Around 40 Colorado Springs residents filled tables at the downtown YMCA Tuesday evening to talk about polarization and homelessness with members of the City Council.

The town hall, hosted by Council President Lynette Crow-Iverson, President Pro Tem Brian Risley and Councilmember David Leinweber, was moderated by a team from Braver Angels, a nonprofit that seeks to increase people’s political involvement while reducing polarization.

While other town halls have focused on issues within city districts, the three at-large council members said they wanted to have broader conversations.

“Instead of just yelling at each other, we want to come together and create opportunities where we can actually dialogue, so that we can hear your concerns and bring those back, discuss them and work out the details,” Leinweber said.

The two-hour town hall focused on just two issues: polarization and homelessness. Residents discussed their views on the challenges around those issues, which organizers then summarized and shared with everyone in the room.

Organizers did not announce the limited scope before the event, which led to dozens of people who showed up to speak about data-center concerns being turned away or choosing to leave, Leinweber said.

Moderator Sandra Brownrigg said organizers chose homelessness from five issues on a survey of potential attendees because it showed a wide array of strong feelings from the public. Brownrigg said the goal was to start conversations, not try to reach any specific solutions.

“For me, that is courageous leadership to step into a place that could be painful, awkward or problematic and say, ‘No, we need to come together,'” Brownrigg said.

The topics showed splits within the room. Some residents talked about how much polarization was tied to online misinformation.

“It can also be hard to meet with people who don’t respect the humanity of certain people, and that makes it harder to bridge divides,” resident Zahria Rogers said.

A few attendees used the topic to raise issues that were otherwise absent from the town hall, such as noise concerns surrounding the Ford Amphitheater and the need for affordable housing in Colorado Springs. A Braver Angels moderator cut off one person speaking about division within city leadership to focus on broader issues with polarization.

The discussion about homelessness saw a similar range of opinion. Several residents shared experiences they or their family members had with becoming homeless and listed the reasons that people end up on the street.

At one table, Jenifer Furda took notes on the comments the other members of the small group said.

“Is it a little bit that you’re only as strong as your weakest link?” Furda asked Mark Reyner, who agreed.

“I think a lot of people work really hard to build a nice community, maintain a nice community, run a nice community, and when we’ve got a group of people on the fringe … it just brings the whole thing down,” Reyner said.