When Jesse Parris speaks during public comment at Denver City Council meetings – which he attends every week – he introduces himself as the next mayor of Denver.

Parris is eyeing the mayoral seat with his campaign “Justice 4 the Poor, People Over Profits!” He has worked in social justice and activism on homeless issues, police brutality and issues involving the Black community for over a decade.

He said he wants to help the city’s most vulnerable, saying the city needs “bold and radical leadership” not involved with the current administration. He has even offered half of the mayor’s salary to community organizations should he be elected.

“We need people that are from the community, people that represent the community,” Parris said. “We need people that are from the streets. We need people that have lived experience with homelessness. We need people that have lived experience with the skyrocketing rents.

“Basically, we need people that can relate to the average person in this city.”

Having experienced homelessness himself, Parris said he wants to repeal the city’s urban camping ban to create a more “welcoming” Denver. He believes that poor and homeless people are criminalized throughout the city and that the city has “hostile infrastructure” like boulders and fences to prevent people from setting up a camp.

“It is inhumane to have such a law still on the books,” Parris said. “It is reminiscent of Jim Crow laws of the 1900s where people were being discriminated against because of their status or what they look like, so I would definitely repeal the ban.”

Shortly after earning his bachelor’s degree in criminology and criminal justice from Metropolitan State University, Parris found himself without a home in Denver, living out of his car. He said he was banned from the very college campus he graduated from and received a number of trespassing tickets while he was homeless.

Parris also thinks the city’s Department of Housing Stability isn’t doing what it’s supposed to be doing and wants to see a revamp of the “failed program” that he said is not helping those who need it most. He said many of the people getting housed struggle with mental health or addiction issues and don’t get the treatment they need.

“I have ideas and strategies on how to change that, to actually get people housed that need to be housed,” Parris said. “We could start with the safe outdoor spaces and go from there, but my whole thing when I ran for City Council at large in 2019 was to get people off the streets and get them into housing that they can actually afford and provide them with wraparound services.”

Parris also wants to see the city limit its carbon imprint, hoping to set up a recycling program for items the city throws away from encampment sweeps. He also thinks Denver’s rise in crime stems from people not having good relationships with their neighbors and the city becoming unaffordable to live in.

A member of the city’s Task Force to Reimagine Denver Policing, Parris said he was supportive of a proposal that Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca introduced to create a peace force to replace police.