Emergency warming shelters in Boulder and Longmont sheltered scores of unhoused people during the arctic cold front that rolled into the Front Range last weekend, bringing snow, ice and subzero temperatures to the region.

During weather that cold, access to indoor shelter can make the difference between life and death.

Initial figures and reports from Boulder show nearly 100 people used the warming shelter at the East Boulder Community Center, 5660 Sioux Drive, during the most frigid days and nights of the past week.

The warming shelter acted as an overflow for the All Roads Shelter, formerly Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, and was open from mid-day Saturday to mid-day Tuesday. Free transportation was offered between All Roads and the East Boulder Community Center during that time.

Kurt Firnhaber, director of Boulder Housing and Human Services, said the warming shelter in Boulder served 90 individuals, some of whom may have visited more than once, in the days and nights it was open. On its busiest nights, nearly 70 people stayed overnight.

In Longmont, Homeless Outreach Providing Encouragement (HOPE) opened both of its shelters, according to shelter director Laura Denton. HOPE uses two locations, Messiah Lutheran Church at 1335 Francis St. and Journey Church at 2000 Pike Road, to shelter unhoused residents. Messiah is usually used on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, while Journey is used on Sunday through Wednesday nights.

Each shelter location can normally accommodate up to 49 people. But using both shelters, HOPE was able to shelter 79 individuals from Friday evening to Tuesday morning. Denton said 72 people stayed at the HOPE shelters on their busiest night.

At the Boulder emergency shelter, Firnhaber said things generally ran smoothly, and so far, he’s been hearing positive feedback from people who stayed there.

Firnhaber attributes some of that success to staffers being well-prepared and trained for this occasion. Last summer, city and county workers participated in a training on how to run such an emergency shelter. And the shelter set up this past week was a coordinated effort between nearly two dozen staffers, including behavioral health workers, peer support specialists and staffers from All Roads.

But Firnhaber said he believes there was also some luck involved.

“Things can go wrong, and they didn’t. It wasn’t necessarily things that we did (that were) good or bad,” he said.

The shelter was set up mainly in the ballrooms at the East Age Well Center. Activities such as games and puzzles were available for the people staying there, which Firnhaber said contributed to a “positive environment” where no one would get too bored or restless. In the evenings, shelter residents were allowed to shower in the recreation center after it closed.

Emergency warming shelters offer a valuable service, but they are not a permanent solution to homelessness in Boulder or elsewhere. City officials say it is not easy to set up an emergency shelter because of how many staffers and resources are required, so the city only does so under extreme conditions. This cold snap was only the fourth time the city has set up an emergency shelter.

And the ongoing sheltering options Boulder does have are not enough to accommodate everyone living on the streets. All Roads spokesperson Andy Schultheiss said the shelter still frequently turns people away due to reaching capacity, even though its overnight capacity increased from 160 to 180 beds last year.

Schultheiss said on all three nights when the emergency warming shelter was open in the past week, All Roads reached its capacity and had to turn people away. Many of those people might have had to sleep outside if not for the warming shelter.

“There are way more people who are homeless in Boulder than we have the capacity to shelter, one way or the other. It’s a tragedy, and it’s happening all over the country, obviously,” he said.

“There’s no perfect solution.”