The need
Veteran homelessness here is falling, and the county is still short of the capacity that makes it fall. That is the gap we fill.
The gap
On a single January night in 2026, the Pikes Peak Continuum of Care, the regional body that coordinates federal homelessness funding and services here, counted 131 veterans experiencing homelessness in El Paso County. Forty five had no shelter of any kind. Thirty met the federal definition of chronic homelessness, which means a disabling condition and at least a year without a home, or four episodes in three years that add up to a year.
A year earlier the figure was 195. Counted veteran homelessness in this county fell 33 percent in twelve months, and chronic veteran homelessness fell 55 percent. We state that before a funder finds it, because it is the strongest thing we can say: veteran homelessness falls where transitional and supportive capacity exists.
This county lost a piece of that capacity. The Crawford House, a veteran transitional house operated for twenty two years by the Colorado Veterans Resource Coalition, closed in 2022, removing 20 veteran transitional beds. VA Grant and Per Diem is the federal program that pays community organizations a daily rate for each veteran they house in a transitional bed. The Salvation Army operates a VA Grant and Per Diem transitional program for veterans in Colorado Springs, with 60 veteran beds in its fiscal year 2027 award, and on the January 2026 count night 45 veterans had no shelter at all.
131
veterans homeless on one January night, 2026 (45 with no shelter at all)
195
additional shelter or transitional beds the county is short (2026, compared with 518 in 2025)
60
veteran beds in The Salvation Army's VA Grant and Per Diem transitional program, fiscal year 2027 award
15.6%
of El Paso County adults are veterans (85,526, nearly triple the national rate)
Pikes Peak Continuum of Care (CoC) 2025 and 2026 PIT/HIC Key Takeaways and PIT Summaries, U.S. Census ACS 2024 one-year estimates, and VA Grant and Per Diem FY 2027 Award List. PIT is the Point in Time count, the one night January count of people who are homeless. HIC is the Housing Inventory Count, the count of beds available to them. Where press coverage of these counts differs from the CoC's own release, the release governs.
The Continuum of Care states its gap as additional year round emergency shelter or transitional housing beds needed (518 for January 2025, 195 for January 2026). The gap narrowed because the count fell. That category, emergency shelter and transitional housing, is precisely what this organization adds.
The 2026 count night fell below zero degrees Fahrenheit, which drives people into shelter and suppresses unsheltered counts. Both years should be read as floors rather than precise censuses.
The weather here
The thermometer in this picture was pushing a hundred degrees on a July afternoon in Colorado Springs. The city has reached one hundred only a dozen times in its record, and the all time high is 101, but at six thousand feet the sun burns faster and dries a person out faster than the number says, and a sidewalk has no shade.
Winter is the other half. The record low here is 27 below zero, and an ordinary January night averages 18 degrees. A veteran sleeping in a car or under a bridge in this county meets both ends of that range every year.
That is what a bed and a door that locks are for.
