The facility that houses the Tri-Cities Homelessness Navigation Center and the Bridge House Ready-to-Work program will officially open to the public in April, after being delayed last year.
Following a tour of the facility on March 7, Englewood City Manager Shawn Lewis said the city is looking forward to the opening of the facility.
“We’re just so excited about the opportunity that this is going to provide Englewood and the Tri-Cities,” Lewis said. “To be able to take people out of homelessness and into a stable, living environment where they can receive job skills and navigation, caseworkers and those wraparound services will really help them get into permanent housing with successful lives ahead of them.”
On one side of the 13,150 square-foot facility, located at 4675 S. Windermere St. in Englewood, will be the Ready-to-Work program of Bridge House, a Boulder-based nonprofit that provides services for adults experiencing homelessness. That side of the building will contain 49 beds for unhoused individuals who are seeking housing placement and other services.
The Ready-to-Work (RTW) program is a year-long residential employment program designed to help people experiencing homelessness back into a full-time working and housed lifestyle, said Scott Medina, director of community relations for Bridge House.
“These trainees will live in the RTW program for, on average, a year while they work for us and are paid an hourly wage,” Medina said. “The goal is to graduate within a year’s time with a full-time job and housing, both of which we help them to get.”
On the other side of the building will be the Tri-Cities Homelessness Navigation Center, and it will contain 20 beds. Tri-Cities Homeless Initiative is an organization started by Englewood, Littleton and Sheridan to address homelessness issues in those communities.
Medina said the navigation program is designed to navigate clients to housing outcomes in a short amount of time.
“Most clients will stay there one to four weeks. A look inside the new facility at 4675 S. Windermere St. that houses the Tri Cities Homelessness Navigation Center and Bridge House Ready-to-Work program. One side of the building contains the Navigation Center, which will house up to 20 people on a temporary basis. Photo by Elisabeth Slay
as they work with case managers to meet specific goals and housing,” Medina said. “This is a completely separate program from RTW.”
Medina said the client selection process for RTW requires an application and initial internship to see if someone is a good fit for the program.
“If they are an appropriate candidate for the program, they will be accepted,” Medina said. “If it’s not a good fit, we will refer them to other resources that are better suited.”
Medina said the selection process for the navigation side of the faculty will be more open-ended, since it is shorter term with a higher rotation of clients.
The facility was redesigned in 2024 with a completion goal aimed for the end of that year. The project was delayed due to a utility replacement and was originally supposed to open in Fall of 2023.
Funding for the project comes from many places, including the federal government, the State of Colorado, Arapahoe County, and the cities of Englewood, Littleton and Sheridan, as well as philanthropic foundations.
“As a key component of the workforce development strategy in the Tri-Cities Homelessness Plan of Action, the Ready-to-Work program aims to help approximately 34 people transition out of homelessness each year, based on the success of similar programs in Boulder and Aurora,” said Tim Dodd, Englewood’s deputy city manager.
The project began in 2020 after Englewood, Littleton and Sheridan worked to develop the Tri-Cities Homelessness Plan of Action.
Through a survey of those experiencing homelessness and stakeholders, the cities were able to determine four themes that needed to be addressed. They are: governance model, family system, chronic individual system and workforce development.
The cities then worked with Bridge House to conduct a study to determine if the organization’s Ready-to-Work program would be feasible in their communities.
The Tri-Cities Homelessness Action Plan was crafted to ease the burden of homelessness throughout the Tri-Cities community.
Clients can access the Ready-to-Work program through referrals, and the Navigation Center will provide walk-in services.
For more information on the plan and its projects, visit tricitieshomeless.com.