Marcelo Mainzer, Nederland. Niche; “a comfortable or suitable position in life or employment”.

We call Nederland, Colorado, our home, despite the environmental and often economic challenges, we choose to be up here because as our town motto says “Life Is Better Up Here”.

The hundreds of people who camp in our mountains feel that way too. It is their home and many have earned their place in our community by volunteering their time for the benefit of our town and earning the respect they deserve by showing up and helping, by working at our shops and restaurants and much more. 

NICHE, The Nederland Interagency Council for Homeless Encampments, was tasked with addressing homelessness on public lands, in partnership with local, state and federal agencies, and human service providers. They address a broad range of issues facing the camping homeless. Two local people who helped shape the programs for NICHE are Nederland Community Presbyterian Church Pastor, Rev Hansen Wendlandt and Claudia Schauffler member of the Nederland Downtown Development Authority and owner of The Shop in the Tebo Shopping Center.

“(NICHE) is a collaborative organization with shared responsibilities that foster public health and safety through care for the vulnerable, stewardship of natural resources, and respect for the needs of the mountain community,” NICHE News Fall 2019. NICHE has been such a success that Rev Wendlandt helped craft a bill titled Homeless Outreach Programs to Reduce Wildfire Risk that is making its way through the Colorado State Capitol, to promote this model. “Some of those services are as small as getting them to a veterinarian, it’s childcare, it’s birth certificates, it’s IDs, it’s job training, it’s eviction services, it’s a whole list of different things,” said Rev Wendlandt.

State Senator and Majority Leader Steven Fenberg took the lead to ensure that a bill supporting homeless outreach would be drafted with bi-partisan lead support. It has been approved by committee and will be presented formally on the first day of the Senate session. The bill’s draft language will be posted January 8, 2019. It establishes $95,000 in annual grant funding that will support groups like NICHE.

Nederland Community Presbyterian Church (NCPC) has been supporting homeless outreach programs for more than five summers with their Socks & Sandwiches program. Each Thursday at noon from June through August our homeless neighbors who camp in the woods, share meals with us. The program offers various items that help (like socks & hygiene products) and hand out trash bags so that folks can keep their campsites and the woods clean. With partners from the Forest Service, Fire Department and CO Parks and Wildlife, there is education on safe campfire management and how to deal with wildlife. NCPC is a place where homeless campers can charge their phones, fill up their water jugs and just take a break at the picnic tables.

NICHE News, fall 2019 says, “Claudia Schauffler is on her second year working as the Summer Homeless Advocate. With financial support from Boulder County Community Services, she was able to increase her hours this year, and sought out homeless campers from mid-April to mid-October. Between those extra hours, a higher homeless population, more familiarity with the community, and deeper trust, we were able to contact 318 campers on the spectrum of homelessness. Of those, we were able to connect 94 people to various services, including 10 to stable housing, 24 to public health (including an incident where we helped BoCo Public Health contain a hepatitis outbreak), 9 to mental health, 23 to child and family support, and 7 to disability support. We were able to connect 9 people to Boulder County Coordinated Entry which arranged a way for us to help people pre-register over the phone, and another 12 of whom were able to find jobs and stable housing.”

I sat down with Claudia, she told me that homeless people start by volunteering then prove their reliability and, when given a chance, at employment, do a really good job. Claudia gives people attention, she understands that, to them, their campsite is their home and she respects that. Four examples of the success of programs like NICHE are Willow and Fluffy. Willow, a disabled Marine veteran, went to Socks and Sandwiches to meet the community and see how she could help this summer. She has been a “nomad” all her life and choose to come up to Nederland, because she wanted to live up here. With the help of Ari Goodman of the Center for People with Disabilities she set up Ned Cares, a cross support group, to connect people with the kind of resources that NICHE offers. They meet every Thursday between 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. at the Nederland Library. Everyone is welcome and they have a Facebook page. Her husband, Fluffy, a metal fabricator came to Nederland because it reminds him of the Virginia mining country where he grew up where the mists rising up at dusk paint beautiful skies and he is surrounded by “critters”.

“There are still problems, but this created a real cooperative effort to find solutions,” Tom Sloan, the Undersheriff for the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office said. “On the front end, we thought this was really an issue for the Forest Service or law enforcement, but we’ve found that this is a community issue and that we all have a stake in this at some level. It’s no one agency’s job to fix it all. I think that really took a lot of pressure off the Forest Service.”

“I do think the NICHE concept is helping and would support it at the state level from a fire reduction perspective,” wrote Rick Dirr, Chief of the Nederland Fire Protection District, in a statement to the Wildfire Matters Review Committee, which approved the bill for introduction when the 2020 legislative session begins on January 4, 2020. 

(Originally published in the January 9, 2020, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)