Today is July 19, 2023, and here’s what you need to know:

During his first full day in office, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston declared a state of emergency over the city’s rising homeless population.

As part of the declaration, Johnston said he plans to house 1,000 of Denver’s unsheltered homeless residents by the end of the year – those who sleep in public places, such as on the street, in tents or in cars. 

This is Johnston’s first official act as mayor after campaigning to end street homelessness in the next four years.

“We know it doesn’t end today, we know it starts today. But this is our commitment,” Johnston said.

There were at least 4,794 homeless people in Denver in January 2022, according to the latest count. That’s up 44% from only five years prior. Around 27% (1,313) of the homeless population was unsheltered.

Johnston’s administration plans to activate the city’s emergency operations center by the end of the week to begin work under the declaration. It will be tasked to coordinate and manage the initiative’s objectives.

Apartment rents in the metro Denver area rose an average of $32 per month in the second quarter, which is fairly typical for that time of year. 

Average rents now stand at $1,878, a 2% increase year-over-year, according to the second quarter Vacancy & Rent report from the Apartment Association of Metro Denver released Tuesday.

The median Denver area rent stood at $1,802.

Vacancy rates, meanwhile, basically stayed flat – dropping just 0.1% to 5.5% overall. 

El Paso County’s land-use code violated federal housing law by placing discriminatory caps on group-living facilities for people recovering from drug addiction, the federal appeals court based in Denver ruled on Tuesday.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit concluded the county provided no valid justification for treating rehabilitation facilities differently from other types of group homes, yet it imposed lower occupancy limits through its land development code. Because people in addiction recovery qualify as disabled under federal law, the county’s differential treatment was unlawful.

“Sometimes, zoning officials might relent to housing discrimination after campaigns by neighborhood homeowners concerned that the presence of people recovering from addiction will degrade their quiet neighborhoods. In other situations, local governments may ban or more strictly regulate group homes for disabled persons without an adequate justification,” wrote Judge Gregory A. Phillips in the panel’s July 18 opinion. “In either situation, the result is the same: Group homes for disabled persons are zoned out of the neighborhoods of nondisabled homeowners.”

The Colorado Division of Insurance on Monday announced that it is joining four other states to liquidate Friday Health Plans.

The liquidation is raising concerns that some health care providers may stop seeing patients enrolled in Friday before the insurance company shuts down.

That means about 30,000 Coloradans enrolled in Friday Health Plans will lose their health insurance sooner than anticipated and will have to find another plan by the end of August. For some, it could also mean they will have to restart the clock on deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums.

Most of the Coloradans enrolled in Friday’s HMO are in the individual market.

The insurance division said it has asked the courts to put Friday into liquidation, with health plans terminating as of Aug. 31, 2023.

A target letter sent to Donald Trump suggests that a sprawling Justice Department investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election is zeroing in on him after more than a year of interviews with top aides to the former president and state officials from across the country.

Federal prosecutors have cast a wide net, asking witnesses in recent months about a chaotic White House meeting that included discussion of seizing voting machines and about lawyers’ involvement in plans to block the transfer of power, according to people familiar with the probe. They’ve discussed with witnesses schemes by Trump associates to enlist slates of Republican fake electors in battleground states won by Democrat Joe Biden and interviewed state election officials who faced a pressure campaign over the election results in the days before the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

It is unclear how much longer special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation will last, but its gravity was evident Tuesday when Trump disclosed that he had received a letter from the Justice Department advising him that he was a target of the probe. Such letters often precede criminal charges; Trump received one ahead of his indictment last month on charges that he illegally hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida.