THORNTON — Colorado’s sixth-largest city will soon provide troubled youth a much-needed respite from the trials of the streets with a new 10-bed shelter for homeless and displaced teens — Adams County’s first.
“When a child is on the streets, they are more likely to commit a crime or become a victim,” Brian Mason, district attorney for the 17th Judicial District, said Thursday. “It’s devastating to me to see a young person that if we had helped them in their time of need would never have gotten involved with the criminal justice system.”
Mason spoke to reporters in the building on Lipan Street in Thornton that used to be home to Arapahoe House, a drug and alcohol abuse facility that closed six years ago. It was purchased by Community Reach Center, a behavioral health services organization, in 2018 for $3.6 million.
Community Reach Center will manage the shelter, which is expected to open in the next few months and serve youth ages 12 to 18. Last week, the Thornton City Council approved the re-zoning of the property to allow the facility.
It will buttress similar efforts to provide shelter to youth in other nearby communities, like Urban Peak in Denver or TGTHR in Boulder.
Thornton Police Chief Terrence Gordon said the 10 beds at the center likely won’t be enough to address the needs of a population that has only increased in size in recent years. But he called it “a start.”
“We have a habit in our country of setting up the safety nets way down the road,” the chief said Thursday. “(Right now) we make a bunch of phone calls until we find someone who will take the kid. This was a gaping hole in Adams County.”
While it’s difficult to ascertain how many homeless youth there are in Adams County at any given time, the Point-in-Time survey conducted by the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative in January revealed that 948 unsheltered people were in the county. It found that those 17 and younger made up 6.1% of that total — or approximately 58 children.
The center on Lipan Street is not designed to serve the chronically homeless but rather kids who may have been booted from their homes or who decided to run away to escape confrontation and conflict.
“We have families that get overwhelmed,” Mason said. “And some families get overwhelmed with their children.”
Stays at the center will typically run from a few days to a maximum of three weeks — enough time hopefully to pave the way for family reunifications to occur.
“Sometimes the reunifications happen quickly and sometimes they take longer,” said Rick Doucet, CEO of Community Reach Center.
The shelter features dorm-style rooms, a common area with a TV, puzzles and board games, and a cafeteria where kids can get three meals a day. There will be services like counseling and tutoring for the children who need it. Doucet said it’s not a detention facility and those staying there will be permitted to come and go as they need.
The shelter is being funded by a one-year, $1.2 million grant from the American Recovery Act. Gordon, the police chief, said there will be a need to procure more money to keep the center going into the future.
“I really think that a year from now, we will be talking about expanding,” he said.
