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I’ve Been Staying at the Aurora Regional Navigation Center (ARNC) Every Friday Night Through Saturday Morning, Since Late February
As the mayor of Aurora and as a member of the board for the nonprofit ARNC operator, Advanced Pathways, I’m committed to making sure that the ARNC is a model program for serving the needs of the areas homeless.
The ARNC is an incentive-based program with three separate tiers. Tier I is for those who have either just come off of the streets or have lost their housing and are newly homeless and it is austere by design. There are incentives to participate in programs to help them achieve the highest level of self-sufficiency that they are capable of achieving.
Every Friday afternoon, I leave my office for the ARNC where I meet with the men and women who are staying in Tier I. I stay overnight in the men’s’ congregate shelter sleeping on a cot. In the morning, I help set up and serve breakfast to everyone in Tier I.
The experience has enabled me to better understand their unique and complex challenges and it has helped me to see them with compassion, as individuals, and not through a lens of condescension or contempt.
Consistency is important so that they know that I will be there every Friday and as I’ve become more familiar to them, they have become more relaxed and open about talking to me about their challenges and expectations for their future.
The goal is to get them to Tier II where they are participating in addiction recovery, mental health, and job training. Participants in Tier II have semiprivate accommodations, a secure area for storing their belongings, and a bed instead of a cot to sleep on as a reward for engaging in services.
Tier III is the 255 individual rooms that were a part of the former hotel and conference center that are available as transitional housing for those who are working fulltime. Tier III is temporarily unavailable until this fall due to scheduled maintenance requirements.
I will continue to stay with those experiencing homelessness, every Friday night, until the program is everything that I believe that it can be and it is a model, not just for Colorado, but for the country.
In the photo, I went to sleep just before the lights turned off at 10:00 pm. I brought some construction ear protection because of the noise, which I seem to have adjusted to. They were too uncomfortable to wear so I no longer wear them anyway.
I give my business cards out to those staying in Tier I in case they need to contact me or send me something during the week and someone took the picture and emailed it to me.
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