PUEBLO — The City of Pueblo and the mayor have received both support and pushback about the way they are trying to clean up the steel city. Last week, the city cleared out trash and homeless camps along Fountain Creek.
This clean up has brought forward many concerns over how the city is dealing with homelessness and whether or not the city is providing enough resources.
Last week the area from the 8th Street to the 4th Street bridge was cleared out by the city. But people in Pueblo are at odds, some voicing support of this while others say there needs to be more resources for unhoused individuals. It began on Tuesday, September 3rd. That is when city crews began removing trash and homeless camps along Fountain Creek.
"It was a really big mess,” Pueblo Mayor Heather Graham said.
Mayor Graham said during the four-day clean up, the city removed 450 tons of trash and towed one trailer. She said Pueblo Police did not give anyone a camping ban ticket.
During a crowded Pueblo city council meeting the following Monday night, Mayor Graham showed photos of the clean up.
"This is illegal dumping, leftover homeless encampments,” Graham said.
Some Pueblo residents gave the city their support regarding the Fountain Creek clean up.
"Thank you for what you have done with the cleanup. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again. A healthy society has to have order, has to have structure, has to have boundaries."
While other people wore purple to the Pueblo city council meeting to show solidarity with the people who were displaced.
"Does that to somebody's tent, someone's shelter that they put blood, sweat, and tears into building themselves bother you so much from your client controlled upper middle class house."
"The mayor said that this displacement by bulldozer would be fine because there were less than five people living down there. Well, your account was off by probably 50 or more."
But Mayor Graham said the city did not track how many people were displaced.
"If 50 people were displaced. I don't know where they went because they had bed space available at the mission where they could've gone and received resources and had a warm nice place to spend the night and they didn't choose to do that,” Graham said.
Graham added the Pueblo Rescue Mission had nearly 40 beds available every night they were cleaning up the Fountain Creek area.
"No unhoused individuals took these resources that have been offered time and time again by the pueblo rescue mission,” Graham said.
News5 asked the Mayor, "You're saying there are beds available but people don't necessarily want to go to those. So what is the city's role in trying to connect people to having open beds to people still sleeping on the streets?"
"I mean, when people call up here and want resources or what the mayor's office has to offer we've been displaced, we connect them to the nonprofits that we provide funding for every year,” Mayor Graham said.
She said the city has invested $16.6 million for housing, homelessness and infrastructure development since 2021. The money is broken down into two parts. The first is HUD funding from the federal government.
"When people or nonprofits are applying for it, you have to be able to provide housing or homeless resources to individuals. Posada gets funding from that. The rescue mission gets funding from that. Those are the CDBG funds,” Graham said.
The second is ARPA dollars which includes a number of grants to Pueblo nonprofits that help people experiencing homelessness.
"it's not the city directly saying, coming to the mayor's office, and we'll provide you with this tonight, but it's our partners who we provide the funding to, and those are our expectations, if we provide funding to you, is that you're you're putting it to use and helping unhoused individuals,” Graham said.
The mayor argues there are resources and non-profits for unhoused people to get help.
"I think when you talk about homeless individuals, it's really about saying, hey, there's resources. If you don't want to accept them, then you need to move along to another city,” Graham said.
Statistics show homelessness is on the rise in Pueblo. The point-in-time survey, done every other year, found that in 2021, there were 204 people in the county who were experiencing homelessness. fast forward two years to 2023, those numbers jumped to 359 people, which is a 75% spike.
Mayor Graham said going forward clean ups like the one last week at Fountain Creek will continue. She said it's part of her initiative to crack down on crime and make Pueblo a safer place to live.
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