Homeless shelter housed 107,

Without support from the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, Carl Herman isn’t certain he’d be here.

Four years ago, Herman, 60, was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer. The medical bills piled up, and soon, Herman said, he could no longer afford housing.

“Because of my sickness, I was in a really bad state,” he said, later adding, “I was just going to go away. I was going to fade away.”

He spent a few years living in his van or crashing on friends’ couches before sheltering in Longmont and ultimately reserving a consistent spot in late January at the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless. A few months later, the shelter helped him move into a permanent home in one of Boulder Housing Partners’ affordable housing locations on Portland Place, north of downtown. Herman is one of 107 people the shelter helped into housing during the past year.

Although that number was higher last year, the shelter blames this on unique circumstances due to COVID-19 and says the number remains larger than it had been in years prior. In the past two years, the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless said it accommodated 225 people, whereas 120 people were housed in the two years prior to that.

“Anytime we break the triple digits threshold, it’s a huge achievement,” Bill Rigler said.

Rigler works for Mapragency, a local public relations firm that assists the shelter.

A 2020 point-in-time survey counted 689 people experiencing homelessness in Boulder County, up from 623 in 2019. The number is not an

Timothy Hurst / Staff Photographer Carl Herman, who was previously experiencing homelessness, sits for a portrait in front of his apartment on Monday in Boulder.