Government officials and nonprofit workers in Fremont County have been working with Community Solutions since October 2019 as part of the Built for Zero project, a framework created by Community Solutions to end homelessness across the country.
Cañon City is located about an hour southwest of Colorado Springs and is home to several prisons, including the Colorado State Penitentiary, which provide jobs for many of the area's residents. Loaves and Fishes Ministries runs the county's only emergency homeless shelter, in Canon City, which has seventeen beds and is typically full every night.
"We applied just because we knew that we wanted to end homelessness and we knew that what we were doing wasn’t making the greatest impact. We needed help. We needed technical assistance. That’s what drove us to apply for it," says DeeDee Clement, executive director of Loaves and Fishes, which has a twenty-person staff.