No correlation between weed, homelessness, says DU scholar
Those coming to Colorado from out-of-state who are homeless remains stable, according to data.
The long-time suspicion that increased homelessness in Colorado is due to legalized recreational marijuana isn’t supported by the data.
Data collected in recent years for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless Point In Time report shows that those who claim to be homeless in the state that are transplants from outside of Colorado has remained relatively stable, and has even decreased in recent years for Denver.
“The data does not support correlation,” said Donald Burnes, a scholar-in-residence at the University of Denver, who presented on the topic of marijuana and homelessness Wednesday at Colorado State University-Pueblo.
Burnes, who has spent much of his career in educational research, is developing the Burnes Institute, a nonprofit organization that conducts research regarding Colorado homelessness. It’s the first of its kind in the nation, according to Burnes.
The most accurate data is from the Denver-metro area, Burnes said. A state balance tends to get skewed.
In 2012, of the 5,648 total homeless in metro Denver, 764 were from out of state — about 13 percent.
In 2016, the number of total homeless had increased to 6,004, but the out of state homeless population dropped to 606 people — 10.1 percent.
The remarks from Burnes come as contradiction to common narratives often repeated in Pueblo County by homeless advocates.
Posada, a Pueblo support organization for homeless, said in 2016 it served nearly 8,000 homeless individuals, a 600-person increase from the year prior.
The PIT report only puts the number of people in emergency shelters at 204 people. 25 are chronically homeless, according to the report. And 14 veterans experience homelessness.
But capturing accurate data on homelessness can be difficult, and the writers of the report note that.
“First, due to the transient nature of the population and the large geographic area of the Balance of State, it is extremely difficult to capture all homeless individuals and families,” the PIT report says. “Furthermore, not all homeless service providers in the Balance of State participated in the survey.”
According to the report, Posada participated in the survey, along with seven other programs in Pueblo County.
Anne Stattleman, director of Posada, has continuously put the blame on marijuana for increased homelessness.
“They generally don’t tell us it’s due to marijuana. But we do know they’ve moved here from out of state, and then it’s generally in longer conversations with case managers or down the road after we’ve housed them for a while that we find out exactly why they came here,” Stattleman told PULP in June 2015.
Stattleman has recently joined PROPuebloCO, a group dedicated to improving and promoting Pueblo, to take on the issue of ‘vagrancy,’ or those who the group say are draining resources for the homeless.
Medicaid expansion has also been to blame, Stattleman said at a recent meeting the PROPuebloCO group held. At a recent meeting, leaders of the group suggested working with legislators to establish residency requirements to receive benefits.
Rather than marijuana, Burnes cited the top three reasons for homelessness in Colorado as loss of a job, high housing costs and some kind of relationship or family break-up.
The Colorado Department of Local Affairs uses the Housing and Urban Development’s annual study to identify who is living without any housing or is residing in shelters, “and we use the Department of Education’s estimates for homeless students which identifies public school students living without housing or in temporary housing situations,” said DOLA public information officer Denise Stepto.
The definitions between each can differ, however. HUD’s definition includes unsheltered, people in shelters, people in transitional houising and people in motels.
The Department of Education includes people doubled-up and couch surfing.
So depending on the source, the national number for homeless, particularly homeless children, can differ. By HUD’s count, there are 128,000 homeless school-aged children. But the Department of Education counts 1.3 million homeless school-aged children.
