Even as the global pandemic weakens, the ground-breaking COVID-19 Recovery Center in Boulder remains open with help from the city of Longmont.
The City Council earlier this month agreed once again to let the COVID-19 Recovery Center, or CRC, use a van donated by Longmont to transport homeless people to its facility at Mount Calvary Lutheran, 3485 Stanford Court in Boulder. Once there, the CRC provides a safe place for people experiencing homelessness to temporarily isolate or quarantine due to COVID-19, a city staff report to the city council states.
Longmont covers maintenance and insurance costs for the van while Boulder County will be responsible for all damages to the van as well as other supplemental insurance for the county’s staff, according to a city staff report to the city council.
So far, the CRC has served 470 people who are homeless and reported symptoms of COVID-19, Heidi Grove, systems manager for Homeless Solutions for Boulder County, said via email.
The CRC will remain open at least until the end of the month. After that, the facility’s future depends on finding from Boulder County Public Health, Grove said.
“Public Health has traditionally set the following parameters: 14 days with 0 clients and a decline in positivity rates during regular testing,” Grove said. “Public Health is currently reviewing this and will be making recommendations by the end of March 2022.”
CRC services include a bed and space to recover, three meals a day, over the counter medication to manage COVID-19, access to staff 24/7 and connection to services if needed for post recovery, Grove said.
Individuals can also get help through Medical Reserve Corps for symptom checks and telehealth is provided by Boulder’s CLINICA family health and Mental Health Partners, Grove said. CRC residents are offered TV, books and games during quarantine time, she said.
The cities of Longmont and Boulder, and Boulder County, agreed to help operate the CRC when it opened in March 2020 as the pandemic swept the country. The CRC was one of the first programs in the nation to create a non-medical space for individuals experiencing homelessness…” according to the CRC website.
In its first 15 months of operation, the facility served 306 people. During that time, Boulder County homeless shelters saw significantly lower rates of COVID-19 than other communities and had no reported COVID-19 death rates in its unhoused population, the website states.
When the CRC first opened, Longmont provided a van to take residents needing CRC services to the facility in Boulder, according to the staff report. Longmont agreed in early 2021, to use its van to transport Boulder homeless to the CRC when a van donated by a nonprofit was no longer available, the staff report states.
The CRC closed its operations in June 2021 when COVID-19 numbers declined. It reopened again in November 2021 after a resurgence of COVID cases. Longmont, again, provided the same van from its fleet to support the CRC, the staff report states.
The current agreement to keep the van rolling extends through the end of June 2022.
The CRC has helped Longmont’s homeless recover from COVID-19, especially this past fall when the virus rebounded in a big way, said Alice Sueltenfuss, executive director of Homeless Outreach Providing Encouragement, or HOPE.
“This past fall, we had to be very strict with the mask mandate as many folks were getting sick, staff and clients,” Sueltenfuss said via email. “Thankfully, the COVID Recovery Center was there when we had a few positive rapid tests. Boulder County Public Health was there to advise shelters weekly.”
“We learned how to protect ourselves and our clients,” she said.
