Being homeless in Evergreen after an injury put John Alex out of work wasn’t easy, he said. The only shelter, run by a local Christian group, operated from October to April, and outside those times, the easiest place to sleep undisturbed was the woods. Even that wasn’t always peaceful, though, with bears roaming in search of food and water. Alex, 50, talked about his time without a home from a more comfortable space on an unusually hot day in late July: his apartment in Lakewood, in a building that opened less than two months earlier.