10 Lone Tree Voice
December 16, 2021
HOMELESS FROM PAGE 1
the reports have spanned the entire county, Makelky said. This year, the county formed a Homeless Initiative to research how many unhoused people here and how they came to be in their situation — and to formulate a plan to address it. Some in the county say the time is coming for additional local services to help people find shelter or food. Others say that will only invite more transient populations. Still others are considering sweeping camping bans and other regulations for these groups. In work sessions in October and December, Douglas County’s elected commissioners directed staff to begin considerations for a countywide camping-permit requirement and have said they’re not interested in creating homeless shelters for the community. Camping bans already exist in Parker and Lone Tree and at least one councilmember in Castle Pines — Roger Hudson — has said he wants to see one implemented there. Castle Rock’s town council also voted Nov. 16 to begin discussions on addressing local homelessness. Homelessness rising So far, much of the evidence around the growing number of unhoused people in Douglas County is anecdotal. Data from the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative shows a mostly small, steady count of these populations in the county from their local “point in time” survey. But that doesn’t align with what county entities watching homelessness are seeing. That’s why one of the first things the county’s new Homeless Initiative wants to do is improve the way they count the community. The initiative also wants to better define local homelessness and understand if it’s mostly people couch surfing, camping, sleeping in cars or something else. Many of the anecdotal reports of increased homelessness have come from law enforcement, including the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office and the Lone Tree police. “I’ve been here 40 years, and we used to never have anything like this, and now we have it and it’s progressively getting more and more,” Spurlock said. This is in a county with the highest median household income in metro Denver — $119,730 — and the lowest percentage of people in poverty — 2.7% — according to U.S. Census Bureau data for 2019. The county, like most of metro Denver, has also seen sharp increases in housing costs in recent years. Median home sales values jumped 25% over the year ending in October, according to real-estate tracking company Zillow. And average rents in the county were up 5.2% in the first three months of this year from late 2020, the largest quarterly rise since early 2019, according to county data. Local officials say they are still working to understand the causes of any rise in homelessness in the county but have not yet pointed to high housing costs as a factor.
Lone Tree police officers speak with a man who was seen panhandling in Lone Tree Dec. 2. Law enforcement was responding to PHOTOS BY ELLIOTT WENZLER calls that the man appeared to be preparing to fight with another man panhandling there.
‘I’ve been here 40 years, and we used to never have anything like this, and now we have it and it’s progressively getting more and more.’ Tony Spurlock, Douglas County sheriff
An abandoned urban camping site beneath a highway in Lone Tree.
Kirk Wilson, Lone Tree’s chief of police, said his office is definitely seeing more calls related to people experiencing homelessness lately. County Commissioner Abe Laydon, who helps lead the county homeless initiative, first noticed the increase when he saw multiple “really significant encampments” in Lone Tree in 2020, he said. “It seemed like the more I shared this with other people in Highlands Ranch and Parker, they had similar stories of more and more folks and people experiencing homelessness and panhandling,” he said. The Douglas County School District’s total numbers of students experiencing homelessness has remained mostly steady and in some categories decreased. But the district has seen a continuous increase over the past decade in students in shelters, transitional housing or awaiting foster care, according to data from the Colorado Department of Education. In the 2010 to 2011 school year,
there were 37 DCSD students in this category. The school year that began in 2019 had 240. It’s not just Douglas County, though. the region as a whole is seeing “more people experiencing homelessness than ever before,” said Cathy Alderman, chief communications and public policy officer for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. A myriad of theories Representatives from multiple county entities, including the county government and law enforcement agencies, have said they believe the people experiencing homelessness in the community have traveled from both Denver and Colorado Springs. None so far has said they’ve seen people who once had a home in the county but recently became unhoused, but all possible reasons are still being researched. If so, why are more unhoused people migrating to Douglas
County? Is it because, as some have suggested, they’re being pushed out of Denver and other areas by camping bans? Is it because of transportation challenges stemming from the jail and RTD? Among Douglas County’s leaders, there are a myriad of theories floating around as to why this increase is happening but not yet any agreed-upon or verified explanations. In Lone Tree, law enforcement officials say they began to notice the uptick once several RTD light rail stations opened in 2019. “Especially in the last two years there’s been a very big uptick in transients,” said Officer Ricky Stegmaier with the Lone Tree police. “We ask how they got here and a majority of the time it’s light rail.” Stegamier said his office uses the term “transient” to include more people than just those experiencing explicit homelessness. Wilson, the Lone Tree police chief, also said he thinks the increase in the north Douglas County city is due to people riding the train down from Denver. At the end of all light rail lines, SEE HOMELESS, P11
