6 westword.com WESTWORD AUGUST 6-12, 2026 | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Tiny Homes, Big Questions WHAT DOES DENVER’S MICRO- COMMUNITY CLOSURE MEAN FOR THE MODEL? BY SAGE KELLY Tiny homes and micro-communities were once a pillar of Denver Mayor Mike John- ston’s plan to rein in homelessness, but now it looks like they’re quietly winding down. On July 21, Colorado Village Collabora- tive (CVC) CEO Jessica Ehinger spoke on a porch in the Monroe Tiny Home Village, CVC’s fi rst mirco-community in the city. It was the non-profi t and Monroe’s ninth birthday, but soon Monroe will be packed up into storage after the city forced the tiny homes into a move and potential hiberna- tion. The organization is still operating two other micro-communities in the city, but the Monroe location was its fi rst. “This is a really bittersweet moment,” Ehinger said. “We are standing in, basically, the heart and soul of those original tiny home villages. ... It is hard in moments like this when there are setbacks, when there are challenges, when things don’t go the way you want, when there isn’t an easy solution.” The move comes directly from a city deci- sion not to renew the community’s contract in the 2026 budget. The swath of non-renewals affected non-congregate homeless shelter sites, “including the Comfort Inn and Monroe micro-community,” according to the city’s 2026 budget. The budget document went on to say the cuts come “as we shift All in Mile High to focus intensively on housing, connect- ing individuals to work and street engagement for high acuity populations.” This decision saved the city $12.4 million as Denver faces a projected $200 million budget defi cit for 2026. Julia Marvin, spokesperson for the Den- ver Department of Housing Stability, tells Westword that they are “thoughtfully” wind- ing down temporary shelter sites and “dou- bling down on housing — ensuring faster exits from shelter and long-term stability.” “This is how we make transformational change with limited resources,” she says. Ehinger says the Denver mayor’s offi ce told her it would help CVC fi nd a new location for Monroe, but that hasn’t “materialized” yet. After years of debate, protests and prom- ises, what does the future hold for Denver’s tiny homes? Some who were once closely tied to the communities now question their necessity, claiming the idea has fallen from what initially made it special, while propo- nents still believe in the idea and hope for stronger support going forward. Measuring Success Micro-communities provide small, tem- porary shelters for people experiencing homelessness, and give them direct access to resources in an attempt to get them into per- manent housing. This involves “tiny homes,” or private, hard-sided shelters with room for a bed and dresser. The community will often have a center, bathhouse and kitchen area. In 2021, the Department of Housing Stability partnered with CVC through con- tracted funding agreements to expand its tiny homes. After Johnston took over as mayor in 2023, he declared the homeless situation in Denver an emergency and launched the House1000 initiative, which expanded the relationship with CVC. The initiative set out to get 1,000 people off the street by the end of the year. After reaching that goal, Johnston’s offi ce launched the longer-standing All In Mile High (AIMH), which has the lofty ambition to end homelessness as a whole. At the time, CVC was operating two sepa- rate communities at the Monroe location as well as the La Paz community on South Santa Fe Drive and the Steele Village community on 38th Avenue and Steele Street. The latter two are still open and running today. There are also two other micro-communities run by other nonprofi ts: the Stay Inn on East 38th Avenue, run by Bayaud Works and Elati Village near Spear Boulevard in the Golden Triangle neighborhood, run by the Gathering Place. A zoning standard was created in 2022 that allowed these communities to operate on a site for four years before moving off of the parcel for at least four years. Monroe Tiny Home Village was the fi rst to receive a license, set to expire this September. As it stands, the four current villages add up to 190 beds, according to the Department of Housing Stability. Since CVC started its fi rst micro-com- munity in 2017, approximately 766 different people have lived within the nonprofi t’s communities. According to the organization, 60.8% of them exited to “positive” housing destinations, including other shelters, treat- ment facilities, temporary housing situations and permanent housing, with 277 moved to permanent living situations, 80 moved to temporary living situations (like family or friends) and 41 moved into treatment facilities or long-term care. As of July, the two remaining communities have 90 members, including some moved over from the shut- tered Monroe location. Those 766 people were part of the thou- sands Johnston has claimed have been moved off the streets since 2023. Overall, more than 8,500 individuals have had access to shelter and 7,700 have transitioned into permanent housing since Johnston took offi ce, according to the city, helping lower the 1,400 people living on the streets and 4,600 in shelters during the 2023 Point in Time count to 519 people on the street and nearly 6,000 in shelters by 2026. Ehinger argues that no matter which route the city prefers in combatting home- lessness, the micro-community model has been successful, because nearly 25 other nonprofi ts have helped establish supportive services for people living in them. “Once someone comes into the village, they get their own unit, they have their own front door, and then they get access to a whole range of wraparound supportive services. So, we have onsite case manage- ment, onsite peer support, onsite behavioral mental health support,” she says. Stanley Greenemeier, a man who lived at the Monroe shelter back in 2024, has now been in permanent housing for two years. He just founded an LLC for a custom walking stick business called Sticks for People. He says the model helped change his life and expresses endless thanks for CVC. “To have a place where people treated you with dignity and respect. You weren’t invisible,” he says. “My food stamps went further, because I was able to buy food and cook. I wasn’t spending them all at 7/11.” But Terese Howard, founder of House- keys Action Network Denver (HAND) and former board member for CVC, says the idea is too expensive for its level of effectiveness, arguing that the concept has strayed away from the original idea she helped create back in 2017. “It’s sad, because it was a beautiful thing,” Howard tells Westword. “And it’s just one of those examples of how these kind of slow, dehumanized corporatized transi- tions happen.” To Howard, CVC’s priorities and spending are out of whack. And while some people get into permanent housing from the communi- ties, it’s only because they are in close proxim- ity to services, she says. According to her, the city would save money if case managers and services were provided to people already on the street instead of building small but expen- sive communities to house them temporarily. “You shouldn’t spend millions of dollars to build tiny home villages just because you don’t want to stop sweeping people,” she says. Elizabeth Szewczyk, senior director of operations at CVC, says it would be impos- sible to provide all of the services that villages provide to people still living on the street. “When a person living on the street is most focused on the immediate safety and security of themselves, their pets and belong- ings, it is much harder to focus on engaging with services. People may move around fre- quently or be ‘swept,’ making it more diffi cult to keep up with engagement through street teams,” she says. “Someone simply shouldn’t have to live on the street, and that shouldn’t be a prerequisite to get supportive services.” Community Challenge Howard’s history with tiny homes stems back to their start in Denver. She started an advocacy group called Denver Homeless Out Loud in 2012. Around 2015, the guerrilla group built their own tiny home commu- nity on city property at Sustainability Park, near the intersection of 25th and Lawrence streets. At the time, the plot was empty, but the Denver Housing Authority had just sold it off to a private developer for market-rate housing instead of NEWS continued on page 8 KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS The Monroe micro-community is packed up and ready to go into storage after the zoning expired after four years. SAGE KELLEY
