The town of Carbondale has no plans to reopen its temporary shelters this winter.
Last fall, town staff discovered over 80 new immigrants, mostly from Venezuela, living under a bridge near the junction of Highway 82 and 133. Carbondale helped provide shelter and food for many of these individuals until April 1 of this year with support from Colorado’s Department of Local Affairs.
At Carbondale’s Board of Trustees retreat on Aug. 6, Town Manager Lauren Gister said there aren’t nearly as many people living at the bridge as there were last November, and most of those remaining have resources to combat tough winter conditions.
“I don't think they're going to let themselves freeze to death,” Gister said. “I think they'll figure something else out. They pretty much all have vehicles or access to somebody with a vehicle.”
At the town of Carbondale’s work session on Aug. 20, Mayor Ben Bohmfalk said the town tried to coordinate an ongoing response with other regional governments, but they didn’t have much luck.
“We’ve tried really hard to build a coalition around that and get other people engaged and nobody is, other than us,” Bohmfalk said. “It doesn’t feel like this winter is going to look like last winter, but who knows when November comes.”
Pitkin County sent 50 cots to Carbondale’s temporary shelters last year, but Garfield County became a non-sanctuary county in March after Bohmfalk and other town representatives approached commissioners for financial support for shelter operations.
Latino advocacy nonprofit Voces Unidas helped the town of Carbondale launch its initial response to serve dozens of unhoused immigrants in November 2023 by organizing legal clinics and dedicating staff time to support newcomers. President and CEO Alex Sanchez was not surprised that shelter services have sunset.
In a phone call with Aspen Public Radio on Sept. 5, Sanchez said the town of Carbondale can’t succeed as the only municipality attempting to address the issue.
“We as a region have a choice,” Sanchez said. “We're either going to help provide the infrastructure and the support that humans need to get on their feet and find housing, a job and then thrive, or we're going to be dealing with a homelessness problem that has been unprecedented.”
Carbondale’s Board of Trustees isn’t clear on how to move forward with providing services, but Town Trustee Ross Kribbs said they have a responsibility to continue discussing its response to people experiencing homelessness.
“I don’t think that we should decide not to talk about it, especially if at some point we see some inkling that it’s going to be an issue,” Kribbs said. “I would hate to take our eye off the ball and get surprised again. It’d be hard to explain that one.”
Public safety concerns
Staff for the town of Carbondale expressed some concern that reopening winter shelters could be dangerous, given recent criminal activity among new immigrants near the bridge.
Carbondale’s Chief of Police Kirk Wilson said there have been several arrests in the area on a variety of charges, including minor things such as disturbances and trespassing, and more serious charges, like domestic violence.
Town Manager Gister said many of the people who arrived in Carbondale from South America last fall have either moved out of the Roaring Fork Valley, found housing locally, or are living out of their cars.
But at Carbondale’s August board retreat, she said the town has run into issues trying to work with those who are still living at the bridge.
“When we do offer them things, there's a lot of abuse,” Gister said. “They're not communicating with us. They don't want to communicate with us.”
She added that she doesn’t want to concern the public and there are a lot of good people in the group. Voces Unidas’ Alex Sanchez echoed this sentiment.
“That does not mean that the entire community of any community should be represented by those few individuals,” Sanchez said. “That's why we have police and we need those interventions.”
He said by investing in services and infrastructure for unhoused individuals, towns can avoid some of these issues.
“It will become extremely complex and very costly until society realizes that we need interventions,” Sanchez said. “Humans will seek shelter. Humans will seek food. … We will then have to deal with drug abuse and petty crime, and those petty crimes can turn into other things, and those things turn into more incarceration.
