Brandon Leuallen, The Business Times 

In the previous article in this ongoing series, “Is Mesa County a Magnet for Homelessness?”, The Business Times compared Point-in-Time homelessness data from Mesa, Garfield, Eagle, Pitkin, Montrose and Delta counties. Despite accounting for only about 44 percent of the combined population of those six counties, Mesa County accounted for approximately 72 percent of the homeless individuals counted during the 2025 Point-in-Time count.

That disparity prompted a follow-up interview with Grand Junction Housing Manager Ashley Chambers and a series of questions about the unhoused data gathered by the city via survey and whether it fully explains why Mesa County’s homeless population is so disproportionate compared with neighboring communities.

Those questions were at the center of the interview, which lasted more than an hour and 15 minutes, and Chambers also provided a detailed written response from the City of Grand Junction. Throughout the interview, Chambers said homelessness in Mesa County is primarily a local housing and stabilization crisis, saying a significant share of homelessness is tied to a longstanding shortage of housing and housing resources for the populations most in need.

She said she believed relatively few people experiencing homelessness came from outside the area, although she acknowledged the city did not have independently verified data quantifying that number. 

At the same time, both Chambers and the written response acknowledge that Mesa County serves as the Western Slope’s primary regional hub not only for homeless services, but also for healthcare, behavioral health, transportation, employment and other essential services, and that this likely affects who is visible and counted.

While many anecdotes circulate throughout the community, The Business Times examined the available data and found that some claims could not be independently verified, while other data sources acknowledged limitations that make definitive conclusions difficult.

Throughout the interview, The Business Times questioned Chambers about those limitations, including the reliance on self-reported information and the lack of independently verified data supporting some of the conclusions being drawn about homelessness in Mesa County.

Better counting may affect regional comparisons

One of the central themes throughout the interview and the city’s written response was that Mesa County’s homelessness numbers may appear higher than surrounding communities in part because the community has invested significantly more effort into finding and counting people experiencing homelessness.

Chambers said many surrounding counties rely primarily on Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) data and do not conduct physical outreach counts, while Mesa County also uses coordinated outreach teams, shelter counts, volunteers and its By-Name List to identify people who might otherwise go uncounted.

The city’s written response echoes that point and in a section titled “More Robust Outreach and Identification Efforts” and adds that better counting is likely a primary cause in the rapid rise in Mesa County’s numbers in recent years. It says homelessness likely increased only slightly, and much of the apparent increase in recent years reflects a more effective system response and improved identification rather than a dramatic increase in people becoming homeless.

 

Mesa County as a regional hub

As previously reported by The Business Times, HomewardBound of the Grand Valley advertises itself as the region’s only year-round emergency shelter, serving a 12-county region spanning western Colorado and eastern Utah. The availability of services in Mesa County that are unavailable in many surrounding communities, including services that accept people from outside the local area, could be one factor contributing to Mesa County’s disproportionately large share of the region’s homeless population.

The city acknowledged Grand Junction’s role as a regional-service hub and expanded on that point by adding it is a regional hub for many services not directly homeless-related that may contribute as well. The document notes Mesa County serves as the Western Slope’s regional center not only for homeless services, but also for health care, behavioral-health services, substance-use treatment, veteran services, disability services, public transportation, employment opportunities, housing navigation and emergency shelter. 

People from surrounding communities may travel to Grand Junction for medical care, court proceedings, employment, behavioral-health treatment or other essential services. They also may move to the area looking for work opportunities. If they experience housing instability while accessing those systems, they may be identified through outreach teams, health-care providers, shelters or the coordinated-entry system and ultimately be counted in Mesa County’s homeless population.

During the interview Grand Junction Communications Manager Kelsey Coleman offered one example, noting someone may come to Grand Junction for medical treatment, court proceedings or another regional service, or be released from the local jail without a home to return to. In those situations, an individual may become part of Mesa County’s homeless population even though homelessness was not the reason they initially came to the community.

 

Are Mesa County’s homeless bused in?

Although Grand Junction has not conducted a long-term regional analysis of transportation into and out of Mesa County, Chambers said studies she is familiar with suggest transportation generally occurs in both directions, resulting in relatively little net migration and a comparatively small overall effect on local homelessness numbers.

Chambers described programs that help some people leave Grand Junction when they have a verified destination, such as family, employment or an accepted treatment program.

For example, she said, following changes at HomewardBound, 21 individuals used traveler-assistance programs to relocate to verified destinations.

She also clarified the program is not a way to just ship people out of town. 

“We don’t send people anywhere,” Chambers said. “They have to have a family member, a job, like a drug treatment center that’s accepted them or something.”

 

Local ties remain the city’s primary finding

Despite acknowledging Mesa County’s regional role, Chambers emphasized the strongest finding from the city’s survey work is that the majority of respondents reported that they had lived in Mesa County before becoming homeless.

The report says, “Across both survey years, more than 80 percent of respondents reported living in the Grand Junction area at the time they became unhoused.”

The survey report also says that in 2024, approximately 68 percent reported living in Mesa County for more than one year. About 44 percent reported living in Mesa County for more than four years, and another 14 percent said they had lived here all their lives. It says that only about 16 percent reported living in Mesa County for less than one year. 

One of the themes throughout the interview was that two different questions are often treated as though they are the same.

Because many residents believe most people experiencing homelessness came from outside the community, Chambers frequently addressed that perception during the interview. 

The question examined by The Business Times was not whether the majority of people experiencing homelessness in Mesa County came from outside the area. Rather, it was why Mesa County accounts for such a disproportionate share of the region’s homeless population and what factors may contribute to that disparity.

 

Questions about survey data, how responses affects results

One of the data questions raised by The Business Times involved the ratio of chronic to non-chronic respondents in the city’s unhoused survey compared with the larger Point-in-Time count.

A chart in the report shows the 2024 survey included 68 chronically homeless respondents (76 percent) and 21 non-chronic respondents (24 percent). By comparison, the 2024 Point-in-Time count identified 470 non-chronic individuals (65 percent) and 255 chronically homeless individuals (35 percent). In other words, the survey was weighted heavily toward chronically homeless respondents, while the Point-in-Time count showed that nearly two-thirds of the overall homeless population was classified as non-chronic. That difference became significant when discussing whether survey findings could be extrapolated to the broader Point-in-Time count.

According to the report, 19 survey respondents said they came to Mesa County because they were bused here or because services were available. Of those 19 respondents, seven were classified as chronically homeless and 12 as non-chronic. Because the survey included far fewer non-chronic respondents, non-chronic individuals reported coming to Mesa County for those reasons at a proportionally higher rate. If that pattern held true across the broader homeless population, it could indicate a higher overall percentage than the survey alone suggests.

The survey also found non-chronic respondents were more likely than the survey population as a whole to report moving to Mesa County within the previous year. While 16 percent of all respondents reported living in Mesa County for less than one year, that figure increased to 36 percent among non-chronic respondents. Non-chronic respondents were also much less likely to report being lifelong Mesa County residents.

The Business Times asked whether those findings could indicate that a larger share of the overall homeless population became homeless outside Mesa County than the survey report suggests. Chambers cautioned against drawing that conclusion, saying she believed the percentage would actually likely decrease if the survey findings were expanded to the full Point-in-Time count. However, when asked what data supported that expectation, she acknowledged the City did not have data confirming it and suggested HomewardBound might have additional information.

 

Survey Limitations

The city’s written response also explains what its survey was designed to measure and what it was not.

It says the survey relied on self-reported responses and “was not intended to serve as independently verified administrative records.” The document notes responses may be affected by recall bias, misunderstandings or underrepresentation of people not reached through outreach efforts.

The response also says the survey was not intended to serve as a definitive migration study. It did not: ask whether people would have come to Mesa County if services were unavailable; specifically ask whether respondents had been referred or relocated by another community; or collect immigration or citizenship information.

The city noted that respondents may have come to Mesa County for multiple reasons, such as family, employment or services, and survey responses should not be interpreted as establishing a single cause. 

However, neither the survey report nor the city’s written response discusses the possibility of response bias or whether respondents may have felt any incentive to describe themselves as local.

 

Comparing Mesa County to other studies

During the interview, Chambers encouraged looking at research from other communities examining whether homelessness is largely homegrown.

That prompted a review of the University of California-San Francisco’s California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, which was also cited in the city’s 2023 Unhoused Needs Survey Report.  

The study found that most participants reported becoming homeless in the county where they were ultimately interviewed, but approximately 25 percent reported becoming homeless somewhere else.

More specifically, About 10 percent reported becoming homeless outside California, while another 15 percent reported becoming homeless in a different California county. Those findings generally support Chambers’ broader point that homelessness is primarily local, while also demonstrating that national and regional migration does occur and has an impact on numbers. 

Like Mesa County’s Unhoused Needs Assessment, the UCSF study relied heavily on self-reported survey and interview responses. The study does not indicate that participants’ previous locations were independently verified through administrative records.  

 

 Why PIT counts declined

For the question about why Point-in-Time counts declined not only in Mesa County, but across much of the Western Slope over the previous year as housing affordability challenges persisted across the region, the city’s response offered several possible contributing factors for why Mesa County’s numbers had gone down, but less about what contributed to the simultaneous regional decline. Especially as many counties do not perform physical counts and simply rely on Homeless Management Information System data. 

If homelessness declined simultaneously across multiple counties despite those ongoing challenges, it raises the question of what other factors beyond housing affordability may also be influencing the numbers.

Under “Why PIT Counts May Have Declined Between 2025 and 2026,” the city lists several possible factors contributing to Mesa County’s decline, including the opening of 40 permanent supportive-housing units at Mother Teresa Place, coordinated outreach before HomewardBound’s shelter closure, movement into housing and treatment programs, and people dispersing after the shelter closed, making them harder to locate during the count.

The document also notes 29 individuals experiencing homelessness died during 2025, representing a 100 percent increase compared with prior years, and cautions that declining PIT counts should not automatically be interpreted as positive outcomes.

 

Limited capacity despite more services

Another point emphasized in the city’s written response is that although Mesa County has more homeless resources than many neighboring communities, those resources are already operating near capacity.

Under the section titled “Neighbor-to-Neighbor outreach and service-awareness gaps,” the document says providers continue operating with limited capacity, extensive waiting lists and eligibility restrictions. Emergency shelter beds, permanent-supportive housing, treatment placements, housing vouchers and deeply affordable housing units are frequently fully utilized, according to the document.

While many homeless services are available to local residents and people from outside the area, Chambers said housing resources administered through the Grand Junction Housing Authority prioritize local residents, seniors and people with disabilities.

“Priority is given to locals,” Chambers said. She added, “The housing authority will tell you that it’s incredibly rare for people outside the community, because the wait list is three to four years long.” 

“Every service is so overly and highly utilized that even if a bunch of people were coming here, they’d quickly find out there’s really not services here. And they probably move on their way to somewhere else because there’s just not the resources.”

The discussion also turned to whether regional homeless migration should be studied in greater depth.

Chambers said Mesa County has not conducted a long-term migration study, because the necessary data are spread across numerous organizations. She said such a project would require years of coordination among hospitals, shelters, nonprofits and other service providers. She noted the city’s most recent unhoused-needs assessment alone cost nearly $70,000.

Instead, Chambers questioned whether those resources would be better spent improving the homelessness response.

“Would it be valuable? Maybe,” she said. “But also, are there things that we can do that have the same impact without that time and energy commitment?”

She argued the better investment would be improving collaboration among service providers, strengthening outreach, expanding housing navigation and helping people move into permanent housing more quickly.

“If we improve those systems,” she said, “we have the same result as if we spent all this time running the same data.”

Chambers also invited The Business Times to accompany the city’s housing-outreach team during future outreach efforts to interview people experiencing homelessness. The Business Times plans to continue reporting on the issue. The full list of questions and the city’s written response will be published with this article on The Business Times website.