Aug. 4—The growing homelessness problem in Greeley and Weld County may be tied largely to the brain in many cases, but it certainly isn't merely in people's heads.
It is a real problem involving real people who are dealing with complex and significant issues.
A 2023 survey by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development showed 31% of people experiencing homelessness who were surveyed reported having a serious mental illness. Statewide figures provided by the Colorado Coalition For The Homeless in 2023 show similar numbers: 27% of people experiencing homelessness reported having mental illness, including 25% in Northern Colorado.
In 2020, a small group of representatives from the city of Greeley and community stakeholders began meeting to discuss how exactly to address growing issues surrounding homelessness and affordable housing.
Those efforts have developed into a task force called for by Greeley Mayor John Gates to unite community leaders and local organizations in an effort to provide long-term solutions to the growing prevalence of people experiencing homelessness locally.
Through its crisis support center, and a variety of other services, North Range Behavioral Health in Greeley is just one entity that attempts to take on the growing homelessness issue head on, by getting to one of the primary roots of the issue.
"(Mental health) is as important as any other variable that exists that is contributing to a person's struggles or their successes," North Range clinical network director of the adult outpatient network Bennett Edgerly said. "It was as essential an element as it can be to get these people back into stable living circumstances."
The issue of homelessness, locally and nationally, is as complex and diverse as the people who experience it.
There is certainly no foolproof solution for such a complex problem.
But mental illness often lies at the heart of any population of people experiencing homelessness, and North Range's director of marketing and community outreach Micaela Sanchez shared her optimism for how Greeley's leaders, and its community, have opted not to turn and look the other way from this pressing, growing problem.
"Greeley is waking up to the fact that something needs to happen," Sanchez said. "We know that mental health and homelessness walk alongside each other. Even if we're not living with mental illness, being unhoused is a significant stressor on wellness. And that's going to impact how we interact with our world."
A head-on approach
Edgerly credits Gates' task force and assistant city manager Juliana Kitten for stepping up in the fight to combat homelessness in this area.
That effort doesn't entail pushing people experiencing homelessness out of the rest of society's eyesight.
Quite the opposite — Edgerly praised the city for addressing this issue head-on and striving to know and understand these people and the mental issues they may be facing.
"I don't want to call any one place out, but what I can say is, if you want to know if Greeley is doing a good job, go look at other communities that are similar to ours," Edgerly said. "I think you'll see we're doing a pretty amazing job. ... Other partners at the police department, the fire department, United Way — we've been coming together and actually learning about where we can all work together to support these populations."
Opening the door
Health care access can be difficult for people experiencing homelessness, as they are usually without health insurance and they lack the income to pay out of pocket. Many of these people have difficulty seeking and engaging with health care providers within their community.
To combat these challenges, North Range is identified by the state of Colorado's Behavior Health Administration as a comprehensive and essential safety net agency. As a result, North Range receives government funding to provide mental health support to people of all stages of life, even those who don't have their own means of paying for services.
This provides at least some navigation around one of the biggest roadblocks preventing people experiencing homelessness from receiving the mental health treatment they so deeply need.
It allows an entity like North Range to focus on providing personalized treatment with fewer crippling financial restraints.
"We're trying our best to identify what are the issues that contribute to a person's homelessness," Edgerly said. "We've been trying to dedicate ourselves to understanding what are the stressors, who are these people and what kind of support do we have in place to give these people the help they are looking for."
Edgerly said North Range has made an effort throughout the community to erase the misconception that your average person experiencing homelessness is that "homeless guy who's passed out with a bottle."
These are people of all ages and all sexes from a variety of backgrounds, with an assortment of reasons why they are in their current state. They also have a variety of needs unique to their own mental health.
"These individuals are hardworking people," Edgerly said. "They are hardworking people often dealing with disabilities. A significant number of them are veterans. A lot of them worked in the same industries that prop up our local community. These are people who are in the circumstances they're in because some series of things have happened."
The co-responders program
One way the city has partnered with North Range to address the mental needs of people experiencing homelessness is through the city's co-responders program.
The co-responders program creates a system in which a licensed mental health professional accompanies police officers or firefighters in an emergency situation involving a person who may be experiencing a mental health crisis. Or the first responder may receive professional behavioral health training to be better equipped to handle the situation.
Emergency calls that were likely to end in an arrest previously — at times unnecessarily burdening law enforcement resources — may now open the door for a person to receive the mental health care they desperately need.
Certainly, not everyone experiencing homelessness is likely to have the desire or knowledge to seek out local services through an organization like North Range. But, with a tool like the co-responders program, mental health professionals can provide potentially life-saving services to people in need, often in the midst of a critical mental health crisis.
"We have to see people in the community where they live," Edgerly said. "Even while having the beautiful offices that we have in our wonderful locations, and the hours that we have, there are going to be people who just aren't going to be able to come in to see us. They don't want to come in to see us, for whatever reason. They can't come in to see us, for whatever reason.
"We needed to have an infrastructure in place to support people in the community."
The co-responders program may also remove some of the burden from police officers or firefighters who aren't specifically trained to handle a person's mental health crisis as they fulfill their other responsibilities as first responders.
"These individuals, who are exceptionally good at what they do, are not licensed mental health professionals," Edgerly said. "Sometimes the right thing to do is to have a social worker sit with that person (in need of services) on a bench at Lincoln Park and have a conversation with that person. Or their job is to consult with a police officer to say, 'You know, I think this person might be experiencing a behavioral health crisis.' "
The goal is for the co-responders to extend the reach of North Range and other behavioral health centers, allowing them to provide the mental health care people need regardless of their means or desire to travel to an actual clinic.
"There's over 400 licensed clinicians at North Range," Edgerly said. "That's an incredibly large partner. We are an incredibly wonderful, gifted, talented organization, and we still can't reach everybody. And a co-responder just increases our ability to get out into the community to support more people."
A community-wide issue
There is no universal, quick fix to fully meet the diverse needs of a homeless population that commonly suffers from mental health issues. Perhaps one of the best avenues toward helping these people is by increasing community-wide awareness, Edgerly said.
Mental health professionals have worked for decades to erase the stigma tied to mental health, instead fostering a free, open discussion for all kinds of people.
Likewise, those who advocate for people experiencing homelessness have worked just as hard to make it clear that these people are far from the plague on society they have been mischaracterized as in the past.
These are real people facing real issues. And many of these issues are the same types of mental health issues millions of others face, whether those people are homeless or homed, wealthy or not.
Empowering the general public to ditch old misconceptions and be more caring and open-minded toward people experiencing homelessness — and the mental health issues many of them face — could provide a big step toward addressing the growing homeless problem within Greeley, Weld County and elsewhere.
"At North Range, we do not exist in a vacuum," Edgerly said. "Even with all of these wonderful community partners — who we are so incredibly humbled to be working with — our success is going to depend on the community at large. We need people — not just these foundational institutions that I mentioned before — but we need our neighbors to start looking at this population differently."
Of course, not everyone can be the type of expert that is a licensed mental health professional. But to further help the average person understand the complexity of mental health, North Range offers a series of free, public classes on topics ranging from mental health first aid to compassion fatigue.
"One of the challenges we have with mental health is it's hard to talk about mental health," Sanchez said. "It's not as easy of a topic to bring up at the dinner table or soccer game as is something like our hip pain. But it is just as critical and essential to our health. And if we are able to talk about that and normalize those conversations, then we become a person who can be trusted. And when people are struggling, they can reach out."
A compassionate eye — rather than a blind one — is much more likely to foster an environment in which people experiencing homelessness are provided the necessary help and assistance one might offer to a neighbor, relative or close friend, Edgerly said.
"We have to look at these people and realize that while a person may be a part of your family, they are somebody's family," Edgerly said. "We have to look at them through a supportive lens. We as a citizen population have to change the way we look at these people from a problem to people who need support."
