Six months after the City of Denver awarded the Colorado Safe Parking Initiative $600,000 to expand, the future of the anti-homelessness program is uncertain.
People who don't have a place to stay warm often end up sleeping in their cars, but finding a safe place to park is tough. That's where the Colorado Safe Parking Initiative comes in. Most of the people it serves are newly homeless, and while half have jobs, they can't afford to rent or buy a permanent place to stay. Later, unique audio guides greet visitors at the Denver Art Museum.
University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work (GSSW) doctoral student Sierra Coye was on her front porch decompressing after class earlier this fall when a mother and her two young children walked by and in Spanish asked where the school was located. Coye decided to walk them to the nearby elementary school. Those steps turned out to be the first in a long journey walking beside a migrant family that had recently arrived in Denver. The family Alejandra and her children, ages 9 and 5 (names and other identifying information have been changed or omitted to protect the family’s privacy) had left the shelter at 7:30 that morning and had been walking all day searching for the elementary school where they hoped to enroll. Just days before, they had arrived by bus from the southern U.S. border in Texas following a months-long journey on foot fleeing violence in their South American home country. The kids were hungry, so Coye invited the family to join her for dinner. “That’s