Matthew 9:9-13

My mid-week reflection this week, as I meditate on Jesus’ concern for us to have mercy over any performances of our faith or offerings we can give in church, is what I am planning to share with Lakewood’s Planning Commission when they meet today, Wednesday June 3, to vote on the future of the Lakewood Navigation Center.

“One thing that is clear to me tonight, and in my observation of the conversation beforehand, is the overwhelming support by the public for 8000 W Colfax to serve as a fully functioning, 365 days a year, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day transitional housing operation with at least 100 beds that can be made available to people who have hit rock bottom.

The Navigation Center aligns with our comprehensive plan, and its location in a neighborhood I both live and work in, I might add, as the pastor of the United Methodist church just three blocks away, is exactly the place where transitional housing should be. We have an opportunity to be a beacon of compassion and hope in the Denver metro as the city who managed to open Jefferson County’s first fully functioning low threshold homeless shelter. All of these points have been well established, and they ought to be celebrated.

We are here to discuss the assignment of a special-use permit, an otherwise boring conversation that doesn’t normally invite this much public engagement. But this conversation tonight isn’t about whether a cell phone tower will be attached to the building or what kind of automotive business this facility, surrounded by repair and auto body shops, will be. Instead, it is about something deeper, and more urgently relevant. Tonight’s conversation is truly about our shared humanity.

This conversation is about our neighbors who struggle to be recognized as neighbors, who struggle to get enough sleep to function, who struggle to fight their addiction because they have no consistent and meaningful access to safety or shelter or any other of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, who struggle so much more than almost all of us here do because for them every meal, every moment of quiet, every night of sleep, every moment of dignity, every second of comfort is earned through mountains of effort we often don’t think twice about for ourselves.

This conversation is about insisting that it is possible for people who find themselves in this situation to have hope in the possibility that there is a way out. Honorable commissioners, there is no technical argument on the basis of how special-use permits are assigned to properties that can be reasonably made against this property. The requisite standards outlined in our zoning code have been met. And most importantly, transitional housing will not substantially inhibit the use or development of any of the adjacent properties to 8000 W Colfax.

I specifically know that is true because whether or not the Lakewood Navigation Center operates as transitional housing, homelessness has been the status quo among the businesses along 14th Ave, including my church, for at least a decade if not more. Being a good neighbor is a moral standard and a norm we should strive for. It is a standard I believe wholeheartedly that Volunteers of America can meet. But it is not required by law, nor is it germane to the specific conversation about this special-use permit. It is a subjective and relative standard. And it has to apply to more than the business owning or property owning neighbors. Because people experiencing homelessness are our neighbors, too.

I live here, and I work here. I have seen less of the behaviors that the vast minority of folks who are standing up against this special-use permit are pointing out since the establishment of The Navigation Center first operated by RecoveryWorks and now operated by VOA. I would offer to my frustrated neighbors that the visibility of human suffering that makes business difficult for you here has always been here, and the Lakewood Navigation Center has the potential to change that status quo in radical ways more effectively than our normal modus operandi of shuffling people to camp elsewhere across Wadsworth until they ultimately make their way back here.

This place is not a shelter. It is a home for our neighbors. People will live here, not stay here. People will be a part of the community here, not a presence that is tolerated or cleaned up after. The stories that matter here are not the items of trash or irrelevant instances of people desperately dealing with a lack of access to a bathroom. The stories that matter here are the lives that can turn away from the hopelessness of poverty and homelessness and turn toward wholeness, recovery, and dignity. 

This is how we make the neighborhood off of 14th Ave, full of people who are in need and full of people who want to help, better. Thank you.”