Early next year, southeast Denver will welcome a shelter for children and their parents. The facility will provide a warm, safe place for more than 200 families. It will also offer critical services like childcare and medical treatment. Families residing in the shelter can walk to public transit, access pharmacies and grocery stores nearby, and be close to schools and places of worship.
For the soon-to-be residents of 7525 E Hampden Ave, getting off the streets and into a safe place of their own will be life-changing. Families staying at the former Embassy Suites hotel will be able to cook, do laundry, and spend time together. Parents will be able to go to work without fearing for their children’s safety.
And kids will have the stability they need to go to school, learn, and make friends. After enduring months of exposure to the elements, residents will finally have a chance to heal.
The strategy adopted at the new family shelter is supported by decades of research. Extensive data indicates that housing families experiencing homelessness as the initial intervention can be transformative.
Nationwide, participants in ‘Housing First’ programs are more inclined to utilize services and more likely to experience improved health and overall quality of life. Crucially, they are more likely to maintain stable housing over the long term. The robust outcomes associated with the ‘Housing First’ approach often translate into substantial cost savings for cities that invest in this approach.
For the children waiting to move into the family shelter, many of whom are under five, the opportunity to live in a clean and secure space will be transformative. Recent studies of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) document the very harmful effect that homelessness can have on young children.
A child with multiple ACEs is much more likely to develop hepatitis or COPD, suffer from depression, and 12 times more likely to die by suicide. Providing a safe and secure home will significantly reduce the occurrence of these negative health outcomes.
A vocal cohort of our neighbors opposes the family shelter. Some argue that its presence may impact property values negatively, while others express concerns about potential criminal activities or violence from new neighbors. One neighbor has repeatedly argued that placing a family shelter close to a Whole Foods doesn’t make sense because it’s “not an appropriate store for the indigent.”
These fears are overblown and derogatory.
Both here in Denver and across the U.S., family shelters have not created the health and safety issues that so many of us, based on misinformation and negative stereotypes, fear. Indeed, Calvary Baptist Church of Denver — less than a half mile from the proposed shelter — has partnered with Family Promise of Greater Denver to host families in transition for nearly 25 years.
Many of our neighbors are excited to welcome our new neighbors when the family shelter opens. We know that our community is the kind of place – stable, supportive, and accessible – ideally suited to kids and parents working to get back on their feet.
It is human nature to fear the unknown; change is not always comfortable or convenient. But stop and think for a moment. If this were your sibling and their kids, you would bend over backward to help them find a decent place to live. These parents are someone’s sibling, child, or cousin. We believe these families will be a blessing to our community, not a burden. Instead of being part of the problem, we have the opportunity to step up, extend hospitality, and be part of the solution.
Rev. Anne Jernberg Scalfaro is Senior Pastor at Calvary Baptist Church of Denver, located at the northeast corner of Hampden and Monaco streets. Don Burnes is an author and researcher. In November, he released his latest book: When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America.
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