Fort Collins considering Safe Parking program, offering resources to people experiencing homelessness

Fort Collins city council is considering bringing a Safe Parking program to the area.

The program would allow people experiencing homelessness to sleep in their cars overnight in designated areas.

We know housing affordability is a major concern across the community, and what we see when housing prices are high and vacancies are low is that people, especially at the lowest end of the income spectrum, oftentimes really struggle to maintain their housing or to get back into housing, said Vanessa Fenley, the citys senior housing manager.

There's just not enough assistance to really help everybody who needs it, so that's really where we've seen this idea of a Safe Parking pilot program emerge, she added.

In order to bring this program to Fort Collins, the city has to vote on different code changes, including incorporating a licensing program and making changes to the citys land use code.

Fenley said as of now, the city would have to change a total of three different ordinances.

One of the changes that council would be voting on is just incorporating that licensing program into our municipal code because our municipal code and traffic code currently prohibits sleeping in cars, explained Fenley.

We felt, as staff, as we started looking at the options of what would be the pathways that would allow a safe parking program to operate in Fort Collins felt like a licensing program would give us a little bit more ability to stay connected with those sites, a little bit more oversight into what the requirements of a license would look like, more ability to suspend or revoke a license compared to just allowing, you know, safe parking to exist anywhere," she added.

Fenley said they would then also need to align those sections of the code with this new ability for a sanctioned safe parking program.

"And then the final kind of code change relates to our land use code, and so the land use code we would need to be amended to allow this to be an allowable use in our land use code," she explained.

First United Methodist Church is one of the sites being considered for the program. Another site under consideration is Trinity Lutheran Church.

We've been pondering a possibility like this for a long time, but over the last few years, we didn't have all the answers we needed, said the Rev. Bradley Laurvick, the lead pastor with First United Methodist Church.

Once we found the right community partners with Catholic Charities and Family Housing Network, we suddenly were able to say things like, 'We know what's going to happen when it's too cold. We know we have daytime availability for shelter, for laundry, for case management,' he added.

Laurvick said the need has existed for a long time but acknowledges this isnt a permanent solution.

We do know that offering safe parking isn't enough; it's not a real solution, but we hope it'll offer a little bit more comfort as people find their real solution, he emphasized.

The idea being that they'd be with us just in the evening. During the day, they'd use nonprofit sites for case management, for basic services, all these other things, he explained.

City council was expected to vote on these code changes that would allow for the program to move forward on Nov. 3, but it has been postponed to Dec. 1.

Both Fenley and Laurvick said community feedback regarding the program has played a part in the postponement of city councils vote on code changes, which would allow the program to move forward.

Based on the community feedback, you can imagine there's, you know, a lot of folks that if this is coming to their neighborhood, they have questions. They, you know, are really curious about what it'll look like and want to really be able to understand what the intention and the operations of the program would look like. And so that's part of the reason that the vote is being pushed back to December, she stated.

Laurvick added, We aren't in control of the city process, but we did reach out to the city and say we're hearing from our neighbors this has gone too quickly, and there's a reason now it's not being voted on beginning in November, and the vote was moved to the being to December.

A program like this would not be unique to Fort Collins. Denver7 has covered several similar programs in other areas, including Longmont, Summit County, and Denver.

Some current programs in cities served as inspiration for Fort Collins.

For instance, the maximum capacity of any site we're starting and proposing seven vehicles, and that's something that Loveland started with. They started with seven vehicles, felt like that was a manageable number, and have expanded their capacity since then, said Fenley.

City and Church leaders are still working on details of the pilot program and are continuing outreach with neighborhoods, but as of now, First United Methodist Church is looking to allow up to seven cars to park overnight (7PM-7AM). Participants would apply for the program, which would require background checks and proof of vehicle registration and insurance.

After the city code changes are brought before council on Dec. 1, council is expected to have a second reading in the middle of December.