LAS ANIMAS — After 15 years of cheap whiskey, merciless nights on hard concrete, and trips in and out of jail and detox, Richard Spotted Bird heard about a new treatment facility at a sprawling campus that has served as both a prison and Veterans Affairs hospital.
“I told them to put me on the list,” said Spotted Bird, 54, one of 11 people to have graduated from Colorado’s first state-supported homeless program at the former Fort Lyon corrections facility.
The historic facility began life as a frontier fortress and housed a veterans hospital until 2001. It was a state prison when Gov. John Hickenlooper closed it amid budget cuts in 2011. It reopened last year to house the chronically homeless.
It was a plan hatched in controversy, with state legislators questioning the costs and wisdom of a bill that would bus homeless Coloradans — mostly from the Front Range — to Fort Lyon, in Bent County.
In 2013, after the Joint Budget Committee refused to reserve about $6 million over two years to repurpose the campus, the idea became an amendment grafted to a bill with broad legislative support.
Hickenlooper’s staff worked closely with lawmakers to pass the plan, which cost $4 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30. About $2.7 million of that came from the general fund budget, and an additional $1.3 million from Colorado’s share of a national fraud settlement with mortgage lenders.
Operating costs are expected to be similar in the years ahead. Supporters expect that over time some costs to the state will be reduced by federal and other grants, said Pat Coyle, director of the Colorado Division of Housing.
Sen. Scott Renfroe, R-Greeley, was among those who questioned whether the initiative was more about finding a purpose for the prison than helping the homeless.
The graduation of Spotted Bird and a handful of others hasn’t changed his objections, he said.
“To me it is still government dollars going to keep something open that wasn’t needed. We have other facilities that help the homeless.”
Spotted Bird, a Native American of the Kiowa tribe, was struggling to overcome an addiction that kept him chained to Denver’s streets and out of homeless shelters where there is zero tolerance for alcohol.
For the 202 residents, who may stay from 90 days up to two years, the graduations are an encouraging sign that the shelter’s remote location and array of services will, over time, reduce homelessness in the metro area, said Joseph Parvensky, president of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, which administers the program.
“This is one of the few programs designed to serve in an environment away from areas where they have been trapped in addiction. They can focus better on their lives, ” Parvensky said.
But just shy of Sept. 3, the facility’s first anniversary, it is too early to declare Fort Lyon a success, said Sam Tsemberis, who runs Housing First, a national non-profit.
“Even for this graduate, the test for him will be being able to sustain the gains he made back at the program in his own community,” Tsemberis said.
Not everyone successfully completes the program, said James Ginsburg, Fort Lyon program director. Since the facility opened, six people have been involuntarily discharged for rule violations.
“We have a shuttle. People have gotten on the shuttle and gotten drunk. Typically, they get discharged,” Ginsburg said.
Hickenlooper closed the prison to save about $6 million a year, at a time when the state was more than $1 billion in the hole. The closure eliminated about 200 jobs in Bent County.
“Everybody in the community was upset that we lost Fort Lyon. There was a lot of revenue, and it went away,” said Michael Diez, a member of the City Council in nearby Las Animas.
Diez questions how the facility, where there are 161 men and 41 women, will be funded in the long term. He said he believes it was an ill-considered idea hatched to appease locals.
Support for bringing the homeless to the community was high and remains that way, said Kim MacDonnell, Bent County Development Foundation director.
Bent County now employs 13 people who help maintain Fort Lyon. The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless runs the program and employs an additional 28. Enrollment is expected to hit 300 by next summer, when employment will be about 50.
Since reopening, Fort Lyon has paid more than $500,000 of utility bills, and tax revenue is coming in from food, supplies and other things purchased for the shelter, MacDonnell said.
On a bright summer day, the campus is tranquil, a haven of neatly mowed grass and well-kept buildings where residents who spent years scrambling for shelter sleep in private rooms or share a room with one other person.
There is little evidence of the desperate years spent in a drunken stupor in Joe Trotter’s appearance. Dressed in a spotless white shirt and casual trousers, he could be any middle-class Joe heading out to work.
But Trotter, 53, who arrived at Fort Lyon shortly after it reopened, was one of “those guys in the street with the shopping carts. I’m the one with the sleeping bag and the sign.”
While Spotted Bird left Fort Lyons after 10 months to live in a Coalition-owned apartment at Renaissance at Civic Center in downtown Denver, Trotter plans to take the full, two-year program at Fort Lyon. “I’m getting healthy here. I’m going for the brass ring,” he said.
All the residents are required to work at the facility and in return receive points they can use to buy toiletries and other items.
Linda Chadwell, 55, works in the 4½-acre garden she started.
She advises a visitor to run a hand across wood paneling in a hallway to feel the oil she applied, another of her tasks.
Residents, along with Bent County employees, replaced the entire sewer system. They are now working to restore a row of historic officers’ quarters.
The homeless, who travel on bikes, or by Coalition shuttle vans, are having a positive impact locally, MacDonnell said.
“Nobody is drunk and belligerent. There are no fights. There have been two who volunteered at our local museum. They attend our churches, and they have been actively involved in recovery groups that are up and down the valley.”
The ultimate solution to homelessness is housing, Ginsburg said. But for many it is all but impossible to recover sobriety in an environment where they have spent years on streets filled with temptation, he added.
Short-term rehab programs are generally ineffective for people who may have used drugs or alcohol for 30 or more years, Ginsburg said.
“The Coalition’s mission is to create a lasting solution. For a segment of the population who need to come out of the community, this is the solution,” Ginsburg said.
At Fort Lyon, residents get a personalized recovery plan, Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings are on site, and there is a walk-in clinic.
The coalition has partnerships with mental and other health care providers in nearby communities. And residents can take courses at Otero Junior College and Lamar Community College. They also can prepare to get their GED.
Bruce Hall, 52, a Marine Corp veteran who was living out of his car in Grand Junction before coming to Fort Lyon, is studying business and community health at Otero.
Hall, who was a senior account manager at Qwest Communications before he was laid off when the company experienced a financial meltdown in 2001, plans to get an associate degree.
Not a day goes by that he doesn’t consider his chances of staying sober when he returns to the outside world, he said. “But I believe if I do good at Fort Lyon, I will be out there and be employable.”
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671
