The town of Carbondale has been awarded state emergency funding it requested to help support over 100 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, who arrived in the valley over the past few months.
According to Town Manager Lauren Gister, the $223,880 grant from Colorado’s Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) can be used to reimburse the town for things like housing assistance, food, medical care, transportation, staffing and other expenses. But Gister worries this grant may not be enough to cover all of the new arrivals’ needs.
“I added all of it up, got a lot of help getting estimates and everything else and I still suspect that this number is low,” Gister told town trustees during a meeting earlier this month.
Some of the funds will help officials open two new overnight shelters in early January, including one in a community room at Carbondale’s town hall, to help new arrivals through the cold winter months.
“The town is conducting business as usual,” said Carbondale Mayor Ben Bohmfalk. “However, we are making accommodations to respond to an emergency and protect lives.”
The current shelter at the nonprofit Third Street Center is still at capacity with space for about 60 people, and the two additional shelters would each sleep about 20 more people.
Former Roaring Fork School District Superintendent Rob Stein was recently hired to help coordinate the town’s response.
He hopes that opening up a variety of smaller shelters will give people a warm, reliable place to stay for the winter, and take some of the pressure off the Third Street Center and Latino-led advocacy nonprofit Voces Unidas, which has been helping manage the current space and coordinate response efforts.
In a recent meeting with town trustees, he said it would also create a safer environment for the newcomers by separating men, women and families.
“It’s also not ideal to have that many people concentrated in one facility because the social dynamic isn’t ideal, the parking dynamic isn’t ideal, it puts a lot of impact on a single neighborhood and so forth,” Stein said.
People will now be able to use showers at both the town hall and the recreation center, and officials are working on arranging a central meal site to serve dinners.
Carbondale has also hired a security company to ensure safety at the shelters, and it’s talking with a regional nonprofit about taking over some of the management of the new shelter system.
In addition, local officials are hoping to hire people who are bilingual to help support daily response operations over the next few months.
More information about the positions will be posted on Carbondale’s Facebook and its soon-to-be-launched webpage. The page will have updates on the town’s response and how to support the effort, as well as a section for frequently asked questions.
Carbondale recently set up a fund through the Aspen Community Foundation where people can donate, in addition to the fund Voces Unidas created to support newcomers.
Donations collected from the town’s new fund will be used to support organizations working to provide shelter, food and other assistance, rather than going directly to individuals or families.
Other priorities for Carbondale officials include collaborating with regional governments and nonprofits in the valley, continuing COVID-19 testing and isolation when necessary, and helping the newcomers get Temporary Protected Status so they can work.
Representative Elizabeth Velasco of Glenwood Springs has been helping advocate for work permits and additional emergency funding at the state level for rural communities.
According to Velasco, the state’s Joint Budget Committee (JBC) approved $5 million in grant funds on Wednesday to support new migrants arriving in Colorado.
“It is essential that our state government rise to the occasion and provide emergency funding to local communities and I'm grateful to my colleagues on the JBC for doing just that,” she said.
“Even though we know that migration is not new to the community, we are getting a lot of lessons learned and building sustainable systems to support newcomers,” Velasco added.
Velasco is also working with Colorado’s Office of New Americans to create a statewide nonprofit to help manage migrant funding, including supporting communities and organizations with the grant application process.
