Hansen Wendlandt, Nederland.   The Nederland Interagency Council for Homeless Encampments (NICHE) has been working to foster public health and safety through care for the vulnerable, stewardship of natural resources and respect for the needs of the mountain community. NICHE is a collaborative of several organizations that share responsibilities for the issues surrounding homeless camping, namely the Nederland Community Church, Boulder-based human services groups, various law enforcement agencies, the US Forest Service, town and county government, the Ned Fire Department and many more.

This Summer, NICHE started a pilot program to hire an outreach worker, our Summer Homeless Advocate for Residential Encampments (SHARE).

That program has three goals: first, we want to connect people experiencing homelessness who choose to camp on public lands to existing resources, particularly through the government and non-profit programs in Boulder; second, we want to educate the homeless community on appropriate camping practices, to keep themselves and the mountain community safer; third, as the country’s first known study that analyzes strategies and outcomes of human service to homeless campers on public lands, we intend to learn best practices that we can share with other communities that face similar situations and problems.

The initial grant from the Boulder County Community Services Department went to the Nederland Community Presbyterian Church, which has guided NICHE for four years. We hired Claudia Schauffler as our homeless advocate, and she has done a great job!

Claudia and Community Church Pastor Hansen Wendlandt were able to meet 212 campers this summer, most of them while she walked through the main camping areas. Of those campers, some were recreational campers who live comfortably in homes along the Front Range, and about 175 were residing in the forest due to some degree of homelessness (or home-free, transient, travelers, etc). Claudia was able to connect 64 of those people in need to various services, such as medical support and medication, mental health, job training and referrals, childcare and assistance, food, clothing, pet help, transportation, IDs and transitional housing.

Of those 212 campers we met, we shared a message of fire safety with 100 percent. It’s impossible to say how many illegal campfires were prevented by this program, but it certainly helped to have a non-uniformed person, who developed great trust with the homeless community there to express the importance of fire safety. We also were able to educate approximately 170 campers about wildlife interactions and waste management, which is part of the reason CO Parks & Wildlife had a much smoother summer here and why our camping grounds are so much cleaner.

Other reasons why our summer was so improved with regard to homelessness, are that Boulder agencies opened up 210 beds for people in need. As well, the USFS and County Sheriff’s Office partnered to clean up 1240 bags of trash from hot spots, many of which came from the aforementioned recreational campers who left their trash as they drove trailers back to their suburban homes, and many of which came from even less desirable weekend warriors who just come up to party for a weekend. The Community Church and County Commissioners’ Office helped with another nearly 100 bags of trash.

Our law enforcement agencies contributed so much by continuing to make a concerted effort to increase their presence in the camping grounds, rather than only going when called for punitive action. In addition to two long-serving mountain deputies, the Sheriff’s Office also assigned a third officer for our area, who made his presence felt immediately in the campgrounds, not through power, but by kindly helping a homeless couple move their tent to a legal spot.

Moreover, you the community have been more vigilant about calling in fires, so that our great Fire Department can get there fast. Thanks also to the USFS, who have re-engineered campsites for safety and installed dozens of new signs to clarify the fact of the fire ban, which helped a lot.
Sure, the weather was a positive factor for us, and the lack of a large home-free gathering was beneficial. But I want to make sure that we are also aware of the great work that Claudia, our homeless advocate, has done to help the lives of vulnerable people and thereby to help protect our neighborhood.

NICHE will be applying for grants to continue this program and to do it better in coming years. If you have any suggestions for how our partner agencies can work on this issue, or any questions about our data or stories, please reach out to me at ncpcpastor@gmail.com. If you want to get involved personally, please reach out to Joe Hall with Peak to Peak Forest Watch about becoming trained for his group’s mission; and watch for the next USFS Stewardship Day, where you can help remove inappropriate fire rings.

(Originally published in the November 15, 2018, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)