The Denver metro area is likely to spend two-thirds of a billion dollars in public and charitable funding for homelessness by year’s end. That’s according to Colorado’s Common Sense Institute, which also has concluded that from the beginning of 2021 through the end of 2023, more than $1.7 billion will have been spent combatting homelessness in the Denver area.

Denver City Hall alone has been heaping tax dollars onto the problem, spending $152 million last year and allocating $254 million for 2023.

Our community is indeed generous. Patient, too – considering the number of homeless just keeps rising in our area despite all the spending, according to the best available data.

Let’s hope we don’t cross the fine line between being patient – and just plain gullible. Some might say we already have done so. Not just in terms of the sheer amount of money we throw at the problem but also in accounting for what is spent.

The Gazette’s news staff has done some digging into spending on homelessness by the administration of freshman Mayor Mike Johnston as he races to make good on his promise to move 1,000 people off Denver streets into temporary housing by year’s end. As The Gazette reported the other day, it turns out Denver officials skipped the bidding process in awarding a multimillion-dollar contract for 200 “pallet shelters” to an Everett, Wash., company, and it’s unclear if the city even considered other companies or explored alternative prices.

The Gazette’s report quoted a city spokesperson acknowledging, “Under the city’s Homelessness Emergency Declaration, Pallet PBC, Inc. was awarded a master purchase agreement based on a similar procurement by another jurisdiction, outside of Colorado, with similar needs to Denver’s current emergent housing initiative.”

Stay up to speed: Sign-up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

It’s worth noting it took a formal, and costly, public records request by The Gazette just to pry loose the documents from City Hall detailing the expenditure.

The shelters, which resemble garden sheds but have windows, will be a feature of Johnston’s “micro-communities” scattered throughout the city – to the dismay of nearby neighbors in established residential areas.

For $5.1 million, Pallet PBC will deliver 200 one- and two-bed pallet shelters. The city also ordered six larger pallet shelters for community gatherings and laundry units. The price tag includes the shelters themselves and amenities like climate control and rudimentary furniture.

The simple math is that the city will spend on average $25,500 for each temporary wooden hut and the extras. It’s hard to say if that’s a reasonable cost for what is an unusual item in the first place, but given how City Hall didn’t bother to put the contract out to bid, and that it was inked under “an emergency declaration,” it’s a near certainty Denver isn’t paying bottom dollar.

As for the micro-communities where the pallet houses will be located, not only will they disrupt neighborhoods, they also are unlikely to get Denver’s chronically homeless street population back on its feet. Johnston’s embrace of the fundamentally flawed “housing first” philosophy – requiring no commitment by the many drug-addicted participants to enter rehab – ensures the micro-communities’ residents will be back on the streets sooner or later.

The program’s futility aside, The Gazette’s exposure of such loosey-goosey spending on homelessness so early in Johnston’s tenure doesn’t bode well. A deluge of dollars and decades of politicians’ promises don’t seem to have put a lasting dent in the problem.

Spending still more money, faster, just to meet a politician’s arbitrary deadline – while cutting corners on accountability along the way – won’t work, either.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board