. So it's sort of really helping, I think more and more housing units apartments are getting much more on board with that as something that's acceptable. One of the other things that we get to do with Hope, with the safe lot program is people have jobs or appointments to go to. And if it's too hot or too cold outside, you don't want to leave your animal in the car because it's too hot or it's too cold. So we're working with the new small business in town, DOG, which provides doggie daycare. So Annie Milley's place sponsors the doggie daycare at DOG, our small business, for the homeless outreach here in Longmont. That's Hope. It's a huge piece of how we can connect the dots. Again, we have the service providers, the resources. We just need the people to create the avenue. And it's where we met. And it's where we met. We can't leave the animal in a car all day. They can't stay at our facility. It does provide a challenge for a lot of people. Well, I want to do some more, I want you to do some more dot connecting. But I want to come back to just for a moment. You used the term recently unhoused and you've used it a couple of times. And could we just, I want to expand just for a moment. For our definition, I don't know if it's an official definition, but ours is six months or less without a home. I think it's important for folks, when we talk about an unhoused population, I know this is true in Longmont, I think it's probably true in other communities. There aren't many distinctions in the minds and the eyes of many people of the unhoused population. Without understanding, there's this category of recently unhoused 60%, if I recall the data, 60% of the homeowners in Boulder County are housing burdened, many of them severely burdened. What does that mean? They're one automobile accident, one health crisis away from being newly unhoused. I was pretty close to that story myself. I'm happy to go down that road, but I don't want to distract them. What we're talking about, but I had a mental health crisis myself about 10 years ago that led to all those things that we're all afraid of. Yeah, well, our unhoused population is not a monolithic group. There are these segments with very different needs and very different opportunities, right, to respond to services that are offered to them. Once you hit that six months to one year point, that's when all these other pieces come into play, your mental health starts to deteriorate, your hope for things turning around starts to deteriorate and you fall deeper and deeper into sort of what I call the downward spiral. Well, I just think, I hope whoever's listening, long monitors, and whether it's tonight or when this is viewed as a streaming resource, that part of this story helps people understand there are these segments in a homeless population and each segment needs kind of a tailored response. It's not one solution. It's tailored solutions or responses to the needs of that segment of this population. So we've heard about DOG, right, a new business in town, Save Flot. What are the other dots to connect? The Humane Society, other homeless outreach efforts. What's happening right now and what might we see over the next few months or years? Well, the Longman Humane Society has also been a huge, beautiful resource with us helping for people who need foster care. Sometime we've worked with a client who knew in order to clear a ticket so that he could return to his home because he wasn't going home because he knew there was a warrant for his arrest just for a couple of weeks in jail but he wasn't going to go home because he knew his dog would be taken from him. So to avoid all that, he lived on the street and then crisis happened. We ended up being called. We were able to reclaim the animal and through the Longman Humane Society that animal went into foster care. Safe Keep Foster is their owned animal foster program. Then when he was released, he got his dog back which was really life-saving because had he simply been arrested with no phone number to call for his animal, that animal would have been surrendered and become property of the Humane Society who then would have been adopted out. And then this man was released without his one companion available. So the reunification story was quite emotional. We ended up working with him again but this time he could be proactive and he said, I know where my animal is going and I know my animal is going to be safe. And then animal went back to the same foster family. He cleared his ticket and now they're housed and he had that stress. So it's a beautiful, beautiful story but the need for Safe Keep Foster families is really huge. Everybody always talks about how I could never foster an animal because I would fall in love with them and then I would wanna keep them and that becomes a foster fail because it turns into an adoption. But with these cases, these are actually owned animals where you are providing safe family care for somebody who either we're going to rehab or a short-term jail sentence or a hospital in an emergency situation or anything like that, where you then allowed them to be reunified with their family person after when they're released and connected. And those are volunteers who offer their home. Those are volunteers through the Longmont Humane Society and I cannot stress enough how much we need homes to open up to Safe Keep Foster. The animal shelters are just maxed out right now so we need more foster homes. And the Humane Society sets that up. They have all the infrastructure. We don't have the licensing or the infrastructure to be able to do it ourselves. So what we do is use our story to be able to create the need or to identify why it's important and it's stories like this guy's who like he got his animal back. I think that foster family literally saved that man's life. And so using our story to help expand the understanding and the need for Safe Keep Foster so that Longmont Humane has more resources so that they can provide more to the community. If there's anybody listening tonight or subsequently who thinks, hey, I've got a backyard and I've got a basement or whatever, I could do that. What should they know? Does the Humane Society make certain that the dog doesn't have issues before they place the dog? They don't have the veterinary care. It's required that the dog or cat is spayed or neutered. They provide the veterinary care. We cover any additional costs that might be there. There's also all the food is provided. There's training provided. The animal is vetted for behavior issues. They're gonna make sure that the right animal goes to the right home. Yeah, low risk for everybody. High pay off for the dog and low risks for the foster caregiver for a while. Absolutely, and that's what they're really good at doing. What else? What other dimensions of the story, other dots that people ought to know about before, because I'm gonna move on to cost and benefits here in just a minute, but this is an important part of the story. Yes. Well, I was thinking of a dog who leaped out of a grave to all the flesh of his paws, and Kristen was able to connect the dots so that the dog got veterinary care, made a full recovery. Otherwise, who knows how long this dog would have been. Suffering maybe even died, and the owner would have been. Yeah, would have been crushed. Yes, absolutely. So, yeah, providing not only the preventative veterinary care, like the vaccinations and things like that, that enabled them to go into either doggy daycare or foster care or whatever, but the emergency care is used to. Also, with the veterinary care, sometimes there is an animal that we just helped where the person knew that something was wrong with the dog, brought the dog in, but because it would have been an urgent appointment, that means that like $120, $150, it depends on the practice, needs to be paid up front. And if the person doesn't have that 150, like in this situation, didn't have the money to be paid up front, left, but three days later, we got the call where the dog was near death. And so that we were able to step in with great support and we were able to pay the over $1,000 to save the dog's life, which ultimately saved the person's life, but had that person had access to just the first $150 could have gone home probably with an antibiotic, and it would have cleared the situation. So some of that, like the difference between preventative and urgent and the emergency, there's sort of a track just like in human healthcare, you gotta take care of things before they blow up. And so the veterinary dots, and the clinics and veterinarians that we've been able to work with here in Longmont and with Street Dog Coalition, putting all those pieces together has been just a gift and an honor to be able to do those things. Yeah, I was gonna say, it was very early on we had our first conversation and a few weeks after that, I got a frantic phone call from a gentleman whose dog was it, I forgot which organization it was with, but they were gonna put him up for adoption at the end of the day, if he didn't come up with the money to get him out of the thing. And we get a lot of calls from a lot of different places and it was sort of, for me it was a little bit of a litmus test because I didn't have the time to run around. So I called her up and within three hours they had the dog released to them and the guys back reunited with the guy. Interesting, I mean the stories really make the point, don't they, about the niche or the gap that has existed and how it's being filled right now. Before I move on, any other parts of that story in terms of what's kind of rolling out right now, as services or connections? Really, it's focusing on veterinary care, on foster care and helping people find access to daycare, those are like our primary focuses right now. And also with education and advocacy to change the stigma around people experiencing homelessness with their pets. Like each one of us has our own story, how we each were transformed in our idea that got us into this conversation because we all have our first. You're probably transforming minds and hearts as we speak right now. We have some audience members, if anybody in the audience wants to ask a question I'm gonna ask if you get over there where I can see it but as you do that, and we may or may not have questions but I don't wanna shut them out, especially as we're about that time in the hour. But I do wanna go to the idea of costs and benefits, right? There are, this doesn't come free, right? There are costs to do this, there are benefits and I'm just curious, what your thoughts are about both costs and benefits both to the individuals and then to the community, right? It's to the animal in terms of benefits, the animal, the owner, but there are others as well. And I'm gonna have a follow on question about costs of not doing this, right? So start with costs and benefits and what that looks like from your perspective. The costs of having an animal to a homeless person? The cost of these kinds of services. This doesn't happen, it has to be resourced. Right, there are resources, like everything costs, like we just said, like $120 to be able to have a dog looked at versus the over a thousand to have a dog treated three days later, like that's where you're gonna come up with that if you don't have gas money to get to the vet or can't get on the bus because the animal isn't allowed on the bus, things like that, so that there's actual costs that come in. We have been very much supported by private donors so far who just believe in this work and have been able to make generous donations to help us do this and that is one of the things that I feel like we can do. It's like you might not want to make that phone call to the vet, but if you got an extra 50 bucks, Jim, I'll take it and then we'll spend it on somebody else, right? Seeking after the show and all, yeah, yeah. Then we can be the conduit to help that stuff happen and then there's also the cost of running program because this program doesn't exist if we don't have the infrastructure in place. If you don't have people doing the program, you just don't have the program, right? Yes, so we were super blessed to receive from PetSmart Charities a small grant that enabled us to build our infrastructure at Annie Millie's place. Now, I'm not getting paid a big salary, I get paid to work four hours a week and none of our board members get paid or anything like that, but we were able to hire some people to help us build a system that creates this organization to become something that will thrive in our community. It's only a one-year grant, it's not gonna last forever, but when PetSmart Charities reached out to us and said, we believe in you and we believe in this story and we believe in this cause and we wanna be part of it, that is allowing us to start somewhere. We have to have a foundation to build on. So that started it and then, but that doesn't cover any of the program costs, the program costs from people who support this work and hear the story. And actually, as a family member who I had to kind of, the difference between enabling and empowering is a very, very fine line. So in dealing with our family, our whole family, extended family and when we would support Annie became a real conversation that the whole family had together. But when we have donations from other people and it's many, many times I've had conversation with people who said, my dad was homeless and had an animal. I've sat in that same seat or my aunt or my son have been able, I've had these holy conversations where they've come in and told me these things. And then they create the resources where we can show up because we're not messed up in their family system. We get to go the extra line. So the generous support of donors who have showed up to help us do the program work while PetSmart Charities helps us do the infrastructure work. There's real cost to how this whole thing happens. But again, it's all about pulling it all together. So I'm gonna pause any other thoughts on this? What she said. So let's talk about, we know the benefits to the animal. There are benefits to the owner. There have to be, there's a benefit to society, I would think, to communities like this and to the larger society. You wanna talk about what you see as benefits from either a research or an academic perspective or as an activist perspective with what you're doing with the Fort Collins crew or from Hope's perspective. I think the benefits to my perspective at Hope and the client perspective is before, like that gentleman that called early on, I would have either had to drop everything I was doing and find a resource that doesn't exist and spend a lot of time focusing on that or not providing this level of service out in the community. Now I have somebody I can just call that already has that in place. Really it's a priceless piece because we don't have the resources to be taken care of that or we'd have to create a whole new program for taking care of that. And Annie Milley's place is that program. She's really a go-to for us. And at a more abstract level, it helps when communities are inclusive and to not help homeless people with pets means effectively that what you're saying is that only certain kinds of people are allowed to have the companionship of animals. And if Lamont and other places can make it possible for people and animals to stay together, to love each other, to thrive in that relationship, then it's a more humane community. And what role do animals play in terms of the mental, emotional, health, stability, balance of somebody who's dealing with a bunch of other issues, right? If you're unhoused for whatever reasons. I think it's huge. In so many instances, the animal is the only source of stability and support they have. Yeah, there's a person I've known now for close to five years and can almost never get a word out of her. But the day she had her new puppy and saw me, I couldn't get her to stop talking. So there's, yeah, the animal provides an access for conversation sometimes. So, yeah. Are there, we do have a question. I'm gonna give me one more chance to follow up on this. So what are the costs from your perspectives of not doing this? Lives. I think the real cost is lives because where Annie lost her heart and breath life because she couldn't be resourced alongside her animal, I think she lost her heart and breath life because she lost her life of hope and meaning. And when she was told over and over again, no, no, no, she lost hope and she got tired. Hope and purpose, huh? Hope and purpose. Reason to get out of bed in the morning. Yeah, so it's both, and we don't know about Millie, we can hope that she's still running around but we don't know that for sure. So there's actual heart and breath life as well as hope and meaning and purpose life. Well, there's a relationship between those two, don't we know? Yeah, 100%. And then the overall health of the community and the stability, housed or unhoused. What we all need, right, is balance in our lives. For sure. So there are the costs of not doing something. Right. Probably way steeper than the cost of what you're doing. Because the work also matters to the people who love the people who are struggling with hope and meaning and purpose. Well, we're not gonna finish this without giving people. I don't think it's a cost that you can put in dollar terms. I think it's all very intangible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, anybody who has listened to me, not so much on this program, but in other venues, people would say, oh yeah, he is really preoccupied with metrics and data and evaluation, which is true. But I have also said, not everything worth doing is measurable, and not everything good measures worth doing. And this is what we're talking about now, very difficult to measure and really worth doing. So, yeah. For sure. All right, we have a question. From the audience, thank you. A question is the emotional wellbeing part. Are there any medical doctors or therapy or counselors involved that can rank that off? So that the homeless can get on the bus with their pet? You mean, designate the animal as a service animal? Yes. Yeah, I guess the hard part, though, is getting service providers outside of the community of homeless providers to accept those letters and take them just because we have a letter that presents somebody to a bus driver does not mean they're going to accept it. Oh, okay. So, go ahead. Is there an educational component that can come out of this to help the community understand the connection and the bond? That's what we hope that we're up to in some of this work and just getting started is to be able to do that advocacy and education for our entire community through different organizations, through different groups, through different networking, opportunities, through all the different things we would love to tell the story about why it matters so that maybe that bus driver would hear it and then be one of our hashtags that we like to use is unleash compassion and just letting compassion run free in the world like how different life would be if you take your dog up a leash and it runs. What if we did that with all of our compassion in the world? But that does come from education and advocacy for sure and so any avenues that we can find to preach and teach our story, that's what we're gonna do. That's part of what we do. That's part of the reason we're having this conversation, right? This is all about storytelling. And thank you for your question. You know, you'll have access to this link. Do with it, we'll do with it, whatever you'd like. And it'll be available on YouTube and in Longmont Public Media, Facebook and website because this is just one form, one venue for storytelling and this is a story that needs to be told over and over and over again. So you're off to a good start, right? Now you've been at this for a while. It's not like you just showed up yesterday in Longmont. But you're still early in your development. Can I assume is any most place of 501C3? Yes, we incorporated in the state of Colorado in January of 21. We received our federal 501C3 in July of 2021. And so we're coming up on our second year anniversary just after the new year. Yeah, it's a big deal, yeah. To get that notice from the IRS. But so you're off to a fast start. A lot of good things are going on. But you also have a vision for an aspirations. Talk about what those aspirations are. What do you want people to know about what you'd like them to see here and be part of going forward over the next decade or so? Well, I know I see a, there's lots of conversation happening around campuses where like the one stop shop for homeless services. I would love to see Annie and Millie's place be sort of the catalyst for pulling those offices together. Not duplicating the services, but providing office space so that when somebody would need to go to the library to jump on a computer to look for a job while navigating a path to housing or whatever, like all of those resources are there. Like Andy would have an office in our building or something or the doggy daycare would have a couple of kennels that are specifically for the people who need to go to a job or and then we run the foster program of the human society or another organization out. But where we become the sort of a hub of services that would outreach in our community, I would love to see that happen in some way. And there's some conversations I know that are happening around our cities, not just Longman, but like Donald Rory, there's some homeless campus conversation that's been happening and we're trying to tap in and pay attention to those conversations as well as the national conversation around this. I would love to see co-sheltering be just a real life thing where Andy doesn't have to make the choice to turn somebody away because they have an animal that he can be like, oh, right here, look at this. What has to happen for that to happen? Oh, I know that's, I'm not sure. Love your pay grade? Yeah, it's above the pay grade. I was trying to court you. I could tell by the look in your eyes. We know that it doesn't come easy. We know that it's a very complicated issue because as much as we want to keep the people who have the animal companion safe, we know that there's people who are not safe around dogs or cats because of allergies or what other issues they have. Absolutely. So we want to care for all people? Yeah. And it has to be an environment we were just talking that is good for the animal as well because not all animals say get along with other animals who are in a comfortable and a created situation. There's a lot to be on out there around them. Right, right. So this way we need to bring in other experts who know how to do the different, we need the veterinary person there, we need maybe a trainer who can help train the person and the animal to understand that a crate may be a temporary situation, but how do we work through that anxiety for both the human and the person? Somebody who understands dog behavior and you don't have an animal. Right, right, like we can bring in trains. We can do all those different things because we know that it's a really complicated problem but a problem is just the flip side of a solution. So we need to be working toward staying on that other side. Yeah, and I wasn't trying to ask you to solve the whole homeless shelter issue, but you actually have responded. I mean, you've answered the question about that there are some specifics about co-sheltering that make it just more complicated than just, let's find this place and have everybody co-shelter because of- And I'd be lying if I said we've never sort of just thrown that around as a topic of discussion and just coming up with a solution that's much more complicated. Yeah. And need the resources. Well, so we'll talk about, let's talk about it. You have an ambitious set of aspirations, right? For doing much more, extending this to our unhoused population in ways that are not available right now, co-housing among them. We need more vets volunteering. We need, what else do you need? Money. We need people writing checks. We need people writing checks. We need a lot of money. We need a lot of money. All right. We need a big building for an office in. Sure. Yeah, a vehicle would be great. Also, the in-kind supplies, the food and the crates and the leashes and all of that stuff, that really matters too. We know Colorado Pet Pantry works alongside the R Center to provide those resources once a month here in Longmont. We also go down to Boulder and work with Feet Forward, which is an organization. We're down there twice a month handing out supplies. So, like all of that stuff, it becomes stuff in a place to put it. The supplies, the really sweaters and the cold. Yeah, and the cold. The workhead clothing, we were really at that season. Yeah. You know, when you think about co-drives and those guys, you don't think about so much about animals, you're thinking about, you know, coach for their owners. We're even like puppy boots, because the pavement's either too hot in Colorado or too golden. Yeah. And I know that they've given us these supplies to take out on our own outreach. So if we come across any people with pets, you know, it doesn't only have to be Annie and Millie's place out there to call them when they come, we will keep these supplies on our outreach vehicles as well. Right. So people, so whether it's hope, whether it's the kinds of work that you're doing, both as a professor, as an academic, but also as an activist, or specifically with Annie and Millie's place. Anybody who's watching tonight or watches this, you know, after tonight, how do they get involved? Who do they contact? What's a URL? A phone number that you, if you want to share that. How do they, and in addition to writing a check, what are the other volunteer opportunities that are out there? Yes. Well, we, Kristen mentioned that we go down to Boulder to distribute food twice a month. We can always use people who can help us at that table there or eventually do that on their own, down the line. People who can go to the various places and collect the supplies that are being donated so that Kristen doesn't have to do all that. Do all that, or somebody to check in with hope and be like, what's your shopping list? What do you need? And then to go do the shopping. We need people to help just, help us understand how to run a business. If you have great business, growth, entrepreneurial experience, that would be really helpful. I'm a theologian, not a business person, so trying to figure out how to do that is different. So there's lots of ways to use the gifts, talents, and abilities that people bring to the world and connect them at the table. But our URL is www.AnnieandMillies.org, and you can always email info at AnnieandMillies.org or send me a, I'm currently the one answering the phone at 720-340-1268. Say again? It's 720-340-1268. Okay. Hopefully everybody got that. And you can also send a text message or just shoot me a demo. We're on Facebook and Instagram right now. We'll grow that social media once I figure out how to do that. So if you go social media. Speaking of volunteers. Speaking of volunteers. Yes. And then there's always a way to connect. And because we don't have a physical space right now, it's harder to be like, we don't need somebody to come paint the building because we don't have a building yet. But someday we might, we watched Hope have great growth too. So it's like we can always connect with our partners who are providing the work and connect different ways there. Scott groups are great for painting buildings. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Andy, do you want to add anything here in terms of not just Andy Milley's place, but from a Hope perspective? Anybody who's listening who would like to, who hasn't connected with Hope and what Mike did? If you want to connect with Hope, it's real easy. Our website is HopeforLongmont.org. F-O-R is spelled out. And my email address is Andy at HopeforLongmont.org. I can connect people with Kristen. I'm a resource for just about anything you'd want to know at Hope if you want to be involved in our services. Absolutely. I'm happy to talk to anybody about what we do. All right. Before we wrap up, any last thoughts? Anything else you want to add? Put a punctuation on this? We're just really thankful for the support that we've gotten as a family member who's, this was the hardest thing that our family has ever had to deal with. It was terrible in all sorts of ways. But to be able to have this opportunity to turn trauma into Hope for so many others has really been healing work for us. And the support that we've gotten has been brilliant and amazing. So I just want to send a huge thank you to everybody who's been part of helping us, helping us to tell our story and supporting it along the way. Any last thoughts? Thank you, Kevin. Well, listen, this is the fun of what I do here as a volunteer is I get a chance to meet people like you and I learn something in every one of these. So I'll say again, how much I appreciate that you gave up time this evening to tell this story. And more importantly, what you do, and we've learned about what you do, day in and day out in service of a part of our community that needs the best that you can bring. And you need other people to lean in and care about and help with this. So thanks for that. To Longmonters, the last Monday of every month, we're in the Longmont Public Studio telling Sharon a backstory. So topics vary from month to month. If you'd like to join us, we'd love to have the studio audience. We have a studio audience here who I know would like to thank this group right now. And Longmonters, that's the backstory on Annie and Millie's place.