By Lindy Browning | Contributor, Rocky Mountain Voice
Grand Junction businesses and residents in the downtown area have become fed up with the nefarious and criminal activity stemming from the Homeward Bound Day Center for the homeless, and they are directing their ire at elected officials on City Council.
Ben Van Dyke, who owns the car wash next door to the center, says that although he understands, and has compassion for, the people who are homeless, the criminal and nuisance activities that are not being managed are unsafe and are driving away his business.
“My revenue is down 30 percent because my customers tell me they feel unsafe,” he said. “I used to go down and do maintenance on my building at night so I didn’t have to shut down operations during the day. I can’t do that anymore because it is not a safe place to be at night.”
Van Dyke has seen drug deals, drug use, prostitution and assaults on almost a daily basis at the property next door. He and the other businesses routinely have to clean up piles of human feces and drug paraphernalia. They also have to call police over trespassing issues with regularity.
“We have survived the shale oil crash in the 80’s, the recession, and COVID, this is the biggest threat to my family business since the early 1960’s,” Van Dyke said.
In a workshop meeting Oct. 21, Chief of Police Matt Smith confirmed to City Council that there are a significant number of responses to the center and surrounding area. They respond to fights, criminal activity, trespassing, drug use and other public concerns regularly.
“We (the businesses in the area) just feel so exhausted and unheard. We brought our complaints to the management, Bill Wade and Chris Masters at the Homeward Bound Center, and at first he pretended to listen to us, but then nothing would change; now he doesn’t even return our calls,” Van Dyke said.
“We have been going to the City Council and asking for help for months, and they let us talk, but they do nothing to help us,” he continued. “Cody Kennedy is the only one who seems to speak for us at the meetings.”
Van Dyke wants the Center closed, and if not closed, the management of the Center must be changed, he says.
“Catholic Outreach is right there in the same area, providing the same services, and they don’t have these problems. It used to be a problem, but they have built a relationship with the people who use their facility and those people know that there are expectations for behavior while at the facility and in the neighborhood,” Van Dyke said.
He also claims to be unable to figure out where all the taxpayer’s money is going. Homeward Bound is given a $450,000 operating budget every year.
“Catholic Outreach receives $100,000 from the city and does a much better job,” Van Dyke said.
He relayed a story about an occurrence last Thursday: “An employee had a guy on the hood of her truck screaming at her. She was trapped and afraid to get out of her vehicle.”
Van Dyke added, “The saddest thing about what’s going on over there is that the people who really need the services, the most vulnerable of the homeless population, won’t come because it’s too dangerous. Those are the people we need to be helping. This is just drawing the criminal element. A lot of people who are not using the services there, are not homeless, hang around there for the drugs, to sell drugs, or for prostitution. The most vulnerable don’t want that,” Van Dyke sympathetically said .
The most shocking claim that Van Dyke made was that the people operating the center don’t even call the police over the criminal activity that takes place on their property.
Jeremy Sheetz, who is the spokesperson for the Elks Lodge on Ute Street, confirms Van Dyke’s perception of the issues relating to the center.
“It started about 6 months ago. We deal with feces around our building, trespassing, vandalism, and assaults on our customers,” he said.
Sheetz showed a police report of an incident a few weeks ago where police arrested a man for pulling a knife on a family and attempting to carjack them.
The Elks Lodge has a small area where out-of-town members can park an RV for the night, as they travel around the area.
“I had three calls recently where members wanted a refund,” Sheetz said. “They had booked multiple night stays, and after the first night called and said they wanted refunds because it was too unsafe to stay in our RV spots. They had people banging on their RV doors all night and came out in the morning to see people sleeping right outside their door.”
He says people are afraid to come to Elks’ events.
“They are driving our business away. The elderly are afraid to come to our events, our employees feel unsafe even though we hired private security to patrol the property,” Sheetz said, adding they are able to look out their window on any given day and see a half dozen people smoking drugs, and see prostitution daily.
During the meeting of Oct. 21, city staff also shared concerns. Andrea Smith told the City Council that there appears to be a lack of staff training, lack of supervision and a lack of accountability from staff and management. She also said that there doesn’t seem to be any direct resources for mental health — “that’s not happening,” she said.
Smith also says there are concerns about the location of the center. Staff feels there is a negative impact to businesses and residents, she says. Staff suggestions to City Council include: limiting hours of operations, ensuring a supervisory presence, and a temporary closure to attempt a reset on expectations.
“Is this a successful model? Beyond the output data, food, showers and that kind of thing, we are not sure this is a success. This is impacting the overall community,” she said.
City Councilman Cody Kennedy also shared concerns that, “I’ve had conversations with Masters and Wade, and I’m just not seeing any accountability.” They just keep asking him for more money, he says.
“I think they need to be closed immediately, they meet (the criteria for) our nuisance code to the letter. The services are being duplicated by Catholic Outreach,” Kennedy said.
He noted a recent assault of a CDOT worker, and that an AMTRAC employee had been bitten by a dog that belonged to one of the people that hang out at the center.
City Councilwoman Anna Stout asked how limiting the hours would help.
“When they are closed people don’t just go away,” she said. “The NIMBY’ism [Not In My Backyard] is going to happen anywhere we put these people.”
Stout defended the center, insisting she didn’t think there has been enough time and data to say it isn’t a success. She wants to exercise other options, rather than closing the center. She acknowledged there are problems, but seemed to attribute the issues to a lack of training and funding.
“I don’t think we can know if the center model is working unless we give them all the tools to succeed. I don’t know if they can, but I think if we want to find out, this gives us time to see if this model works,” she said. “Remember why we are here. We voted to close Whitman Park after someone was stabbed in the neck. This was the temporary (two-year) solution that we came up with at the time.”
City Council was unable to find a consensus on the direction forward. They have directed staff to come up with suggestions and possible recommendations about a way forward. So for now, the business owners will continue to struggle with the crime and nefarious activity in their neighborhood.