Local Buzz: New Boulder group focuses on community, opportunity for homeless and working poor

Published April 2009 Vol. 13 Issue 3

BOULDER – Looking at community as a means of making opportunity and preserving life, a new nonprofit is taking roots in Boulder, working to fill the gaps in services for the homeless and working poor.

Directed by Jim Budd, a formerly homeless person, BOHO, or Boulder Outreach for Homeless Overflow, is working with local agencies to explore and provide routes out of homelessness. In addition, Budd wants to ensure that no one has to sleep outside when the elements are life-threatening.

“One fundamental purpose of community is to preserve life,” Budd says, explaining that despite current efforts to shelter and otherwise assist the homeless, disabled people sleep on the ground every night in Boulder. “All people are vulnerable to the earth’s elements,” he says.

Budd also wants to develop a common market for goods, services and other commerce—including jobs. He says this is one way to create more paths out of homelessness for the people who are able to take them.
For more information on BOHO, contact Budd at 720-413-2673.

—Tara Flanagan