 Hello, everybody. I'm Marsha Martin and this is 15 Minutes. Today, I have Alice Seltenfuss, the Executive Director of Hope, with me. I'm really delighted to have you here, so I'd really appreciate it if you would start by just explaining what Hope is, what your job is, and just a little about the general philosophy. Thank you, Marsha, so much for having me here. I think the Longmont community has been so wonderful to work with and the city of Longmont has been so open to our organization and other organizations that help needy in our community, and that's why I love living here. Hope Homeless Outreach is 15 years old and we do a number of things. We do street outreach where we are going on the streets of Longmont specifically, looking for people who need some assistance. And I'm not talking about just, do you need a sack meal and do you need a blanket, but do you know the resources in our community? Do you know that you can take this brochure and call coordinated entry and you can go to one of two shelters. Resources for mental health and resources for addiction and resources to get a number of assistance. That happens throughout the week. Then we have our safe lot program which is only one, one and a half years old, and we have some situations that are new as you already know being on the city council that there are people that just cannot afford to be in their living space anymore and they're not sure what to do and they've got their car, they've got their dog and where do I go, but I still have my job. So our safe lot program is at churches where they can park safely without anybody wrapping on their window and saying hey you can't park here and it's a safe place. They can go in for a shower and a meal and they feel that there's people that can take care of them, but just a little bit because these are savvy people, they have jobs, they have to get up in the morning and go to that job, but if they stay in this parking lot then what they can do is save money and within two months, sometimes two weeks, they have hit the pavement finding a place to live, they rely on our case manager for help for some things, but that program housed eight people, eight people in the month of March alone, so these folks are hungry to get back into a living situation and they love our community and they want to get back into that but they just needed a reprieve for a short while. Then we have our navigation shelter which does sheltering for those who went through coordinated entry and they said I want to get a job and I don't have disabilities, I want to be in this program and I want to stay at the shelter, work, and then what we do is we come back and say if you stay with us and you meet with a case manager because we know that you have some obstacles, you've been homeless for a while, we will help you save money, we will help you get that first month's rent or pay for part of it or the deposit, we'll be there every step of the way and then we'll have volunteers come in and bring a hot nutritious meal so we can get your health back and we'll have showers available and what's nice about the programs that I've mentioned is that our money is not used for a building. The churches in this community have reached out and we've reached out to them and they have said yes please do your program here and we want to work alongside you. So we have some churches that have been so gracious to us, Westview Presbyterian Journey Faith Point Church and Messiah Lutheran Church. These churches have come together, UCC, just amazing that these churches have said yes, we believe in what you're doing and we're just trying to get people into housing. We are a housing program, we do not want an individual to just live on the street like yes here's a sandwich and a pair of socks, no, no, no. Here's a sandwich and a pair of socks but here's resources, we want you to use these resources and we'll help you every step of the way and then we have an outreach center so we had over 200 individuals walk up to our outreach center at 804 South Lincoln to say I need help and maybe we've seen them a few times and I just need a sack meal today or last month I just need a pair of gloves today and some hand warmers but we have all of these things so that we can help the person who is chronically homeless all the way up to the person who made some bad financial decisions and now they're in their car with their puppy dog and they just need a safe place to be and everybody deserves housing of some sort and when I say housing Marsha let's go find places that have a room for rent or let's together let's work together to find out what fits your budget because we're a collective we can look at other situations also. So I think what you've said if I can summarize we have different groups of people who are unhoused at any given moment the people who are using the safe lots are determined there they are used to being housed they're used to being self-sufficient something has happened maybe it was a bad financial decision maybe it was an inevitable financial decision you know and illness even some people live so close to the edge that if their car breaks down they have to choose between fixing their car and being able to get to work or paying the next month's rent and they become homeless for that reason that's true then the people who live in the shelters or the people that you persuade to the shelters have maybe been homeless longer they need to relearn some life skills is that true? Yes that is so true unlike the safe lot clients those clients their biggest need with us is car repair because they have to ignore car repair and we have so many community partners in Longmont we all work together to help each other out and right now the Longmont Community Foundation helps us with getting those cars repaired that was a huge huge gift to be able to help out this individual in January and this one individual in February it was wonderful but the folks who are chronically homeless or have been homeless for a few months the motivation and finding what their needs really are building trust takes a long time many people have experienced having trust taken away over most of their lives so maybe it's mental health issues that they're facing illnesses we have some clients with cancer right now that has turned their life upside down and they're homeless on top of that and their needs we're constantly looking for now how to bring the medical partner in and planning and the things that we're faced with every time we meet somebody new because a human condition is always changing it's it's different and so we're always faced with what are the the needs of this specific person and let's get together client advocate meetings and let's really meet the needs of each person and reach out to our community partners I think that's important and I I'm really proud of the way our community partners have have stepped up and and are are providing as you said with the Longmont Foundation and and car repairs I wouldn't have really thought of that yeah but you know you see this little niche need but getting it filled can mean everything can you talk about a little bit about how being longer term unhoused means it changes people um how uh you know you always hear well I can't stay at hope because I'm banned you have in particular from other conversations we've had really worked hard to bring those people back into the fold and back working with you so um can you talk a little bit about how those situations arise where a person has a behavioral problem that makes them unsuitable for staying in the group shelter I so appreciate that question because that's a question that we could have easily ignored but I like to face the tough stuff yes there are people who are experiencing homelessness who live on our streets who will say no hope is not going to help me I've already tried there is always a nuance of truth to things that most people say and the nuance to truth to that is that if you did coordinated entry which is through our homeless solutions for boulder county it's made us part of a bigger engine to help people get housed and so that means instead of us doing market rate housing all the time now because we're part of this uh HSBC continuum we can go on housing meetings and there are some housing opportunities for our chronically homeless clients for quite a few years I've been advocating can we have chronically homeless in our navigation shelter situation and just this past year we all agreed that there are just some people on the streets of longmont who won't be able to survive well in boulder they don't know but boulder they actually grew up in longmont and we run into those individuals a lot so we have a process where we say you're from longmont you've been chronically homeless if you would like to be part of our shelter here's what we need from you we just need for you to do your part are you open to being in housing of some sort is that something that you would work towards with us and if the answer is yes and you can be a safe participant what I mean safe is that a shelter could be a scary place if it wasn't safe you hear about very large shelters in large communities where people talk about it isn't safe there and so safety has to be the number one thing so if somebody comes to us and has experienced unsafe behavior we've had to say hey how about you come back tomorrow let's try again tomorrow okay all right but if you come back tomorrow and we have those same unsafe situations for a few days and then we try again and then we come back in a week and we still have that then we have to say you're not a good fit for us and we're not a good fit for you but we can't take everybody who's chronically homeless into our navigation shelter so we have to say you have been referred to the boulder shelter and this is why it's such a good thing they are experts at taking your disability which is how you got directed there in the first place use you self reported a disability you self reported this disability and we're saying as a system your best scenario is to be at the boulder shelter where they will get you into housing and your disability that they help set up for you will lead to housing and we hope it happens soon and it might not happen right away but it will happen and we we believe that when we get together as a county we really believe when we're looking at each person if there's a hundred people on our list we're going to get to these people eventually and it's so rewarding to be on those housing meetings I have one last question because I see that we're almost out of time okay but referring people to boulder I know from my own you know small attempts at providing transitional housing by as a room renter that sometimes people become very attached to the community they find in the unhoused population is that a problem when people are asked to relocate from Longmont to Boulder to get the more supportive services they need do you have people coming back we do boulder shelter is large for a reason so that it could be a shelter for folks who have chronic homelessness who have a multitude of needs and so if we have a facility that has 160 beds I think because of COVID they're using 140 beds right now there are people that want to stay in our community it's just difficult to meet the needs of every single person if they have an option of two of two things and it's not accepted by them that is difficult so in street outreach we're meeting their needs on the street with them okay you don't want to go here and maybe you're not accepted here how about we get together and I still get you on a housing list and we still meet and so our street outreach professionals meet with the individuals where they are and they work on their housing goals and we're just taking baby steps to meet meet halfway you know I think that's a very progressive and heroic honestly approach to outreach and I really congratulate on you on that thank you for being here Alice and we have so much more to say that I'm going to invite Alice back for a second section to talk about what the community of Longmont can do to uplift this effort and so we'll see you again soon thank you Marcia you're very welcome