Mayor Mike Johnston has just two months to find housing for 830 people if he is to keep his promise to move 1,000 of Denver’s homeless off the streets by the end of the year.
“We feel a real sense of momentum and we do believe that it’s possible,” he said. “We think the pieces are in place to be able to help get 1,000 Denverites off the streets and we know a lot of these units will come on in November and December.”
But roadblocks and a raft of questions remain with some homeless advocates and City Council members suggesting a slower approach might be more productive, allowing the city to focus on providing fewer people with better support to get into long-term housing.
“The mayor may indeed reach his goal for “Housing” 1,000 but that’s within his defined parameters, which most advocates and providers, including myself, don’t agree with,” said Jess Wiederholt, a member of the homeless support and advocacy group Mutual Aid Monday. “We are going to see a large percentage of the 1,000 back on the streets, I’m afraid.”
In recent weeks, council members have delayed consideration of some proposed contracts so they can ask more questions. Meanwhile, the administration has yet to announce deals with other contractors who will provide staff, security, mental health and addiction treatment, employment support, and other wraparound service at the micro-communities at the center of the effort.
Work is underway on two sites, and the administration says fencing has been put up around a third.
The online dashboard tracking progress on Johnston’s House1000 homelessness initiative showed that 168 people had been connected with housing or shelter through the effort as of Thursday morning. Of that, 61 have moved into apartments or other leased housing and 79 are in converted hotel or motel rooms.
That leaves Johnston about two months to move more than 830 people off the streets.
Meanwhile, the city still needs to try and win the support of communities that would rather Johnston’s plans to house the homeless leave their neighborhoods alone.
“There’s tons of kids in the neighborhood, tons of families, there’s older women in the neighborhood whose husbands have passed away years ago,” Virginia Village resident Georgia Kristan said of her opposition to a proposed micro-community of 30 to 40 housing units at 1380 S. Birch St. “I do not think it is a good location.”
Micro-communities — essentially tiny home villages with shared buildings for meals and services — have received much of the public attention. But the key to getting the first 1,000 people sheltered lies with other initiatives, namely the city’s purchase and leasing of hotels. One of the biggest pieces of the puzzle could snap into place in the next few weeks.
The City Council’s safety committee recently advanced two bills that, if passed, will allow the city to lease and potentially spend an estimated $39 million to purchase a 300-room, 450-bed former Double Tree hotel in the Central Park neighborhood starting in early November.
The people who were living in the first encampment the administration closed in late September were moved to a former Best Western hotel. For Johnston, that operation was the proof of concept he was waiting for with every encampment resident who offered space in the hotel shelter accepting it.
“I think the most resonant part of the last three weeks for us is that this is a strategy we know is going to be successful,” Johnston said.
The Salvation Army, a faith-based service provider, is running the former Best Western shelter. Advocates and members of the unhoused community occupied the City Council chambers this month during public comment as part of a protest against the city’s approach.
Specifically, members of the grassroots group Housekeys Action Network Denver have blasted the mayor for still allowing encampment sweeps to happen without housing options available and for calling his initiative House1000 when people are in fact being offered temporary shelter space whether it be in a hotel or tiny home. Members of that group have railed against the Salvation Army for running shelters with strict rules they liken to halfway houses. Rules include banning on-site drug use.
Asked by council members about the organization’s rules at a meeting this month, Salvation Army Major Richard Pease said, “Our goal is to have safe spaces that allow people to make safe choices.”
The City Council approved $15.7 million to support the Denver Housing Authority’s acquisition of that 194-room Best Western property early this month and it’s clear it will remain a key cog in the House1000 strategy.
One of the advocates’ demands is that Johnston prioritize leased housing where people can have more autonomy.
Work on the first of Johnston’s oft-talked-about micro-communities is also underway. The administration publicly confirmed the location of the first site earlier this month, a Colorado Department of Transportation-owned patch of land at 2301 S. Santa Fe Drive in Overland. The ground there is being prepared to host enough tiny homes, bathrooms and other support structures to host 120 people by year’s end, officials say.
Progress is also being made on at least two other sites, Johnston spokesman Jose Salas said.
Ground has been broken at 12033 E. 38th Ave. That’s the parking lot of the former Stay Inn, another hotel Denver acquired this year — when Mayor Michael Hancock was still in office — to provide transitional housing options for the city’s growing homeless population. The hotel itself is being renovated but its parking lot is expected to host a micro-community sooner.
Pre-construction work including setting up fencing has started on a parking lot at 1375 N. Elati St. ready to serve as a micro-community for the next two to four years.
Specifics on when construction might wrap up and how many micro units each of those sites will host haven’t been finalized, Salas said. But in a slide presentation delivered at a community meeting in the Golden Triangle neighborhood earlier this month, city officials indicated the Elati Street site could host 51 micro units.
Another site discussed at that meeting, 1199 N. Bannock St., was pulled off the list of prospective host properties this month. Golden Triangle neighbors repeatedly asked Johnston why their small neighborhood was being eyed for two micro communities just blocks from each other.
The mayor is aiming higher than just what has been made public so far.
“We have plans to try to get, I’d say, four to six up by the end of the year is our goal,” Johnston said of the micro-communities. “And then obviously three to four hotels up by the end of the year. Those are all also part of the target. And so those are a lot of moving pieces we have right now.”
Council members want more transparency
But the intensive use of city staff time and other resources, the speed at which things are happening and, at times, the lack of clarity around the initiative has drawn criticism from inside and outside city hall.
Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer voted against extending Johnston’s emergency declaration each of the four times it came before the council since July. She has raised concerns at those junctures about a preliminary list of potential micro-community sites being drawn up without what she felt was enough due diligence and a lack of detail around the tens of millions of spending that is needed to achieve the mayor’s goal.
Sawyer got to hit pause on Johnston’s breakneck pace last Monday. She invoked city rules to delay for a week a vote on a $6 million contract with a developer who would build the city up to 300 “manufactured sleeping units” — or tiny homes — to fill out forthcoming micro-communities. The delay gave Sawyer time to tour the manufacturing facility, see a prototype and make an informed decision, she said.
Councilwoman Flor Avlidrez voted against extending the declaration for the second month in a row. She has concerns the city is “cutting corners.” Specifically, she asked why she had not seen an environmental assessment of the South Santa Fe micro-community location with work already underway there. An assessment has been completed and will be shared with the councilwoman, Salas said Wednesday.
Finally, Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore cast a no vote this month after Cole Chandler, the mayor’s top homelessness adviser, told her the administration was still working to prepare a detailed spending plan for the initiative. For Gilmore, the chair of the council’s critical safety committee that has been reviewing contracts associated with the House1000 push, the broad strokes, $48.6 million estimate the administration has provided for the work this year is essentially a blank check.
“I have worked in government as an elected official for eight years and things don’t move quickly all the time for a reason, to make sure we have fiduciary accountability and that’s my job as a council person,” Gilmore told The Denver Post.
Even some members of the council majority who have voted to keep the House1000 effort going through an extended emergency order have expressed some doubts.
Shontel Lewis previously worked for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless before being elected to the council. Before voting yes earlier this month she noted that she has been struggling to see how some of the flurry of contracts coming through the council pipeline fit into a larger picture that gets people not only off the streets but into long-term housing.
Lewis pointed out that her northeast Denver District 8 has three sites that Johnston is relying on to get to his House1000 goal between the Stay Inn, the former Best Western and now the forthcoming Double Tree property. Yet none of the encampments in her district have been prioritized for decommissioning at this point.
“I think that the larger part of the conversation here is we have to make sure the entire city is carrying the solutions to housing, and not just one district,” Lewis said.
Megan Devenport is among the homeless service providers and advocates who have raised concerns that the administration is prioritizing the most visible encampments over those where residents might be most vulnerable.
Devenport is the CEO of the Gathering Place, a drop-in day shelter for women, transgender people and their children. She supports Johnston’s aiming high. What she fears is that the initiative could devolve into simply pushing people into shelters for a few weeks at a time to check a box and hit a quota.
“Falling short of a bold goal, there is no shame in that,” Devenport said. “To me, failure would look like losing momentum and urgency for the scale of the problem or losing sight of the ultimate goal which is making sure homelessness in our city is rare and brief.”
