Boulder’s Feet Forward homelessness organization to merge with Haven Ridge
By Amber Carlson | acarlson@prairiemountainmedia.com
UPDATED: October 29, 2024 at 4:29 PM MDT
Two prominent Boulder homelessness advocacy nonprofits will soon be merging into one entity.
Haven Ridge, formerly known as Mother House, will absorb Feet Forward, a group that offers peer support and outreach services to unhoused people. Haven Ridge will start offering Feet Forward’s support and outreach programs effective Nov. 8. The Feet Forward organization will also be closed and formally dissolved by the end of this year.
Additionally, Feet Forward staff, including Program Manager Libby Ogletree and Peer Outreach Specialist Kyesha Willauer Gallucci, will join the team at Haven Ridge, according to a release.
“We are so excited to have Libby and the rest of her team joining our Haven Ridge family,” Lisa Sweeney-Miran, CEO of Haven Ridge, said in the release. “This really allows us to do complete wrap-around work, from first contact to peer support, sheltering, case management, employment and housing counseling, sobriety support and transitional housing. We are very proud of the work we do and of our success rates. We all want to see a world where no one has to live on the street, and meeting people where they’re at really allows us to start helping even earlier than before.”
The merger comes as pandemic-era stimulus programs, such as the American Rescue Plan Act, are sunsetting. Feet Forward received roughly $227,000 in ARPA funding last year, but that funding won’t be available for next year, Interim Executive Director Leanne Wheeler told the Daily Camera.
The $227,000 was spent on the organization’s peer support and outreach services, Wheeler said. But a key goal for that funding was to set up the organization to be able to bill Medicaid. Wheeler said the organization fell short of that goal and that leadership started talking about the organization’s future in August.
“We knew we would have to work with, partner with, an organization that already had infrastructure in place,” she said. “We ended up landing on Haven Ridge given that they already had the shelter side in place. … It was the right time and the right outfit.”
Sweeney-Miran said her organization has wanted to expand its street outreach and peer support services, and partnering with Feet Forward offers a way to do that.
“As an organization that’s committed to finding pathways to long-term success, this work matters to us a lot. We already have a family donation program and do some low-level outreach, but we have wanted to do more for some time to help meet the need at the source and get people off the street and into shelter as quickly as possible,” she said in a text message.
Haven Ridge was founded in 1982. Its flagship Mother House program provides a residential community for at-risk mothers and babies. In 2020, the organization began offering The Lodge, a shelter and transitional housing facility for women and transgender people experiencing homelessness.
Feet Forward was created in 2020 by Jennifer Livovich, who spent several years living on the streets of Boulder. The organization is best known for its Tuesday afternoon events in Central Park, near the Bandshell, where volunteers hand out food, clothing and supplies to people experiencing homelessness.
Livovich resigned suddenly last year over a dispute with the board of directors regarding the organization’s involvement in an ACLU lawsuit against the city’s camping ban. She originally was sympathetic to the lawsuit, filed in May 2022, and she agreed to add herself and Feet Forward as plaintiffs. But eventually, she began to see the lawsuit as a distraction from the mission and the daily work of the organization.
Early last year, Livovich withdrew her name from the suit, and she told the board of directors she would resign if they did not agree to also remove Feet Forward as a plaintiff. The board members overruled her, opting to move forward with the lawsuit, and she handed in her letter of resignation in May 2023.
There were signs the organization was struggling after Livovich’s departure. Many volunteers and staffers left when she did. Feet Forward appeared to pare down its services and offerings. The organization did not file essential paperwork with the Colorado Secretary of State in a timely manner. Donors were also angered that donations they made to support Livovich’s work were no longer going to her.
Some former Feet Forward board members suggested that other board members were more interested in the ACLU camping ban lawsuit than the organization’s future. And even the future of that lawsuit is in doubt: Boulder moved to dismiss the lawsuit in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this year that allowed cities to ban unhoused people from sleeping outside.
Sweeney-Miran said Feet Forward will continue as a plaintiff on the lawsuit through the end of this year, but Haven Ridge supports the aims of the lawsuit. If the lawsuit continues past the end of this year, Haven Ridge will discuss whether to become involved, she said.
Originally Published: October 29, 2024 at 3:32 PM MDT