A pair of cowboy boots sit outside of a Pallet home, as the resident of the home rests inside, Nov. 17, 2021, at the Salvation Army in Aurora where 30 of these homes are located Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado 
Members of the Aurora Day Resource Center street outreach team, Jason Goertz, front, and Byron Shaw, check in on a tent that is located in a homeless camp, File photo by Philip B. Poston/Sentinel
AURORA | Cold weather is finally rolling into the Aurora region this weekend and the city is prepared to house 525 people experiencing homelessness.
Snow is predicted to begin falling in Aurora on Friday afternoon and continue through the night and into Saturday morning, according to the National Weather Service. The low temperature is forecast to be 10 degrees on Friday night and 7 degrees on Saturday night. The region could get about 6 inches of snow before an expected storm moves out Sunday.
Aurora police said they’re part of a city unit activated this weekend to ensure people without homes can find shelter from the cold or at the very least ways to survive it.
“We’ll offer them a ride to one of the city’s shelters,” Aurora Police Lt. Chris Amslers said about the city’s ACOT unit, Aurora Cold Weather Outreach Team. The project is a combined effort of Aurora Mental Health Center, Mile High Behavioral Health, Aurora Police and the Aurora Fire Department.
Amsler said the unit operates from vans or small buses, seeking out people without homes during dangerous weather, or responding to reports from residents or police.
People without homes can call 911 for help themselves, or others can call 911 to report someone they think is at risk of exposure, Amsler said.
At a temperature of 5 degrees with 30 mph winds, frostbite can set in in just 30 minutes. At minus-5 degrees with 30 mph winds, it takes just 10 minutes.
Those temperatures can be deadly for people living on the streets. According to the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, 7% of the homeless people who died in the Denver metro area this year died of environmental exposure during the coldest months of the year.
“We are always concerned about people that aren’t able to get into shelters and therefore stay outside during snowstorms,” coalition spokesperson Cathy Alderman said in an email. “It can be very dangerous, especially when there are high winds and prolonged below freezing temperatures.
Last winter, local shelter’s saw about 600 people in search of a bed, according to Lana Dalton, Aurora’s Homelessness Programs Division Manager.
As of June there were an estimated 480 homeless Aurorans in a city with no permanent shelter, though some homelessness advocates say that estimate is a significant undercount. An annual point in time count is set to occur in January.
The city normally has 365 shelter beds available, spread across a handful of temporary shelter venues. When the weather drops below 20 degrees, 160 more beds are added to that tally.
The Aurora Day Resource Center is a part of those additional beds. They’ll be open on New Years Eve and New Years Day. If that facility fills up, motel vouchers will be available, according to Bob Dorshimer, CEO of Mile High Behavioral Health.
This year the city lacks the emergency shelter it opened last year thanks to federal pandemic funds. The north Aurora warehouse served as a short-term home for about 100 people.
Lawmakers approved the site, at 3293 Oakland St., in part because social-distancing restrictions during the early days of the pandemic pushed people out of local homeless shelters and into outdoor encampments.
With the more transmissible omicron variant tearing through communities, Dalton said city staffers have talked about options in case of an outbreak in one of the city facilities. Respite motels may be available to house infectious people seeking shelter, but those plans are largely still to be determined as an outbreak has yet to occur.
Different from last winter’s inventory of space for people experiencing homeless are about five dozen beds in pallet shelters at the Salvation Army site in north Aurora. A safe parking site is also in operation at Restoration Christian Fellowship Church, though people interested in parking there need to apply through the Colorado Safe Parking Initiative’s website. About 25 heated tents are available there, too.
There is also an “unprecedented need” for toddler, children and youth sized coats, hats and gloves. “We were wiped clean this year. It’s bizarre,” said Mile High Behavioral Health CEO Robert Dorshimer.
— Photo Editor Philip B. Poston and Reporter Carina Julig contributed to this story.