Authored by Ashley Chambers, Housing Manager, City of Grand Junction
Since 2023, Grand Junction, CO (pop: 65,560), has undertaken significant collaborative efforts to better understand and respond to the experiences of people who are unhoused in our community. Across nonprofits, healthcare providers, outreach teams, public agencies and residents, a shared goal emerged: to replace assumptions with real data, elevate lived experience and create coordinated strategies that match the scale of need.
Key Takeaways
- Listening to lived experience fundamentally changed the community’s understanding of homelessness. By intentionally meeting people where they were and centering lived experience alongside data, the Unhoused Survey dispelled common myths, revealed the complexity of homelessness and highlighted both challenges and strengths within the unhoused community — creating a more honest and human foundation for decision-making.
- Data and collaboration together created clarity and accountability. The Unhoused Needs Assessment and the work of nine cross-sector workgroups replaced fragmented efforts with a shared framework, common language and measurable goals. Improved data sharing, Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) participation, and coordinated entry strengthened the community’s ability to respond strategically rather than reactively.
- Sustainable solutions require systems change, not single programs. The work underscored that homelessness cannot be addressed through shelter or outreach alone. Long-term progress depends on coordinated investment in deeply affordable housing, behavioral health, outreach and prevention — supported by strong partnerships, ongoing public engagement and leadership that recognizes homelessness as a shared community responsibility.
This work resulted in three major community-driven initiatives: the Unhoused Survey, the Unhoused Needs Assessment and the development of a community-wide Unhoused Strategy & Implementation Plan. Together, these efforts have created a more accurate picture of local challenges while offering a roadmap toward meaningful, sustainable solutions.
The Unhoused Survey: Listening to Lived Experience
Recognizing the limitations of data collected solely through formal systems, the City of Grand Junction, alongside several community partners, designed a survey that met people where they were — encampments, parks, resource centers, libraries, river corridors and meal programs. Outreach teams — including the City’s Neighbor 2 Neighbor (N2N) team comprised of service providers, volunteers and people with lived experience — helped administer the survey with compassion and intentionality.
The outcome? One of the most comprehensive sets of qualitative and quantitative insights ever gathered locally. More than numbers, the survey captured voices: how long people have been in Grand Junction, the circumstances that led them experiencing homelessness, what support systems they rely on and what barriers prevent them from accessing shelter or housing.
This work helped to dispel many myths and rumors circulating in our community, and demonstrated that homelessness in Grand Junction is far from a single-issue challenge. Economic instability, lack of affordable housing, untreated health conditions, family trauma, disability and gaps in service access all intersect in complex ways. The survey also highlighted strengths — resilience, community ties, employment aspirations and the desire for stability that many respondents expressed.
The Unhoused Needs Assessment: Bringing Data into Focus
After completion of the survey, the City and many of its partners then needed to understand the community resources, availability and the system that supported those individuals. In 2023, the City completed the Unhoused Needs Assessment with JG Research, which built on the survey by compiling a wide range of data: public safety calls, Emergency Medical Systems and Fire responses, shelter usage, outreach engagements, healthcare utilization, housing inventory and service gaps. Local agencies contributed a significant number of hours to compiling and validating the information to ensure that the final document would be credible, transparent and reflective of what is happening on the ground.
Among its key findings:
- The supply of year-round low-barrier shelter beds remains insufficient for the documented need.
- A significant portion of people experiencing homelessness have disabling conditions that complicate access to traditional services.
- The shortage of affordable housing — especially units affordable to households at or below 30 percent Area Median Income (AMI) — continues to drive long-term homelessness.
- Emergency systems (EMS, Police and Fire) are spending thousands of hours annually responding to calls involving people without stable housing.
- Outreach and diversion programs, when adequately staffed, measurably reduce both system strain and human harm.
The assessment underscored what community partners already knew: the issue requires multisystem coordination, sustained investment and solutions tailored to specific population needs.
The Unhoused Strategy: A Shared Roadmap Built by Nine Workgroups
To move from understanding to action, the community formed the Mesa Collaborative for the Unhoused, a leadership collaborative with a goal to work towards system-wide community solutions. A community wide- strategic plan that included seven key strategies was formally adopted with specific action items. From these efforts, nine workgroups were formed — each focused on an essential component of the homelessness response system and specific action steps within the strategies. These groups included more than 100 participants from nonprofits, behavioral health, healthcare, public safety, housing providers, business leaders, philanthropy and people with lived expertise.
The workgroups were tasked with the implementation of action plans, outlining both immediate steps and long-term strategies. Their mandates included identifying resource gaps, recommending system improvements and determining where new partnerships or investments would have the greatest impact.
The nine workgroups and their marching orders included:
- Housing Stability: Expand access to immediate shelter, low-barrier housing and long-term pathways to permanent homes.
- Outreach and Basic Needs: Coordinate street outreach, improve consistency of engagement and increase access to hygiene, food and survival services.
- Community Resilience & Public Health: Strengthen behavioral health access, crisis response, health services and public safety/emergency response options.
- Access & Mobility: Improve coordinated approaches to transportation and mobility throughout the community.
- Data Analysis: Improve data sharing, HMIS participation and system performance measurement.
- Administrative Integration: Build clear pathways for individuals to access the right services at the right time and with the right organizations, and improve system functions between partners and services.
- Funding and Resource Stewardship: Explore and coordinate efforts to resource development, grants and community-organized efforts.
- Policy and Public Engagement: Improve communication with the public, reduce stigma, build shared understanding of the complexity of homelessness and engage with policymakers.
- People with Lived Experience Advisory Group: Provides guidance and feedback on policies, programs and services aimed at addressing homelessness, ensuring that people with lived experience are considered in the decision-making process.
Each group meets monthly, with a quarterly reconvening of all groups to review data, gather partner input and ultimately submit a set of 90-day priority steps shaped by both evidence and lived experience.
Key Wins from the Workgroups
Despite the complexity of the issue, these workgroups achieved significant progress. Some of the biggest wins include:
- A unified framework for the community’s homelessness response: For the first time, all major service providers, public agencies and partners are working from the same strategic language, goals and measurement framework.
- Creation of actionable, realistic plans: The groups generated dozens of concrete strategies — from expanding diversion programs to strengthening wraparound supports — that now serve as the backbone of the community-wide Unhoused Strategy.
- Improved data collaboration: The Data & Analytics group helped establish protocols to increase HMIS participation and strengthen outcome tracking, resulting in a more accurate picture of community needs and progress. Additionally, the community significantly improved the accuracy and utilization of its Coordinated Entry By-Name List, previously averaging around 120 names per month and now consistently averaging more than 550.
- Strengthened cross-agency relationships: Bringing partners together consistently built trust and understanding, reducing duplication of services and increasing coordination across outreach, shelter, housing and behavioral health, and increased participation of those with lived experience.
- Identification of near-term opportunities: The workgroups identified several “quick wins,” including better alignment around fire mitigation responses, expanded outreach collaboration and clearer communication structures for service providers.
Major Challenges Identified by the Working Groups
Even with strong momentum, the work also brought forward significant challenges:
- Lack of deeply affordable housing: Without more units affordable to the lowest-income households, long-term homelessness will remain difficult to address.
- Reduced capacity in Critical Stabilization Services: Ongoing funding changes and limited community resources have constrained both service capacity and staffing in critical stabilization areas. Recently, the community has also experienced reductions in key behavioral health services and a decrease in available emergency shelter beds.
- Limited year-round shelter availability: Demand continues to exceed supply, especially for low-barrier and specialized beds.
- High service system utilization: Fire, EMS and Police continue to spend large amounts of time responding to calls involving people experiencing homelessness, stretching already thin resources.
- Funding constraints: While partners are committed, sustainable funding for outreach, shelter operations and long-term housing solutions remains a challenge.
Moving Forward Together
The Unhoused Survey, Needs Assessment and nine workgroups collectively represent a turning point for Grand Junction. While it is still in its infancy, this process replaced siloed efforts with a community-wide approach rooted in data, compassion, shared responsibility and long-term planning.
The challenges ahead are real, but so is the momentum. With a unified strategy and an engaged network of partners, Grand Junction is better positioned than ever to strengthen its homelessness response system and build pathways to stability, safety and housing for all residents.
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