LOCAL STORY This prompted the City Council to re-open discussion on the lease and take more public comment at the December 4 regular City Council meeting. Nothing changed. After the public meeting, the camp was ticketed and moved again — less than a block away. It now sits across the street from the Catholic Outreach soup kitchen. The soup kitchen is the elephant in the room during these discussions. Located just a block and a half from the Resource Center, the soup kitchen serves 200 meals a day, six days a week. Coupled with other Catholic Outreach programs, it’s the largest service provider in Grand Junction. With or without the Resource Center, the soup kitchen will continue to draw the unhoused into downtown Grand Junction. But now, even that might be changing. • Glen Grueling and other hungry people have recently been turned away from the Catholic Outreach’s soup kitchen. Grueling, who has been eating at the soup kitchen for over 20 years, said he has never been asked to provide a name or identification until now. According to Grueling, when he arrived at the soup kitchen recently, Angela Walsh, the soup kitchen’s director, did not see Grueling’s name on her list. “I told her to just write down Firefox, ‘cause that’s what everybody calls me,” said Greuling. He added that Walsh dismissed him, telling him to to find somewhere else to eat before calling for the next person in line. “A lot of hungry bellies were 86ed,” said Grueling, explaining that he was not the only one denied a warm meal that day. “We know the people we serve, and new people are coming here with complaints, cussing out our volunteers,” said Sister Karen Bland with Catholic Outreach. Bland acknowledged that people were being turned away but said it was only one or two people. “We are doing it; we are taking names. Eventually, we will have a card system like Homeward Bound,” said Bland. The card system Bland mentioned is the clarity ID, which is being rolled out by all of the service providers around the city, with Homeward Bound taking the lead. Using clarity IDs was sold as a way to not duplicate services but there is “WHERE ARE THEY GOING TO GO?” ASKED COUNCIL MEMBER SCOTT BEILFUSS, LONG ADVOCATING FOR HOUSING-BASED STRATEGIES TOWARDS HOMELESSNESS. | PHOTO BY BETHANY COCHRAN “ IT WEARS YOU OUT, HAVING TO HIDE FROM THE POLICE. I NEED RESOURCES; I CAN’T WALK ALL OVER TOWN,” concern that it is already turning into a tool of collective punishment, as it can prevent people from accessing not just one service but all of them. It can also serve as a way for the police and providers to separate the deserving poor from the undeserving. “We want people who are cooperative and joyful to get a meal,” said Bland, who added that, since they’ve begun to require names, “things have been great.” Regarding the encampment that popped up across the street from the soup kitchen, Bland had no comment. • “The solution is housing, we can’t get people off the streets without housing,” said Richard Crespin with Mutual Aid Partners, during public comment “[Council] is hoping the homeless population will somehow disappear. It’s not going to happen.” But much of the homeless population has disappeared. disappeared into They have the county jail with lengthy sentences for petty municipal changes. They have disappeared into the deserts north of the city and neighboring towns of Fruita and Clifton — towns without services. In September, the Colorado ACLU sent a letter to the City of Grand Junction imploring the municipal court to cease violating the constitutional rights of the poor and unhoused. Finding that the court “persistently and illegally denies court-appointed counsel to incarcerated people, coerces uncounseled guilty pleas, and often imposes lengthy, uncounseled, illegal jail sentences. Based on the consistency of Judge Eret’s practices, it is likely that all or the vast majority of people convicted by Judge Eret were convicted and sentenced in violation of the Colorado and United States Constitutions.” Grand Junction has a rate of homelessness higher than any city in the State of Colorado, and there are no meaningful solutions on the horizon. Grand Junction is in a state of emergency, whether it’s declared by the City or not. INSIDE THE SPECIAL MEETING HELD BY THE GRAND JUNCTION CITY COUNCIL ON NOVEMBER 25. | PHOTO BY BETHANY COCHRAN January 2025 DENVER VOICE 7
8 Publizr Home