LITTLETON, Colo. — For Stephanie Meder, executive director of Break Bread in Littleton, the work never ends.
The non-profit has been offering warm meals and community to folks in Littleton and the surrounding areas since 2017.
“We started serving about 50 meals a week, and now we serve just over 550 meals a week. So certainly, the need has grown to, you know, just much larger numbers,” said Meder.
It’s just one piece of the puzzle in preventing homelessness in Arapahoe County.
“We want to try and be kind of a pre-service, if you will, for people getting in that really serious situation,” said Meder.
The 2025 Point-In-Time (PIT) count showed that targeted prevention efforts have had significant success even as overall numbers continue to rise in Arapahoe County.
The count found 285 individuals experienced homelessness in Arapahoe County (excluding the City of Aurora), showing an 11% increase from 2024.
Despite the overall rise, data showed that the rate of growth slowed considerably from the 47.1% spike recorded between 2023 and 2024.
Digging deeper, the number of newly-homeless individuals dropped by 18 percent, and unsheltered homelessness decreased by 22 percent.
These numbers are something county officials have been working on for years.
The Arapahoe County Board of Commissioners established the Homeless Coordinating Committee (HCC) in 2021 to address the crisis of homelessness within Arapahoe County.
Local municipalities have also been putting in the work. The Englewood, Littleton, and Sheridan communities created a collaborative response to homelessness through the Tri-Cities Homelessness Initiative, which led to the recent implementation of its Homelessness Action Plan.
“We are encouraged to see that our prevention efforts and the partnerships in which we have been able to implement additional services throughout the county are making an impact in the growth,” said Arapahoe County Community Resources Director Katherine Smith.
The county said investing in solutions like rental assistance, short term placements, and legal aid has led to the turnaround.
This year alone, two new centers (the Tri-Cities Navigation Center and the Bridge House Ready-to-Work facility) opened their doors, with a third (Aurora Navigation Center) slated to open later this year.
“Our biggest focus is to really look at those areas in which we have seen a rise and really being able to utilize that data to address specific programmatic needs,” said Smith.
This includes finding solutions to family homelessness, which went up by 77 percent—and homelessness among seniors, up by 68 percent.
“They're like, ‘You know, I'm about to lose my place to live. Do you have some place I can go?’” said Meder, “It is gut wrenching and just heartbreaking.”
It’s a difficult reminder of why the work is never finished.
“There is still a lot of work to do to further reduce our unhoused population, and we know that in the coming year, we will have additional projects that we've been working on opening,” said Smith, “That really just underscores the need for us to focus our efforts in the area of our senior population as well as families.”
