12 JUNE 19-25, 2025 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | unsheltered homeless individuals,” says CSI homelessness fellow Dustin Zvonek, a former Aurora city councilman hired by CSI earlier this year. “However, as CSI noted in our spring report, this is clearly not reducing the total amount of homeless individuals in Denver. Taking people off of the street and putting them into hotels serving as homeless shelters isn’t the same as reducing homelessness.” From 2023 to 2025, the number of people living on the streets in Denver dropped by about 600 people, but the number of homeless residents living in shelters increased by more than 2,000 during that same span, PIT counts note. According to the Denver Department of Housing Stability (HOST), 750 people are currently living in AIMH shelters. Chandler says that Johnston’s goal when he took offi ce was to resolve unsheltered homelessness, not necessarily to have empty shelters, too. He points out that Denver is one of the fi rst cities to start investing in a large- scale solution to homelessness, so CSI has no real way of studying Denver’s success yet. “It is true that someone staying in a shelter is still considered homeless, but they are no longer considered to be unsheltered, which is what our strategy has been focused on,” Chandler says. “And the reality is this isn’t a debate: There are proven best practices across the country, and we know what works. What has not been done is those strategies have not been invested in at scale, and that’s why you’ve seen unsheltered homelessness continue to rise. We are starting to invest in those strategies at scale.” Is Fear a Factor? Johnston has said that as of a few months ago, there were no more large encampments Denver, sometimes noting that migrant en- campments are gone, too. Encampments with hundreds of tents and residents used to frustrate residents and businesses in downtown-adjacent areas like La Alma, Five Points and the Ballpark District. Chandler says that the city and Denver Police Depar- mtnet have become quick and effi cient in taking down tents and small encampments before they grow. “We’ll have people pop up a tent every now and then, but any time those complaints come in via 311, we’re getting to them within a business day,” Chandler says. “There are no large encampments in the city. We very rarely see complaints of even more than fi ve tents at a time.” The Housekeys Action Network of Den- ver, a group that advocates for the city’s homeless population, says that unsheltered residents have felt pressure from the police. Terese Howard, HAND’s lead organizer, argues that increased police enforcement against encampments, which are usually taken down because of the city’s camping ban or public sidewalk and right-of-way rules, has scared homeless residents into hiding. This, she says, is what the new PIT data is really refl ecting. “This decrease in unsheltered is not the pure result of getting people into housing or shelters. It is, primarily, the result of in- creased policing,” Howards says. “Yes, the Point in Time count counted less people on the streets, unsheltered, but that’s because those people who are still living on the street are mostly in hiding and not visible.” Like CCH, she and HAND are advocating for Denver to spend more money on afford- able housing. Howard says that HAND is pushing for the mayor to fund affordable housing projects with the Vibrant Denver bond, which still needs city council’s okay before appearing on the ballot for voter ap- proval in November. The bond seeks to raise upwards of $800 million for improvements of city properties and facilities. Johnston tried to pass a half-cent sales tax to fund affordable housing projects last year, but voters rejected the ballot measure, known as Affordable Denver. During town halls and community meet- ings, residents in neighborhoods outside of downtown have told Denver’s elected offi cials, including the mayor, that they fear Johnston’s downtown encampment sweeps pushed homelessness into their communi- ties. Councilman Kevin Flynn said in May 2024 that Johnston’s homeless initiative had moved downtown homelessness into his south Denver district, and Councilwoman Jamie Torres said last July that homelessness migrated along the light rail lines into parts of her district in west Denver. Chandler says that the data “doesn’t re- veal that” homelessness is being pushed around, and promises the reduction can be seen throughout Denver. “The majority of the encampments that we resolved were downtown, but this prob- lem wasn’t solved by just pushing people out to other areas,” Chandler adds. “We literally cut the population on the streets in half, and that’s refl ected across the entire city.” In addition to 2025 PIT data, Chandler cites decreasing calls to 911 and 311, a city-run hotline for making complaints and request- ing services that is often used by residents to report encampments and people living out of their cars. Chandler says that calls to those two numbers with homelessness complaints have dropped by 60 percent during the past two years. “When you look at not only the number of people experiencing homelessness on the streets but the number of 911 and 311, those have also dropped in half in the past couple years,” Chandler says. “We used to see sixty to seventy homelessness complaints across the entire city on a daily basis. We now see twenty to thirty across the entire city.” Getting the House in Order The mayor has offered a sense of his homelessness strategy over the next two years of his fi rst term, but he’ll have to navi- gate a $200 million budget shortfall at the same time. Chandler says that the goal now is to work within the system the mayor set up during his fi rst two years to move out the hundreds of people currently staying in the city-funded AIMH shelters. “It’s not like we’re suddenly going to be rapidly expanding shelter again,” Chandler says. “At this point, it’s about, ‘How do we make the entire system work for us?’” Denver spent more than $138 million during Johnston’s fi rst two years in offi ce to rent and lease hotels to convert into shelters for homeless residents and migrants. That includes $43 million on the Aspen, formerly the DoubleTree, which has been embroiled in controversies like an unsolved double homicide in March 2024 and criticism of the Salvation Army, which was contracted by the city to manage the site. According to Chandler, the city won’t be buying up more hotels, but it did add two micro-communities with forty units each to its AIMH system in January. Monroe and Steele villages, as the two micro-communi- ties are called, are in north Denver and were built by Colorado Village Collaborative, an organization that Chandler helped establish. The three micro-communities that the mayor opened in 2024 have a temporary operating permit that will expire at the end of his term. The other two that opened this year will be able to stay open longer. The Support Team Assisted Response Program, which sends paramedics and be- havioral health clinicians to low-risk emer- gency calls, marked its fi fth anniversary on June 2. The team responds to issues related to homelessness, substance abuse and mental health, and has played a role in how Johnston’s administration man- ages homelessness. However, STAR needs money to keep going, roughly $5 million, but that could be at risk with the city’s budget problems. The newly created Ballpark Business Improvement District could alleviate the pressure from the budget crisis by help- ing to handle homelessness downtown, as the district has ambassadors that patrol and clean the area and work with police to manage issues related to homelessness. The Ballpark District was home to the largest homeless encampment in the city when Johnston took offi ce; the city cleared that encampment, formerly around 21st and Curtis streets and in front of the U.S. Post Offi ce on 20th Street, in late 2023. “Overall, homelessness is still rising, but there’s a couple strong indicators that we’re getting on the right side of that,” Chandler says. “Our North Star has been addressing unsheltered homelessness. We’ve made signifi cant progress on the thing that we set out to do, and we’re going to continue that work.” Email the author at [email protected]. News continued from page 10 A homeless resident stands outside her tent at the corner of 21st and Curtis streets, just outside the U.S. Post Offi ce in late 2023. Sabrina Allie, an employee with the Denver Department of Housing Stability, records a homeless resident living in a tent under an overpass in Sun Valley during the Point in Time count in January 2024. BENNITO L. KELT Y BENNITO L. KELT Y
