 Welcome to 15 minutes. Today, I have Alice Seltenfuss back to talk about hope for a second episode because we had way too much to say to each other. We're going to talk about hope in the community and what more Longmont can do to really lift up the homeless population, integrate the homeless population and just do more. Absolutely, Marsha. Hope is working with anyone experiencing homelessness, whether it's for a short period of time or a long period of time, and we want housing to be their focus as well. So we're on the streets, we're providing shelter to lead towards housing so that we can write housing goals with people. And we write housing goals with even the person who's on the corner and we just want to say, hey, look, really, it can happen. We can work on it together. You know, I think that's really important. At different times in my life, I have faced needing to access some kind of services, you know, and what I've often found is that there's no roadmap. And, you know, you kind of feel like you're running from pillar to post and when you said writing a housing plan, I thought, oh, if someone could have done that for me, you know, not that I have not been homeless, but I have had, you know, other needs in my life. And so can you tell us a little more about that and what you do and how you find people, places, considering all the barriers that there really are? Sure, it is very difficult in Boulder County with our housing shortage. First off, being part of HSBC, Homeless Solutions for Boulder County, we go to weekly and monthly meetings about clients and we make it personal. We talk about people who have real stories. We rate who needs one right away. What if someone has a debilitating disease right now? Well, let's get them housed as soon as possible in this one. We have 10 housing opportunities. Let's get these. Let's pick the top 10 and we just keep moving and keep moving. And then in our shelters, we are on the streets looking for market rate situations. It could be just a room, just rent a room, but we found that room with the help of our clients and we're looking for other resources. But the community is so rich with resources here in Longmont that we have so many community partners. We have the in-between doing transitional housing and the hour center working with families. We have the rec center providing rich things for people to do that help even homeless individuals have activities that they could be engaged in. El Comite is providing Cinco de Mayo, May 7th, that we can all come together as a community and partake in this fun event. And then the other thing the city is doing is they're doing Elanion Park meeting on the 23rd, on April 23rd. I'll be there. You will be there, wonderful. So we're going to be there. Hope will be there and say, hey neighbors, hey community, someone experiencing difficulty, here's what I can tell you about resources. We just want to share resources with people because so often we hear, oh, I didn't know about that resource or oh, I didn't know Hope did that. And we truly want to help people with all of the resources our rich community has to offer. So Alice, you mentioned housing opportunities. Do you actually go do outreach into the housing market and find these housing opportunities that are going to be appropriate? Can you tell me a little about that? Absolutely. It is a tough job. Our client advocates, we say that instead of case managers, they go hit the streets and look at demographic areas where folks who are making a moderate amount of money or maybe it's at the service industry kind of jobs where people live in. And they talk to managers of apartment complexes. We also get our clients coming back and saying, this was such a good experience. I appreciate that you helped me find this living situation or that living situation or renting a room from that family has been such a good experience for me. I would recommend them in the future. And then we also go to housing meetings as a county and when housing opportunities come about that will be voucher related, then we work together to figure out who gets the next housing opportunity that arises and it's very exciting when we can do that and walk away from the table with a few people housed. I'm thinking, you are really doing a lot of different things. Can you tell us a personal story about someone that through HOPE's efforts has been able to rejoin the community with work and a place to live of their own? I would love to. There's this woman who comes to our outreach center every day to get her mail. We let people receive mail at our outreach center. We've been helping her for 10 years and she struggles. So she's on her second round of getting back on her feet and feeling confident for the first time in four years she has a job here in Longmont. She just received a Longmont housing voucher and as of last week is housed in the community she wants to live in. Sometimes there is friction between the unhoused community, especially the street living community and people who are living more conventional lives. Do you have opinions about what the city can do in terms of the way it works and the way it's designed? Because I do. To kind of make it so that people with different lifestyles don't bump up against each other quite so much. I think it always comes back to the affordable housing piece. I myself drive down Main Street. Here I am, I work elbow to elbow with homeless individuals all the time and I drive down Main Street and go, whoa, what happened here? We have a lot of people out here just sleeping right there on the sidewalk and that's kind of unnerving for even those of us who have that slant of compassion in that area. But when I help my daughter look for an apartment in a large community and the apartment only costs $525 a month it reminds me that every single person staying in our navigation shelter could afford that. And some of the individuals we talked to on the street have given up. So when we can be creative and find temporary housing solutions that might not be something we all agree on but we come together and say, what if we have a variety of resources temporary for housing then maybe we give someone a little hope that when Alice or Andy or my client advocates, Janeth, Peggy and Cyrus say, hey, can we go work on your ID? You've got to have an ID first to get any kind of housing. They'd be like, well, yeah, because I have this safe place to stay right now and it's temporary and if I can stay here for a while okay, yeah, I'll work with you and I think that it's just out of reach for some people who've been beat down by life's situations. Of course, there are so many moving parts in terms of creating permanently affordable housing or housing that our land costs so much. Now our building materials cost so much and we've got a long way to go to try to figure out solutions to all of that, especially when some people who have been homeless for a long time are going to have a hard time living in, for example, a high rise apartment building. It's easier to make those affordable because land is the biggest cost so if you stack a lot of dwelling units on a small piece of land they can be cheaper but we've already seen that some people just have a hard time living that way. It's true, there are people who just don't want to be housed and we even judge some people that don't want to live with folks who were previously unhoused but there are plenty of people out there that want to live a more inclusive life and wouldn't mind sharing an apartment complex with a variety of people. There was a young man on our streets who was familiar with the police department, the hospitals, us, everybody and he just became housed in a tiny little efficiency apartment. How did he survive that? He put his tent up in the living room, slept in that tent for a whole month until he could handle the larger space and that was him being creative with his case manager on how to successfully be housed and so I just think there are more people out there with a little bit of a say so and we could find common ground with some of them than they can be the role models for others like well if Joe did it maybe I could do it. You know that's a great story and it reminds me of one that I read about in a housing first program that I think was in Utah. The story that I read was about a person who did almost the same thing slept on the floor for a number of months until she was finally able to get in the bed and not feel exposed like she was up on a pedestal or something like that and I think that's a really important example that will help all of us in our understanding of how being on the streets and exposed really can change people. There's a dignity piece like when you get to have a shower every day or every other day it changes who you are when you get to have healthy food they are completely different looking people six months after they've been housed and they've experienced wraparound services. I think that's really important. I wonder what you think of the idea that people may that we could provide public showers toilets and lockers because those things are easier to provide in a small space maybe if they were accessible to places like people in safe lots for example there could maybe be more safe lots if you didn't have to have a church that was willing to open its bathroom facilities to the people. I believe that those things can be designed so that they're easy to police you know so that they're monitored do you think that hope could take on incorporating a facility like that into you know your routines if the city were able to build it I absolutely think so and we like challenges we are just a non-profit but we do like challenges and you know you watch a movie and it shows a European train station that has all of these lockers and whether you're housed or unhoused you like your stuff and you want your stuff protected if we had availability to lockers that is the number one obstacle because at our shelters and I failed to mention this everyone across the county is welcome to come get a hot meal and a shower between some evening hours but man protecting my stuff how do I get my stuff protected so I can venture out for resources but wait no I better stay by my stuff so if we could tackle that together that would be quite the stride for us as a community there's a real lesson in that that there are tiny changes that can be made we could do this as a community and really help more people that way well Alice again it's been wonderful talking to you I hope everyone will take something away from this conversation and be able to do what needs to be done to make Longmont a more inclusive community that has opportunities for everyone to improve their situation thank you Marcia and I just invite you and City Council and the whole community to contact me at aliceathopeforlongmont.org with any concerns or questions or ideas we would appreciate that and thank you for your time today oh thank you for being here I know you're completely busy all in your entire life thank you for coming you're welcome