Update Jan. 11, 2:23 p.m.: Boulder Shelter for the Homeless announced Thursday that Via will add two additional buses from downtown to the shelter before 7 p.m., through Monday evening.
Update Jan. 12, 9:59 a.m.: A 24-hour emergency warming shelter will be open Friday evening through Tuesday morning in the Age Well wing of the East Boulder Community Center, 5660 Sioux Drive, the City of Boulder announced Jan. 11. More information on how to access the shelter and other resources is available here.
An arctic blast coming this weekend could bring subzero temperatures, raising concerns for unhoused community members.
“I’d like to know that if the weather forecasts do end up aligning on an extreme arctic blast this weekend, we are prepared to do significantly more preparation and outreach to our unhoused community before and during this potentially life-threatening cold,” council member Matt Benjamin wrote in a Jan. 8 email to City staff, council and the community. “I’d love to see us proactively patrol the community for unsheltered folks and actively bring them to the shelter, overflows, and warming center(s).”
As of Jan. 10, the National Weather Service forecast for the weekend showed lows of 5 degrees below zero Saturday night and 6 degrees below zero Sunday night.
Benjamin noted various support systems available during cold weather events, including warming centers and additional beds at the shelter, but voiced concerns that the extreme cold could stress the City’s typical network.
“Enhanced preparations are likely needed,” he wrote. As of Wednesday afternoon, no emergency preparations were in place. Council did add a discussion of cold weather preparedness to its Jan. 11 meeting agenda.
There are an estimated 450 people in Boulder experiencing homelessness, though “there’s no consistently accurate way to be sure,” according to the City’s website. Boulder Shelter for the Homeless typically has 160 beds available, and 17 additional hotel beds are available from November to March through support from the City, according to Andy Schultheiss, Boulder Shelter for the Homeless’ chief development and communications officer.
The shelter saw a spike in the number of nights and people it had to turn away in the fall, turning away as many as 30 people on Oct. 30, according to the shelter’s capacity dashboard. The dashboard doesn’t yet show data for December and January, but the shelter has had to turn people away on two nights in January and one or two nights in December, according to Schultheiss.
During critical weather events, an additional 20 beds are available at the shelter, and it remains open during the day as opposed to its regular 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. Additional sheltering is also available through Haven Ridge, SPAN, TGTHR and EFAA’s emergency housing.
Critical weather events are defined as when the forecast is predicted to be 10 degrees or below in the evening, 20 degrees or below during the day and/or six inches or more of snowfall is expected. As of Jan. 10, the thresholds had been met for Thursday through Monday nights. The shelter will remain open during the day Saturday to Monday, according to Schultheiss, subject to changing conditions.
When temperatures reached record-breaking lows during a snowstorm in December 2022, BSH remained open during the day, and a warming center was opened in East Boulder.
Activating a warming center would be coordinated at the City and County level. As of Wednesday afternoon, the City had not made a decision to open warming centers, housing and human services spokesperson Lyndsy Morse-Casillas said.
“While the current conditions do not indicate the need for a response beyond those included in Critical Weather conditions, staff and partners are monitoring the weather forecasts,” Director of Housing and Human Services Kurt Firnhaber wrote Tuesday in an email response to Benjamin. “Should conditions escalate to an emergency response, staff will work with the countywide Office of Disaster Management.”
By comparison, Denver opens emergency shelters when temperatures drop below 20 degrees. The city’s council is considering raising that threshold to 32 degrees. Denver opened warming shelters Jan. 8. They will remain open through Jan. 15.
Via Mobility Services, a nonprofit that operates the free HOP bus to and from the homeless shelter, may also be called upon to help with additional transportation for the unhoused community, the organization’s operations director Lisa Bitzer says.
Typically, the bus makes one trip from the shelter to downtown Boulder at 8 a.m. and one trip from downtown to the shelter at 5 p.m. The bus holds about 45 people and their belongings, and once the bus reaches capacity, people are left behind to walk or pay the fare for the SKIP bus.
Tony Inmin, an unhoused community member who was taking the Via HOP bus to the shelter in the first week of the year, said he hasn’t seen anyone get left behind in recent weeks, but “we’ve been getting pretty packed in there.”
Schultheiss says that Via services to the shelter remain the same during critical weather conditions — one bus in the morning and one in the evening. However, Bitzer says the City may contact Via to help with transportation to warming centers.
“We’ll see if we’re called upon to possibly move some additional people to shelters that may be open, but that remains to be seen if that’ll be activated or not, so we’ll just be on standby just in case we’re needed,” Bitzer says.
Cold weather can prove fatal for the unhoused. According to the 2022 Boulder County coroner’s report, 4% of unhoused deaths were due to exposure to the elements. That’s one of 25 people who died recorded in the coroner’s report, though the coroner’s report likely doesn’t account for all unhoused deaths that occur in the county.
“It sucks to be outside in 10 degree weather, it just really does,” Schultheiss says. “I just hope the community understands that there are people who have been in Boulder for a very long time who are out there on those nights.”
In his email, Benjamin made a plea to the community and City staff.
“Let’s make sure that we do what we can to get through this potential arctic blast without losing a single unhoused community member to the elements,” Benjamin wrote.