After weeks of Denver City Council members flexing their budget-oversight muscles to push for millions of dollars more in emergency rental assistance next year, they reached a compromise Monday with Mayor Mike Johnston.
The council unanimously approved an amendment that will make $13.5 million more available for rental assistance in the 2024 budget.
The amendment brings the total proposed set-aside for that program to $29.1 million, including Johnston’s prior commitment last month to add $3 million more than he’d originally budgeted to that cause. The total is just shy of the $30.1 million level housing advocates have said is the minimum necessary to support renters next year.
Denver landlords have filed more than 10,800 evictions this year as of the end of October, according to county court officials. That’s a record-shattering pace that advocates and council members have pointed to when pleading for more money to prop up renters on the verge of losing their housing.
The city and its partners already have distributed $22 million in rental assistance this year and had to stop accepting new applications.
After a standoff lasting more than three weeks, council members and Johnston celebrated Monday’s vote as a compromise that’s good for the city.
“I’m very proud that our amendment is backed by all 13 members of council and Mayor Johnston’s administration,” at-large Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez said during the council meeting. “These funds will help prevent thousands of evictions in 2024, and it is significant progress towards our long-term collective goals of keeping families housed.”
At last week’s meeting, nine of the 13 council members voted to pull $14.8 million from the city’s reserves next year for rental assistance beyond what Johnston had budgeted. Council members who opposed that amendment worried about the precedent of taking from the city’s reserves before the budget year had even begun. They asked supporters to explore other options in collaboration with the mayor’s office.
The nine-member voting bloc represented a supermajority capable of overruling the mayor if he were to veto that amendment.
But that’s no longer necessary. As part of Monday’s vote on the compromise, the previous amendment was pulled.
“After working in close partnership with City Council, we are excited to deliver funding for rental assistance that will work both for the city budget and for Denverites,” Johnston said in a statement.
The extra $13.5 million is being cobbled together from several sources, the largest of which comes from a $7 million reduction in the amount of money budgeted for services and supplies for all city agencies, including the City Council.
The compromise also required some sacrifice from council members. Councilwoman Shontel Lewis urged her colleagues to vote no on an amendment she put forward on Monday that would have added another $1 million to the city’s funding for the Denver Basic Income Project next year. That project, which provides no-strings-attached cash payments to unhoused people with the goal of improving their lives, is receiving $2 million in next year’s budget, but council members had pushed for as much as $4 million. Lewis acknowledged her decision to vote down her own amendment was tied to rental assistance.
Three amendments from Councilwoman Sarah Parady that would have increased funding for the Support Team Assisted Response program that dispatches mental health clinicians and paramedics to select 911 calls were either voted down or pulled on Monday. The measures would have taken money from a few buckets including more than $2.7 million set aside for police recruiting next year.
The council also undid an amendment that it approved last week at Parady’s request. The stricken amendment would have pulled $1.8 million from a handful of public health and harm reduction efforts in the city including needle exchange programs to help Denver Health backfill the huge cost of uncompensated care that the hospital provides. The Johnston administration has committed to finding other funding sources to meet or exceed that $1.8 million dedication next year, Parady noted.
The council unanimously approved a $450,000 amendment Monday that would pull from the city’s bridge maintenance and emergency repairs fund to provide more money for the Safe Routes to School program. That amendment now joins $550,000 the council set aside last week for the city’s Vision Zero initiative aimed at curtailing traffic deaths and injuries as budget changes that Johnston will have to make a decision on that he has not already publicly endorsed.
The Safe Routes to School program is focused on improving travel safety and encouraging opportunities for physical activity around Denver schools.
The city’s $4 billion budget for 2024, including $1.74 billion in proposed general fund expenditures, is set to face a final council vote on Nov. 13.
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