11/02/2025
"It’s hard to predict the ultimate price of this closure, we have gotten very accustomed to the North Avenue Shelter just being there doing its thing. We should expect to see increases in police calls, ambulance calls, ER visits, incarceration costs, etc. It’s going to cost unhoused people attempting to pull themselves up by their bootstraps their jobs, it’s going to cause people to relapse on their sobriety, it’s going to cost people their stability and their ability to remain med compliant.
It’s going to cost all of us, business owners, workers, taxpayers, unhoused folks, far more than it would take to keep the doors open.
It’s real simple: desperate people will render desperate deeds.
Everything has to go somewhere, and they will go somewhere even though there is nowhere for them to go. They can’t go to Whitman, the Hang-out is closed, the Resource Center is gone, and now the only emergency shelter in town is closing permanently.
This problem is only going to get worse. Thousands of Grand Valley residents are at risk of losing their SNAP benefits and healthcare in the next couple of months. Wages are stagnant and according to the City’s own data 55% of wage earners in Mesa County cannot afford rent on the free market. I’ll say it again, more than half of all workers don’t get paid enough to live here! In the coming months we are going to see a massive rise in the numbers of our coworkers, neighbors, and friends becoming unhoused. It’s going to happen.
I’m sorry the burden has fallen on your shoulders to do something, but the fact is nobody is going to swoop in and save us, we as a community will have to figure this out. Inaction is untenable. My hope is the City Council will follow the lead of the community which heroically raised $150,000 dollars to save the shelter. Some donated because of their compassion, but many others from a pragmatic point of view.
Whether it’s pragmatism or compassion that moves you, we must fund the North Avenue shelter, the human, social, and economic cost are simply too high not to step in and help Homeward Bound continue to provide this clearly essential social service for our community.
Dear Grand Junction City Council Members, I do not envy your position at this moment in history, the short-sighted and ultimately cruel policies of the Trump regime are starting to manifest into re…