Boulder Announces Location For Homeless Day Shelter

At Thursday’s Boulder City Council meeting, city staff announced the location of a new day shelter for those experiencing homelessness. The announcement comes after months of debate and a spike in unhoused families and individuals in Boulder.

Shay Castle of Boulder Beat joined KGNU’s Alexis Kenyon to talk more about the meeting,

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The following is a copy of the city’s press release:

At the April 13 study session with Boulder City Council, staff announced the future location of the Homelessness Day Services Center. The center will be located at 1844 Folsom Street, which is currently a vacant one-story, 6,000 square foot office building.

The Homelessness Day Services Center will serve as a welcoming and inclusive space where individuals experiencing homelessness can engage with service providers in a single location. The center will aim to build a sense of healthy community, meet people where they are on their housing journey, replace unproductive habits with productive habits and provide participants with a path to housing.

During outreach conducted in August 2022, community members, service providers and individuals with lived homelessness experience provided feedback about what characteristics would be important for a day center location. Engagement feedback was summarized in the Community Outreach Report, released in October 2022. Top considerations included:

• Easy access to transportation networks
• Building accessibility for people with disabilities
• Near social and medical services
• Near housing options so newly housed individuals can continue to access support services
• Centrally located and connected to the community

Additionally, to help prioritize potential properties, city staff created evaluation criteria to identify key property characteristics for a successful and effective day center. This included size, Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility, distance from public transportation and schools/day care, zoning, affordability and whether the property would be purchased or leased.

The identified location, 1844 Folsom Street, meets the evaluation criteria for size, being a standalone one-story building, its distance from public transportation and schools/day care and zoning. Full evaluation criteria and details about how this property meets preferred criteria are available on the city’s website.

As a next step, the city is working with Boulder Shelter for the Homeless (BSH) to explore a formal agreement for BSH to operate the center. If an agreement is reached, the city and BSH will meet with neighbors of the center to discuss its operations and services. If contracted, BSH will determine the center’s hours and work with community organizations to provide an array of services.

For the next 18 to 24 months, 1844 Folsom Street will be used for the day services center. The City of Boulder plans to work with a developer on a future redevelopment which will include a 7,000 to 8,000 square foot day services center and approximately 50 apartments for permanent supportive housing. An interim location for the center will be identified during the construction period.

Kurt Firnhaber, director of Housing and Human Services, said, “We appreciate the input we received from the community and from City Council on the day center services and location criteria. This has allowed us to move effectively in finding a location for these services and we plan to open the center before next winter. We are excited to partner with the experts at Boulder Shelter for the Homeless to create an inviting, caring and welcoming space for any individuals experiencing homelessness to connect with the services they need in one central location. It is our goal that the center is a place to help individuals exit homelessness and to provide ongoing support for recently housed community members.”

Learn more about the Homelessness Day Services Center on the city’s website.

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