Homeless intervention gets boost in mid-year budget review

Published on February 26, 2025

At their Tuesday, Feb. 25 evening meeting, the Lakewood City Council completed the budget review they regularly do at the mid-way point of each fiscal year, which in Lakewood runs from July 1 to June 30.

City Finance Director Jose Gomez reported that the city is currently running a surplus of over $900,000 for the full fiscal year, which he said positions the city well financially and provides the ability to devote some resources to deal with a pressing problem in Lakewood, which is the growth in homeless encampments.

Lakewood takes a strong, dual approach,” said City Manager Thaddeus McCormack, “of carrying out intensive outreach to homeless people in the city…offering services and help in leaving the streets and getting housing…coupled with Sheriff's enforcement, if necessary, to ensure that illegal encampments are removed as quickly as possible AND ensure that laws are being followed in order to protect the quality of life for the community as a whole. Lakewood's homeless outreach team has succeeded in encouraging dozens of homeless people in our city to accept help and leave the streets over the past two years. But the challenge is great, with many homeless people being resistant to help and to trying to get off the streets.” 

To help, the city council’s Public Safety Committee, which has studied the problem, recommended that the full council use $75,000 of the current surplus to hire, on temporary contract, two part-time homeless outreach liaisons to join the city’s team. 

“The liaisons,” said McCormack, “will increase our ability to be in touch more frequently with homeless people in Lakewood, to encourage them to  accept our help of housing and services and, if not accepted, the liaisons can work with our Sheriff’s personnel to have the homeless people move if they are on property where they don’t have the right to be. Having that frequent contact with homeless people can really increase the chances of a positive outcome for the homeless person…and for our community quality of life.

“Both are worthy goals,” said McCormack, “and are really the reason we have this budget review so that the City Council can assess our financial situation mid-year and consider how we can get to work solving any urgent problems right away, as opposed to waiting until our next full budget review in June.”