GREELEY, Colo. — Neighbors are great, until they borrow something.
Remember when Aurora city leaders got mad about the city of Denver using an Aurora hotel to shelter people from Denver?
It is now happening up north.
City of Evans leaders are not happy with the city of Greeley for not giving a heads up before moving people off the streets in Greeley into temporary shelters in Evans.
“We have not had a lot of conversations as of this point,” Evans City Manager Cody Sims said. “There's a lot I need to know, quite frankly.”
Sims found out that Greeley was using Evans hotels to shelter those experiencing homelessness last month.
“Communication. Communication’s key,” Sims said. “The city of Evans and the city of Greeley, we share a northern border, so we have to be able to communicate with one another on significant issues such as this.”
“I should have talked to him first,” Greeley Assistant City Manager Juliana Kitten said.
Kitten is in charge of homeless and housing solutions for the city of Greeley.
“It was not like, ‘Oh, we should take all of our homeless people and temporarily put them in Evans hotels.’ That was never the thought. The thought was, these are hotels that are open and available, and we have a sense of great urgency,” Kitten said.
Since May 2023, the city of Greeley has used five hotels in Greeley to house 13 people experiencing homelessness until permanent shelter could be identified, and four hotels in Evans to house 69 people.
“I've got to be able to keep my city council updated on what's going on. And right now, there's too many ‘I don't know's’ to be able to answer questions,” Sims said.
“We're not putting any more people into the hotels in Evans until we can have a conversation, a face-to-face, and develop a better plan,” Kitten said.
That conversation will happen on March 19.
There are currently eight people who are experiencing homelessness that are being temporarily sheltered in Evans hotels, including the Heritage Inn off U.S. 85.
“I'm basically a transition point. If they can follow my rules and follow [Greeley’s] rules, they get put into a permanent housing,” hotel manager Julie Shelanie said. “They can't be rowdy, and they can’t be causing trouble, and no drugs.”
Shelanie said that the city came to her and asked if she would be willing to temporarily house those experiencing homelessness. And she said yes because it hit close to home.
“Compassion, because I've been close to homeless myself,” Shelanie said.
She has a name plate near the front desk with her unofficial title, “The Boss Bitch.”
“I am Southern and I'm German. I don’t play,” Shelanie said.
Why Evans if Greeley has hotel capacity?
“I definitely know that the hotels in Evans have been more open to us working with them,” Kitten said. “I would say that the three hotels in Evans, certainly, have larger capacity, but I also don't think that's necessarily the only factor.”
She said that Greeley has helped 81 people get into permanent housing, and that would be the goal of anyone housed temporarily in Evans shelters.
“The answer is permanent housing, with support for this population,” Kitten said. “Success is successfully maintaining housing, not returning back to homelessness, but also, the real goal is social integration.”
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