MG: I have three journalists in the room. Amy Hadden Marsh.
AHM: Hi Marilyn.
MG: Hi Amy.
MG: Lily Jones.
LJ: Hello.
MG: And myself and all three of us separately attended and watched the Zoom meeting and I thought it would be interesting to get together and just see what, what we picked up from the meeting. Lily, I wanted to start with you. What were the big takeaways from that meeting for you?
LJ: Well, for me, I focused really heavily on the legal aspect of this meeting, especially what Sheriff Lou Vallario and District Attorney Ben Sollars were saying. One of the bigger points that they made, and something that I think we could all do with being reminded of is that being homeless is not, in and of itself illegal. It is not a crime. You cannot just pick somebody up and throw them in a 24-hour hold for the simple act of not having a place to stay. So there was some discussion, especially from Ben Sollars about how these people are entitled to live their lives, but they're not entitled to harm anybody or harm anyone's property, and then that's when they're able to step in.
But their powers do have limits. They can't just go out and arrest people for panhandling or making you uncomfortable or having a campsite. There's a, there's a degree of civil liberties there that we are all privileged to enjoy, that need to be respected for the homeless population as well.
MG: And there was some talk about maybe the homeless population actually choosing to live this way.
LJ: Lou Vallario mentioned several times that, uh, they do see people who. Prefer to be homeless. He says they'll pick people up for, you know, a, a misdemeanor like trespassing. And then when they're being released from jail, they're offered services. He did not go into specifics about what these services might entail, but he said that a lot of these people choose not to partake in whatever these programs might be.
AHM: That's right. Lily and Sheriff Vallario also mentioned, he used the word revolving door, meaning the people that they arrest over and over and over. They arrest them, they let them go, they arrest them, let them go, that most of those people are the ones who choose to be without a home.
Sheriff Vallario: A lot of people that are homeless choose to be, it's not a matter of, um, you know, they get thrown outta their house, they've lost their job, and some of that does exist, but so many of the people we contact over and over again, um, choose to be homeless for a lot of reasons. So it could be an economic thing, it could be a, you know, a mental health issue. It could be a variety of things. But those are the people that are, are the ones that we deal with on a regular basis, and don't necessarily appreciate or enjoy some of the services that are available. They just choose to be homeless and want to camp out on the side of a hill or somewhere.
MG: And did you wanna add anything, Lily, about the services?
LJ: Well, I would've loved for there to be more discussion about what those actually involve and what the city of Glenwood Springs is offering to people who are in a tough financial spot. Not even necessarily people who are just homeless. What resources are there for people who are food insecure? For people who don't know if they might make their rent next month? And it definitely struck me how much we talked about what they're not able to do versus what they are trying and attempting to provide for these people because they just said, oh, well, they don't take it. Well I'd like to know why.
AHM: They mentioned Catholic Charities and they mentioned Feed My Sheep. They didn't go into a detail about what those agencies are and what they do and all of the services they provide. The thing that amazes me is that there's still... despite all the work that, Salvation Army, Feed my Sheep Catholic Charities does for food insecurity, and Lift Up too with the pantries for food insecurity.. for rent assistance that people still don't know about it.
And I think, I agree with Lily that they, it might've been helpful to have somebody representing those agencies.
LJ: I don't think that would necessarily be a problem if they were going to have a follow-up meeting with the people who run these agencies and try and spread more awareness and give these programs more of a platform.
But because, you know, the focus of this was how are homeless people using our public lands, do they pose a danger to our public lands? It was more of an administrative, bureaucratic kind of meeting.
AHM: Debbie Wild was the organizer for some homeless coalition and trying to find ways to get to the root of the issue to maybe provide solutions. So there have been meetings with the agencies talking about services provided. But it's amazing to me that people still don't know about that. But maybe that's because, you know, if you're not. Food insecure. If you're not rent insecure, if you're not homeless, you don't need to know about those agencies.
MG: And there was for a little while during COVID and I think Deb Wild was involved in this. There was a kind of an official safe homeless designated place at the Intercept lot up by the Brush Creek Road.
AHM: Yes, that's right.
MG: Where they had showers and toilets and, you know, people were able to be, to live in a, you know, fairly secure place, unhoused...
AHM: [in] Pitkin County.
MG: ..during that time. And, uh, then it was disbanded and we really don't have anything like that. Some of what really struck me at this meeting was that surprised me. They were taking questions from the public throughout the meeting and that was basically what it was for was to kind of connect with the public and it seemed to me that the great majority of questions they were getting were very sympathetic towards the homeless people.
Stay tuned for part two coming later this week.
