![]() ![]() “We hear a lot of their complaints, but it’s very hard for them to make a complaint with the city. Residents of motels tend to shy away from rocking their close-to-sinking boat by filing formal complaints implicating motel owners, Davidson says. “I use that blanket,” Speak says, pointing to a weathered, nylon sleeping bag folded neatly across a mattress. “He gets cold really, really easily,” says Donna Vigil, head desk clerk at the Mesa, who recently provided Speak with a plug-in heater and says his baseboard heater works fine. It’s cold because the motel operators turn the heat off during the day. The clerks at the 47-unit motel tell him not to turn on the microwave when the baseboard heater is on. He pays $12 each time he wants his room cleaned. The 59-year-old retired machinist gets a government disability check every month to help pay his $550 monthly rent. Speak has spent four years in Room 101 at the Mesa Motor Inn. “So cold,” he says, shaking through a violent cough that almost hinders his ability to connect a lighter with a cigarette. Snow blows across the cracked linoleum floor, and he shrinks deeper into a filthy windbreaker. The baseboard heater in Speak’s room is ice-cold. “I freeze in here,” he says, shivering in his sparse, cinderblocked motel room. Speak’s breath turns frosty in his bedroom. They found Frank Speak there, shuffling on a walker. Last week, Davidson’s group visited the Mesa Motor Inn on Lakewood’s stretch of Colfax. “Even though that number is shocking, we know there are a lot more,” says Brooke Davidson, executive director of the 9-year-old Colfax Community Network, which last year helped 2,604 Colfax motel residents with after-school programs, emergency food services and family support. The Metro Denver Homeless Initiative in January 2007 counted 10,604 homeless people in metro Denver, with a little more than 1,000 of them reporting they were staying in motels. “Mostly what we have been hearing lately is bedbugs,” says Moore, who can’t recall health issues triggering a motel closure in the 18 years he’s been on the job. That’s a “health nuisance,” says Ron Moore, manager of Aurora’s Neighborhood Support Division, which oversees living conditions for 9,000 units in Aurora, including about 300 rooms at 21 motels along Aurora’s portion of Colfax. They get calls for bedbugs, but that’s not a health hazard. A good inspection report can push the interval to five years. Health inspectors in Denver and Aurora visit older motels every two to five years. “As hard as it is to understand,” he says, “these places are actually havens.” “Between this and a burned-out car or the streets, this is the best place for them,” says Ryan Barmore, the health outreach program coordinator for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, during one of his weekly medical-services trips to motels along Colfax. Living conditions in the metro area’s oldest, cheapest motels, while deplorable by almost all standards, barely impact residents battling extreme poverty. It’s a rough life, but the motels offer a last-chance sanctuary before an even uglier life on the city sidewalks. She winces when she recalls the cockroaches, the drug dealers, the all-night yelling, the bedbugs. It’s a warm but cluttered corner unit with a kitchenette that doubles as a closet and playroom.Īfter Lackey’s husband, Jeff, lost his job at Royal Crest Dairy, the family, their dog, Stitch, and four cats rolled through three motels in a month before landing at the Sand & Sage. The Lackeys have been there three months, paying $200 a week for their room. ![]() “Here” is the Sand & Sage Motel on East Colfax Avenue, a few doors away from the Saturday’s strip club. “It’s hard times, no doubt,” says the 24-year-old Lackey. The 17-month-old twins, dressed in diapers, pull purple Mardi Gras beads through their mouths and argue over an empty milk crate. The mile-long walk is difficult without snow boots. Jewel is missing school on this snowy day. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close MenuĪs her twin toddlers holler for hugs, Sabrina Lackey collapses into the couch where her 7-year-old daughter sleeps.
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