It remains to be seen whether Aurora’s planned “one-stop shop” for homeless services — a campus to house, feed, employ, heal and ultimately uplift — can provide the most effective alternative to life on the streets. Experts in the human-services field have to sort out the details, which are still in their planning stages as the city moves ahead.

What’s encouraging about the impending program, however, is its practical premise. As envisioned, it endeavors to restore incentive, responsibility and accountability to a population disproportionately bedeviled by addiction and the loss of a work ethic.

That’s a refreshing and overdue approach to rehabilitating the chronically homeless, not only in Colorado’s No. 3 city but also along the populous Front Range and throughout our state. It borrows from some of the effective strategies employed by Colorado Springs, the state’s No. 2 metro area, which has seen success in reducing its habitually homeless population.

And it serves as an example to Denver, the largest city — and an epicenter of homelessness that just seems to keep growing.

Denver saw a big increase in the number of homeless people — 5,818 as of January of last year, up from 4,794 a year earlier, according to the latest annual “point-in-time” survey of homelessness. And Denver City Hall has been hemorrhaging tax dollars under freshman Mayor Mike Johnston in a mad dash to “house” them — in hotels, in “microcommunities” — without any prospect for keeping them off the streets over the longer run.

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It’s worth noting El Paso County saw a 17% drop in its homeless population — from a high of 1,562 in 2019 to 1,302 — in the same period in which Denver’s homelessness surged. Aurora’s homeless population stood at 572 in the same survey, down from 612 the year before.

What is it that Denver is doing wrong, that Colorado Springs is doing right, and that Aurora is about to do differently?

As reported in The Gazette this week, Aurora’s offer of housing for the unhoused comes with strings attached — and necessarily so. The proposed regional navigation campus would consolidate services in one place, a model similar to that of the Colorado Springs Rescue Mission.

The center promises to be the culmination of a yearlong exploration by city officials who also traveled to Texas, where they researched strategies to reduce homelessness.

At its core, the campus would contain an incentive system in which those served would be offered housing based on tiers. There would be increasing responsibilities and requirements in exchange for better services and living arrangements. 

The lowest tier would be a shelter for people who need services but aren’t working with case managers yet. Housing will be barracks-style, with minimal services.

The next tier up will require people to work part time, including jobs in and around the facility, and to participate in programs for addiction and mental health treatment as well as job training.

That tier will offer what Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman calls “materially better” living arrangements. The highest tier will be for those who have landed gainful jobs but still need some services. People in the third tier will have even better living conditions, including a private room.

The project is moving forward, with the Aurora City Council having voted last month to buy the 13-acre site of a hotel and convention center on the city’s north side to accommodate the new facility. Questions remain, including about the campus’ impact on the surrounding area.

In any event, it holds promise by virtue of breaking with the forever failing “housing first” philosophy that prevails at Denver City Hall. Merely putting roofs over heads without a change in lifestyle is almost inevitably a roundtrip ticket back to the streets. At best, it’s a dead end.

Coffman recommends instilling self-sufficiency instead. As he stated in his State of the City address in December, ”Success is not getting the unsheltered homeless off the streets only to make them permanent wards of the state at taxpayers’ expense.”

Mayor Johnston, are you listening?

Denver Gazette Editorial Board