{"id":32224,"date":"2023-08-17T15:32:52","date_gmt":"2023-08-17T21:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bench-dedication-ceremony-honors-the-loss-of-homeless-friends-and-relatives\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:54:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:54:28","slug":"bench-dedication-ceremony-honors-the-loss-of-homeless-friends-and-relatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bench-dedication-ceremony-honors-the-loss-of-homeless-friends-and-relatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Bench dedication ceremony honors the loss of homeless friends and relatives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Cole
Cole McKinney with the Bridge Emergency Shelter in Cortez opens the door for a client on Tuesday. The Bridge was founded in 2006 to help keep homeless residents from dying from exposure. The shelter&#x2019;s new building is currently under construction.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Montezuma County Homelessness Prevention Coalition will put on a bench dedication ceremony Aug. 17 to honor the lives lost while experiencing homelessness and bring awareness to the community.<\/p>\n

The event was held at 3 p.m. in Veteran\u2019s Park.<\/p>\n

Lucia Bueno-Valdez, a support specialist at the Pi\u00f1on Project, says the ceremony is a way for people who experience homelessness to honor their lost loved ones.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s counting on about 75 people to attend today\u2019s ceremony, including those from the city of Cortez and various organizations that have collaborated on the event. She also hopes the majority of the homeless community will attend and plans to \u201chit the streets and try to round people up who want to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir day-to-day living is different than ours, so it depends on what they\u2019re going through,\u201d Bueno-Valdez said.<\/p>\n

Bueno-Valdez said 265 people experience homelessness in Montezuma County.<\/p>\n

Accounting for deaths among the unhoused is challenging because some people might not be considered unhoused if they have an address. There could be many reasons why someone might not want to return home. And coroners\u2019 reports don\u2019t count the unhoused who have a documented address.<\/p>\n

Relatively speaking, Bueno-Valdez estimated that eight to 13 unhoused people in Montezuma County die each year.<\/p>\n

The homelessness coalition works to decrease the number of homeless people and to ensure that they are unhoused for a shorter periods.<\/p>\n

The coalition\u2019s staff supports people who experience homelessness by actively navigating resources. The coalition helps eligible clients \u2013 whom they call friends and relatives \u2013 to make stable adjustments through rehab, work and job placement. They also help clients through the process to receive benefits such as Supplemental Security Income and Social Security disability insurance.<\/p>\n

If adults need protection services, the coalition can help coordinate referrals through the Department of Human Services.<\/p>\n

Often, staff help the unhoused reconnect with family and friends. For some, that resolves their homelessness. For others, staff helps find referrals for stable housing.<\/p>\n

The coalition received a transitional housing grant for $800,000 that will fund a day center. Bueno-Valdez hopes that it will open this fall for people to stay warm and safe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very proud of our community right now on how they came together to address the homelessness community,\u201d Bueno-Valdez said. \u201cOur community is really great at collaborating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s ceremony is a collective effort with groups including the Montezuma County Homelessness Prevention Coalition, Montezuma County Health and Human Services Departments, Sih Hasin Street Medicine, Axis Health, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Southwest Health System, city of Cortez, The Bridge Shelter, Indigenous Wellbriety Program, Renew, Grace\u2019s Kitchen and Hope\u2019s Kitchen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Montezuma coalition aims to reduce number of unhoused people<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-32224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81721,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32224\/revisions\/81721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32224"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=32224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}