2006: Aurora Event

Date:               Wednesday, November 1, 2006
Time:              5:30 – 7:00 pm
Location:      Aurora First Presbyterian Church
                        1585 Kingston St, Aurora, Colorado 80010

Contact: Terri McMaster, Lutheran Advocacy Ministry - Colorado

Fact Sheet: What It Costs to Live in Adams County

General Overview of the Aurora Event

The Moderator of the event was Reverend Thomas Mayes, Pastor of
Living Water Christian Center in Aurora. Rev. Mayes is a member of the
city's volunteer citizen group, the Key Community Response Team, and
the police chief's advisory group.

The panel, made up of local experts on homelessness, hunger and
healthcare was asked to answer two specific questions:

1) How does poverty manifest itself in your community?

2) What do you think are some local/state solutions to address poverty
and how can we support those efforts?

The panelists were:

Maggie Tidwell, Executive Director, Colfax Community Network. CCN provides children and families residing in low-income housing (primarily residential motels) along Colfax Avenue with information, services, and programs to strengthen and improve family and community life.
Darcie Meierbachtol, Nurse Practitioner & Health Outreach Coordinator, Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. CCH’s Health Outreach Program, operating from a specially equipped van, includes a medical team that frequents shelters, food lines, and motels. (Due to a death in the family, Deb Debutez of CCH substitued for Ms. Meierbachtol).
Cindy Whitehill, Manager of Agency Relations Food Bank of the Rockies. FBR serves Northern Colorado and Wyoming, where the need for food assistance continues to increase. 264,000 people in those areas live in poverty and struggle to meet their basic food needs; 95,000 of them are children.

Some of the key points that resulted from this panel were:

Barriers to self sufficiency:

Affordable housing:

Motels offer emergency housing, but high motel rent becomes a trap, preventing families from transitioning to permanent housing.
Families are surviving by sharing spaces in unsafe numbers – several generations, 10-15 people living in small homes.
Federal cuts in assistance programs serving the poor & working poor, as money is diverted to programs serving only the chronically homeless (i.e. Cuts to Section 8 vouchers, Housing Development Block Grants).
Rezoning. With Fitzsimmons growth, the motels are going to be gone. They should be; they’re hideous places to live. But, they are the one bit of housing left for people in poverty, and 1,500 families (400 children) will be displaced.
City continues to claim that they will provide federal funding (federal relocation act) if they city tears down a motel, providing displaced residents with $5,000 a place to live, and housing counseling.
At the same time, they are offering tax incentives for developers to buy motels. When a developer tears down a motel, they are required to provide no assistance to tenants, and just two-weeks notice.

Huge increase in need:

Nonprofits are also a paycheck away from closing, operating on limited resources, far less than needed to meet basic needs. Food assistance no longer meets only emergency needs. Working families & low-income seniors now need assistance on an ongoing basis.
Meal sites often cannot seat everyone – have to double up food & volunteers to offer two rounds of meals. Families drive together in large groups.
Food bank received a grant, allowing them to offer 1,040 Thanksgiving boxes. They made an offer for requests to about 600 Metro-Denver service providers, and received requests from 108 agencies for more than 8,000 boxes.
There is enough food in Metro Denver. The problem is getting it disbursed to everyone. Small food banks often refuse to list their locations; they'd be deluged with need they couldn’t meet.
No shelters in Aurora. City denies its homeless problem – pushes people to Denver.

Insufficient wages. Most people seeking food and housing assistance are employed now, but cannot come close to making ends meet – even paying rent & utilities. Food is the one thing people know they can get assistance with & will be the last thing they pay for. Cannot possibly budget well enough to live on $5.15, or even $6 or $7 an hour.
Bad fortune coupled with bad choices. As the pain goes on & on, people believe they deserve some relief, and make any choice available to find it. When middle-class & affluent people make a bad choice, they can get out of it somehow. For people living in poverty, the consequences go on & on, getting deeper & deeper.
Predatory lenders – tax services, payday loans, cash cards.
Child care – huge part of the problem. Unaffordable. Even with school-aged kids, lot of days off; low-wage workers cannot get time off & cannot afford care.
Systems, governmental & charitable, which make people demonstrate that they’re worthy of assistance. They’ve worked hard enough, suffered enough, saved enough. Everybody is worthy of housing.
Access to health care

People become homeless when they get sick & can’t get treatment.
CICP doesn’t cover many services & meds, especially in mental health care.
Specialty care nearly impossible to get.
Co-occurring disorders – people have limited ability to understand what is going on with them or how serious it is.
People do whatever they can to keep going (go without treatment for serious illnesses & injuries (severe concussions, thrombosis). They use whatever they can find to “treat” (ie. wood glue to seal deep cut, vitamin D & masking-tape wrap for third-degree burn).
Homeless people much more susceptible to being hit by cars – Colfax a dangerous street.

Access to education

A high-school diploma or G.E.D. will no longer guarantee a job with a livable wage. People need access to vocational schools and four-year colleges.

Recommendations

Address conditions resulting in generational poverty, including the over-representation of minorities. People born into appalling conditions die in the same conditions.
We need to speak up, face the issues square on, refuse to tolerate this in our society. Solutions need to come from community members.
If small, faith-based food pantries would merge, they could increase hours/days of operation & share resources.
Donations are down in Colorado & nationwide. Ongoing strategies needed to keep food donations up year-round. Monetary donations are more effective – food banks can buy five times the product as the individual at a grocery store. Educational efforts needed, but it’s a hard sell. Doesn’t have the same feel-good effect as donating food.
Restore cuts to Higher Education, particularly access to need-based financial aid
Public restrooms. Homeless people have to do all their living outside, and businesses have closed their doors to them. Get tickets for things like public urination.

State Representative Morgan Carroll attended this event & posed the following question to the panell. Funding seems to be the obvious thing legislators can do. If you had to prioritize three things that would provide the biggest bang for the buck, where we could make a dent by our policies, what would they be? Feedback:

Shelter
Transitional housing
Health-care access (Aid to Needy Disabled Program)