It might be hard to believe, but Boulder is actually making steady strides toward addressing homelessness. Since 2017, more than 1,800 individuals have successfully exited homelessness, and every year more programs are put online to assist our community’s most vulnerable.

That is not to say that the city and the county are doing everything perfectly or that soon the tents and encampments will vanish. Rather, it is simply the truth: Considering the overwhelming complexity of the issue of homelessness — and all the issues therein — steady progress is being made.

The most recent positive step is one that has been long overdue in Boulder: A homeless day services center.

The city announced last week that it had found a location for the center, which was identified as a priority at the City Council’s 2022 retreat. A vacant one-story office building at 1844 Folsom St. will serve as the day center for the next 18 to 24 months. At that point, the location will be redeveloped into a larger day center facility with approximately 50 apartments for permanent supportive housing. (During the redevelopment, the day services center will relocate to a temporary location.)

The day services center, which will be operated through a partnership with the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, will provide a variety of crucial resources to those who need them most. Not only will it be a hub for access to services — including coordinated entry, a new peer navigation service, assistance for individuals who need documents and IDs, and, potentially mental health and primary health care — the center will also have showers and laundry facilities, a place to receive mail and make phone calls, restrooms and drinking water — all things that can, at times, be hard to access for those experiencing homelessness, and all things that every human quite simply deserves access to.

The center, of course, will not be the solution to homelessness in Boulder. It likely won’t reach the entire unhoused population in the city, and the services provided won’t meet all the needs of those it does serve. But it is another vital puzzle piece in our community’s effort at addressing our homelessness crisis.

Over the winter, Boulder received the negative glare of the national media spotlight when the main branch of the public library was forced to close after traces of methamphetamines were found in the public restrooms. At the time, this Editorial Board took the stance that the issue of substance use in the library was — more than anything else — a communitywide concern.

Obviously, the library has a responsibility to provide a safe environment for all and prevent drug use on its premises. But, at their most fundamental, libraries are public spaces. And it was this very effort to be a public space — with restrooms and drinking water and where nothing has to be purchased for an individual to gain the right to sit for hours and stay warm and dry — that led some to abuse this privilege.

The result was the temporary closure of the entire library and the more permanent closure of the library’s public restrooms.

It is our hope that a day services center can help alleviate this burden. By providing a dedicated place with these basic human amenities — warmth, water and restrooms, in addition to a plethora of other valuable resources — the center will, ideally, reduce the burden on some of Boulder’s most loved public spaces.

It also has the potential to alleviate the same burden from some businesses and restaurants that have struggled to provide humane access to facilities while juggling the risk of preventing substance use and ensuring all patrons feel safe.

The necessity for such a center, though, might be hard to recognize for neighbors of 1844 Folsom St. who are worried about any potential unintended repercussions of the opening of the new center. And it is the right of any neighbor to ask questions and demand the city and its partners ensure the center will not create any undue safety risks.

In a phone interview, Kurt Firnhaber, director of Boulder Housing and Human Services, stressed that every effort was being explored to best determine how to keep residents and neighbors safe. One measure the city is considering, according to Firnhaber, is to ban anyone from using the center who is found to be camping in the immediate area. Essentially, in order to access the day center’s services, individuals would have to respect the surrounding neighborhood. This is a sensible policy, and one that should be enacted.

This responsibility, though, goes both ways. All Boulderites and neighbors must remember that those who require the services of a day center are also members of our community. Boulder is their home, too.

Homelessness is an extremely complex issue, and the reasons that individuals wind up unhoused are myriad and complicated. The day services center is one program among many aimed at meeting people where they are and addressing their needs. As the center gets up and running we must continue to demand further work be done to assist homeless families, those in need of mental health care and substance use treatment, and everyone else who is in need and unhoused in our community.

Boulder’s homelessness crisis is not ending. The day services center is not going to magically clear the streets of tents and encampments and people. But it is another positive step in the right direction.

Boulder has a long way to go. Let’s continue supporting the projects and services that will help everyone in our community have access to the services and resources they deserve.

Gary Garrison for the Editorial Board