Mesa County sets high standard for housing the homeless

State leaders say Mesa County is setting the standard when it comes to helping the homeless.

Today the Lieutenant Governor made a stop here to learn about the progress we've made.

It was a special celebration today at Catholic Outreach, where politicians, volunteers and the homeless sat down all together, to talk about mesa county's advances in taking care of its homeless.

Lieutenant Governor Joe Garcia, said the state of Colorado has a lot to learn from this area.

"They realize that homeless people are actually people, when you're homeless you begin to feel like your not a person," said Terri McDougald-Gunter, who’s just one of many who spent years of her life living on the streets.

But just as she gave up hope, catholic outreach stepped in.

"I felt like i didn't deserve it because I was so down on myself, still I wake up every morning i look at my apartment and I'm like wow, this is mine, I get to live here," said Terri.

Last year mesa county set a ten year goal to house the homeless and since then great strides have been made.

Lisa Strauss, VA coordinator, said "Our goals were in a 100 days to house 18 veterans and have at least half of them be chronically homeless, we were able to house 13 chronically homeless veterans."

Catholic Outreach has housed over 120 homeless veterans- and it's that kind of success that brought Lieutenant Governor Joe Garcia to Mesa County.

"Mesa County is really setting a standard. Grand Junction has made incredible strides over the last year or two in identifying the need and addressing the needs of homeless veterans, we just want to learn from Grand Junction," said Garcia. 

"If they need shelter they're given a direction to go, if they need food they have a direction to go, and the program itself is just phenomenal," said Mayor Bill Pitts.

An example Lieutenant Governor Garcia says needs to be followed in the rest of the state.

"You can really make a difference if you recognize there's an issue and then commit as a community to addressing it, you can make great strides. we need to do that as a state, and grand junction, again, we're here because it's setting a standard," said Garcia.