{"id":62301,"date":"2019-02-18T18:20:34","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T01:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/city-county-may-spend-70000-on-strategic-plan-to-address-homelessness\/"},"modified":"2019-02-19T01:20:34","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T01:20:34","slug":"city-county-may-spend-70000-on-strategic-plan-to-address-homelessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/city-county-may-spend-70000-on-strategic-plan-to-address-homelessness\/","title":{"rendered":"City, county may spend $70,000 on strategic plan to address homelessness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Durango
Durango and La Plata County governments may spend $70,000 on a strategic plan to address homelessness. Other communities have drafted similar plans with mixed success.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A government-led plan that could identify long-term solutions for homeless residents in Durango may get started this year after a lengthly delay stemming from the 416 Fire.<\/p>\n

Durango city councilors and La Plata County commissioners have set aside $70,000 to spend this year on a strategic plan to address homelessness from the joint city-county sales tax fund, said Interim County Manager Chuck Stevens.<\/p>\n

Other Colorado communities, including Denver and Boulder<\/a>, have completed strategic plans that focus on shelter and mental health care, said Cathy Alderman, vice president of communications and public policy for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless<\/a>. The success of the plans has been mixed. But she still supports the planning process.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gets people around the table to talk about very complicated issues that lead to and exacerbate homelessness,\u201d Alderman said.<\/p>\n

Durango City Councilor Dick White said he supported the plan last year as a way to help analyze all the variables around homelessness.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s the right way to go,\u201d said White, who is term-limited and will leave office in April.<\/p>\n

White said he would like to see the plan finished in time to inform the 2020 city and county budgets.<\/p>\n

The strategic plan project was put out to bid last spring, and a contractor was selected in May, Stevens said.<\/p>\n

The contract was never awarded because the 416 Fire broke out a few days after a contractor was selected, and no money was available to fund it, he said.<\/p>\n

Councilors and commissioners could still decide to award the bid to the selected contractor by May because the bid was valid for a year, he said.<\/p>\n

Once in place, strategic plans to address homelessness usually require funding to meet needs of homeless residents, such as housing, Alderman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the towns and a lot of cities are reluctant to make the needed investment up front,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

However, investments in services for the homeless can save communities money by easing the pressure on emergency services and criminal justice systems, she said.<\/p>\n

For example, a 2017 study by the RAND Corp.<\/a> found Los Angeles County saved $6.5 million in a year by moving homeless residents into housing paired with social services.<\/p>\n

Former Durango Planning Commission Chairman Peter Tregillus said he would like to see a plan collect more refined data about the needs of homeless residents as well as identify some short- and long-term goals. For example, he would like a site to be identified where residents could camp in a structured environment and then evaluate it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be worthwhile, if it keeps us engaged in the process of grappling with this issue,\u201d he said of the strategic plan.<\/p>\n

mshinn@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

have completed similar studies, with mixed results<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1347,611,453,746],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-62301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-government-health-care","tag-homelessness","tag-housing-and-urban-planning","tag-mental-health"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62301","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=62301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62301"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=62301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}