10 The Independent - The Herald
May 17, 2018M
Long road to change ends in hope, stability Once homeless, he tries to use his experiences to help others BY ELLIS ARNOLD EARNOLD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
At one point, Adam Becker was leaving his belongings under a large rock in the woods in Estes Park, walking to work, washing up in the bathroom, walking into the kitchen to wash dishes and never telling anyone he was homeless. “I was walking miles and miles every day and sleeping under a rock 50 hours a week,” Becker, 33, said. “It was a real crazy time to be pretending like I wasn’t homeless.” At 19, Becker left his hometown in rural Minnesota to drive to Arizona, find a job and start a new life. He dreamed of being a writer and wanted to get “out there” to get experiences to draw from. When he got to Boulder, the money started running out. As a kid out of
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original location in the CityCenter Englewood area, near the civic center, in 2015. But people experiencing homeless in their own communities is also on the rise, Alderman said. In the Denvermetro area, rents climbed 52 percent between 2005 and 2015, according to Apartment List, a rental-listing site that researches industry trends. They also rose sharply in Englewood — one-bedroom rents increased nearly 20 percent since 2014, from $978 to $1,168 this year. “People everywhere are one paycheck away” from homelessness, Alderman said, or “one health condition or one loss of job because housing stability is so insecure right now.” Mike Sandgren, a coordinator at Wellspring Anglican Church at 4300 S. Lincoln St., where a food pantry and medical program offer help on weekends to the homeless and others in need, agrees. “I know a lot of people who ... have lived in Englewood their whole life who either are or have experienced homelessness recently,” said Sandgren, also the network leader for Change the Trend. Sgt. Reid McGrath, who oversees the Impact Team of officers who address specific issues in the city, said police see “a split of people” — many have deep ties to the Englewood community, a portion are from out of state and some have connections to Denver and other Colorado areas. And Sayyah, the director at HOPE food pantry, McGrath said about 10 percent of households — the pantry’s term to categorize clients — that
high school, he hadn’t saved much and ended up unable to pay for gas. He met people staying at the public library and gravitated toward the “street crowd,” he said, where he learned how to panhandle and play guitar on the street to get by. “Eventually, I got kinda swept away in it,” Becker said. He spent a few years hitchhiking on the West Coast and lived homeless almost constantly for a decade. Becker slept in parks and along highways and met many eclectic people. Veterans and people with mental illnesses were among them. From 2012-16, he stayed in Estes Park under the rock and in a storage unit, the back of a truck, a few seasonal cabin rentals and other unsteady places. In 2016, an apartment complex opened up, and his employers helped place him at the top of the list for units. He initially worked at the Stanley Hotel washing dishes and struggled with an alcohol addiction. “When you’re bouncing around and unstable, it was something that
the organization serves are homeless. Some say they’re passing through the area, and most don’t come back a second time. He thinks most stay outdoors. “They’ll come in without socks, haven’t bathed in a month,” Sayyah said. At Giving Heart, Zimmerman said, patrons were mostly aged 18-24, but recently, more people up to about 40 years old — and sometimes older — have come in. More are white than Hispanic Zimmerman or black, and about four times as many men as women come to the center. The national opioid epidemic, which has affected Colorado in recent years, also is cited as a cause for homelessness, according to U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, who recently spoke to Englewood City Council about the issue. But although drug use can deplete a person’s resources, it’s difficult to make a firm link between public drug use and lacking housing, McGrath said. “We experience drug-use problems across the full spectrum of our residents,” McGrath said. “You would certainly think if they’re using in the library, it’s more likely for someone to be homeless. But the fact of the matter is people might do it there to avoid doing it at home.” McGrath, a member of Change the Trend, also served on the board of directors in 2016-17 for Love INC of Littleton, a nonprofit that works to help the homeless and others in need. He noted that police tend to find a significant amount of co-occurring mental health and substance-use issues among the homeless. But while there is room for debate on the root cause, community members ranging from a formerly homeless man to high-level city officials agree homelessness is on the rise in
Adam Becker, who was homeless for more than a decade, sits in his new house just outside Englewood city limits. ELLIS ARNOLD
was solid and there,” Becker said of the alcohol. “It was comforting.” In search of change, he visited a church, where pastors pointed him toward a Denver rehabilitation center called 180 Ministries. He completed a live-in, 12-month program in 2017. One day, soon after graduating, he walked by an assisted-living home,
Englewood. “Our homeless population has increased significantly in the past four to five years,” said McGrath, who participated in the January cleanup along the Platte and has been with the police department since 1992. “The river is the worst I’ve seen it in my time here.” Safety is a primary concern Take a drive down South Platte River Drive near West Dartmouth Avenue — that’s where dozens set up camps, like David Morrison, who now has an apartment but was homeless in the Englewood area for nearly 1 1/2 years. Morrison’s old home base along the Platte between West Hampden and Oxford avenues, where he stayed from September 2016 to February 2017, is a common one in an area where Denver, Sheridan and Englewood converge. But people also sleep in cars near the 3400 block of South Broadway in the downtown public-parking area, said Rita Russell, Englewood’s mayor pro tem. Camps have left waste in parks such as Cushing, near Dartmouth Avenue and South Santa Fe Drive, Keck said. The effects of homelessness also reach into the heart of the city, as Mike Lindgren, owner of Gekko Vapes in the 4300 block of South Broadway, has complained to Englewood City Council. Members of the business community on his block and near the Englewood Civic Center say homeless individuals near doorways and in shops have driven away potential customers, said Keck, the city manager. Businesses near Lindgren have brought grievances to city council at meetings and through email in recent months. Liquor bottles, cigarette butts, needles, yelling and aggressive interactions — along with a person using a cigarette ashtray as a toilet — have all made appearances near Lindgren’s
Porter Place Retirement Community in Denver at South Downing Street and East Yale Avenue. “I felt something — it was calling me,” Becker said. He told staff there he had restaurant experience and he landed a job. He also found a duplex unit on the Denver-Englewood border to rent. “To me, it’s been a miracle,” Becker said. “I still get hit with this feeling of not being worth it. Why should I do this? What’s the point? Still, sometimes, I see myself as this hungover bum crawling out from underneath a bridge in dirty clothes. It’s something that is a struggle to find ourselves worthwhile.” He volunteers at 180 Ministries and is a member of Change the Trend Network, a coalition of nonprofits, churches and others seeking to address homelessness in Englewood. “We have a choice to dwell in the pain of our situation or use it as a platform to reach other people,” Becker said. “It’s incredible to use the experience I’ve had for good now.”
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s w store next door to Giving Heart, Lind- a gren said in an interview in March. n “I need my customers and employees and yes, even me, to feel safe,” p Lindgren said, “and right now, no one r does.” g At a shop just doors down from Lindgren, Kellie Martinez, owner of Broadway Barbers, was assaulted on Jan. 16 after she asked two patrons of Giving Heart to stop standing near her barbershop’s front door and blocking access, according to a police report. One of them allegedly became angry and struck her. Personnel at Giving Heart told police the individuals had caused problems recently and were no longer welcome. Russell met with business owners in the area around the middle of 2017 to talk about their concerns. She requested the details from Englewood police on Martinez’s assault because “business owners had concerns that were not being addressed,” Russell said. The city has participated with Change the Trend mostly through the police department, Keck said, to “ensure that homelessness is not criminalized but rather to help formulate a response that will help ensure harmonious relations between all citizens.” “The homeless are also human beings and citizens who have a right to exist,” he said. “But in some instances they have driven customers away due to perceptions about these individuals.” At the Englewood Public Library, which sits on the first floor of the civic center, more than 20 incidents with patrons involving mostly alcohol and some drugs were recorded between March 2017 and March 2018, according to Patron Information Tracking System (PITS) reports provided by library manager Jon Solomon following a Colorado Community Media request. Library staff fills out the reports, which are used internally to keep track of incidents, Solomon said. SEE HOMELESS, P11