While homelessness is clearly a regional issue, the City of Westminster has taken steps towards its elimination unilaterally or through one-on-one partnerships.
The city's current homelessness initiatives include:
Funding: Helping Community Partners
- Through the Human Services Board, funding is provided to the following homeless service providers and/or food banks.
- Ensure local nonprofits are notified of federal and other grant opportunities to help them build capacity.
- Partially fund detox centers with other municipalities.
- Supported several nonprofit organizations as they applied for grant opportunities from other agencies.
Connecting People to Services
- Working with Mile High United Way to ensure that resource providers offering services to those in Westminster are listed in their metro-wide database. This way, when someone needing services calls 2-1-1 or visits the 211 website the resource in closest proximity with capacity will be the first one offered.
- Created and maintain the Westy Live Better! website to simplify finding Westminster services for low-income community members.
- In 2020, the City hired a Homeless Navigator who meets with people to assist them with finding the best service agency or program for them to transition out of homelessness. Helping house more than 100 people in a little over two years, the City added another Navigator in mid-2022 to meet growing demand with an additional two being added in 2025. The Navigators work with other navigators and street outreach workers employed by most of the jurisdictions in Adams and Jefferson Counties.
Housing and temporary shelter
- Making rental assistance through CARES Act funds and HOME funds for people financially impacted by COVID-19 available at Westminster's Housing Resources page.
- Colorado Legal Services offers free tenant legal help for qualifying residents of all of Westminster, Adams County and the city and county of Broomfield. Apply online or by phone at 303-837-1313.
- Housing Needs Assessment presented to City Council on early 2024.
- Built more affordable housing throughout the city.
- Working to preserve older affordable housing by making Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds available to property owners and managers to install new windows and more energy-efficient heating and cooling systems.
- Hired a Housing Coordinator.
- Recruiting more hotels and motels to accept vouchers in Jefferson and Adams counties.
- Offering motel stays for bridge housing when a navigator client has received a housing voucher, medical respite arranged through a medical professional, and cold weather nights as part of the Adams County Severe Weather Activation Program. In 2025, there will be additional hotel rooms available for Westminster Navigator clients.
- Assigned $5.9 million received from the State of Colorado to a low-interest mortgage and down payment assistance program operated by the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority for Westminster residents to access as needed.
Surveying to Ensure We Understand the Issues and Options
- Surveyed faith-based institutions to determine what services they currently offer and what their capacity and/or interest is in future offerings.
- Participate in the national Point-in-Time count annually. The results can be found at the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative's website
- Participated in the Jefferson County Comprehensive Homeless Count in August 2019.
- The City's Homeless Navigator Program uses the Homeless Management Information System, a database shared by homeless service providers across Colorado, to ensure people experiencing homelessness in Westminster are connected and referred to the agencies best positioned to meet their needs.
Regional Collaboration
- Offer Mental Health First Aid trainings to staff; advertise publicly available ones to citizens and businesses.
- Participate in the Built for Zero Initiative, a seven-county collaboration with the Veterans' Administration to house all veterans experiencing homelessness in the Denver Metro Area.
- Collaborate with Healthy JeffCo and JeffCo Thrives to support initiatives taking pro-active approaches to reducing trauma and its effects within the community.
- Training city leadership and staff on homelessness and its many variables.
- Collaborate regionally through: The Metro Denver Homeless Initiative, One Home, the Adams County Regional Alignment on Homelessness and its workgroups, and Jefferson County Heading Home and its four workgroups.
- Attend meetings to determine how to best provide and fund shelter in both Adams and Jefferson counties.
- Westminster staff regularly meet with staff from: Almost Home, The Family Tree, Growing Home, Human Services in both counties, the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative, school districts' homeless liaisons, other municipalities and faith-based organizations in both counties to ensure we are all working together toward the common goal of ensuring homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring.