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Loveland City Council enacted an outdoor camping ban on May 17, but lack of an overnight shelter for displaced residents has delayed efforts to remove encampments. At Tuesday’s special meeting, city staff delivered a progress report on efforts to expand alternative shelter options and scale up enforcement.

“If there was a magic answer to all of this, all the other communities in Colorado and elsewhere would have already initiated it,” Loveland Parks and Recreation Director Elizabeth Kayl told council. “Many communities are trying to process the best they can for their communities, and I think we’re doing a really, really admirable job in tackling this very large and complex issue for the city of Loveland.”

Joining Kayl were Deputy City Manager Ron Wensing, Public Works Director Mark Jackson, and Community Partnership Office Administrator Alison Hade.

Wensing led off with a summary of enforcement efforts to date, which have been limited in scale and concentrated mainly in the King’s Crossing area. Since June 24, the city has successfully removed 18 encampments, and 21 individuals have accepted offers of alternative shelter in local motels.

Wensing explained that concerns over a potential lawsuit have loomed large in city staff’s approach to removing the encampments, and prompted the deliberate pace.

“Staff wanted to move quickly, but also adhere to the guardrails of Martin versus Boise,” he said, referring to a 2018 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit concerning that found anti-camping ordinances without alternative shelters a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Kayl and her team have been overseeing the relocations and managing the camp clean-ups, a multi-step process involving representatives from the city’s risk department, Loveland Police, Thompson Valley Emergency Management Services, SummitStone Health Partners, and private contractors.

She said that the displaced campers have been compliant with the process so far, and she hopes the relationships she and her team are building with the residents will help overcome resistance. She then credited LPD Sgt. Garrett Osilka with leading those efforts on behalf of the city.

“He coordinates most of what happens on the King’s Crossing site,” she said. “We’re very fortunate as an organization to have him.”

Kayl and her team have also been working with the Loveland Fire Rescue Authority on wildfire mitigation in the encampment areas, and will eventually conduct natural restoration with the open lands division.

As for the remaining encampments in King’s Crossing and elsewhere in the city, removal may be several weeks away. According to Wensing, cost constraints make motel rooms a transitional shelter option only, meaning the city must establish an alternative elsewhere.

Currently, the city has targeted two facilities to fill that gap.

On July 18, the Loveland Resource Center opened at 137 Lincoln Street, the former home of 137 Homeless Connection. As of Monday, it functions as a full-day resource center for individuals, with services such as laundry, mail, and storage available. On-site programming coordinators can also connect campers with housing and mental health resources.

According to Hade, the center will open as an overnight shelter in early August, with space for up to 25 people per night.

“We’re still in a place where we’re training staff and getting everything up and running,” she said. “We know that we have a lot of work to do in terms of building a robust program, and I think what’s important to know here is that our primary goal is to create a program that people want to go to. … We’re working on trying to draw people to this location, knowing that the opposite of that would have people just pick up their tents and find someplace else to camp.”

The city has also cleared the former wastewater treatment plant on South Railroad Avenue to serve as a large-scale facility that could potentially shelter up to 75 people. Used most recently for city storage, preparing the site for a new use was “very challenging,” according to Jackson.

“If you were to see this site four weeks ago, calling it a fixer upper is probably overgenerous,” he said. “The transformation that’s taken place on that site is nothing short of amazing.”

Wensing and his team sought direction from council on individual shelter options at the South Railroad Avenue site, and, after some discussion, large format tents were deemed the best option, as they are comparatively low-cost and can be delivered within 45 days. Other options were modular buildings, which are more secure than the tents, or pallet homes, which offer the most privacy, but take up to six-months to deliver and install.

Despite some earlier frustration with the pace of enforcement, council members seemed pleased with staff’s progress to date. Mayor Jacki Marsh and Councilor Dana Foley both acknowledged the scope of the undertaking as well as Kayl’s reminder about the lack of easy answers.

“While a lot of us want government to move at the speed of business, it doesn’t,” Foley said.  “There’s a lot of moving parts that are going on to this.”

He also agreed that the Boise vs. Martin guideline was “fair, and the right thing to do.”

However, a few councilors were concerned that the new facilities and expanded services might attract new campers to Loveland, and urged Wensing and his team to start collecting measurable data.

“We need to see on an ongoing basis, perhaps in the weekly report, how many campsites there are, how many we’ve cleaned up, and how many new ones,” John Fogle said.  “I’m especially interested, and I think council will be to, about move ins, how many new campsites are springing up. I think we really need to track that.”

In the meantime, Kayl and her team will continue camp removals on a weekly basis, with more enforcement action expected as overnight shelter space becomes available. According to Wensing, that will likely happen in September.

“We would like to be able to provide you a firm date, but we can’t quite yet,” he said. “We need to make sure that we have enough beds, a place and storage. So when we’re able to activate the South Railroad site, then we really can can ramp that up.”

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