Evidence continues to mount on the failure of Denver’s open-door policy toward the homeless — while Colorado’s No. 2 and No. 3 cities appear to be getting it right in reaching out to people on their streets.

Colorado Springs and Aurora are using innovative thinking and political pluck to turn the tide. Denver, by contrast keeps throwing cash at the problem, only to see its homeless population grow. The goal — to house people temporarily without addressing their underlying addictions or other pathologies — is all carrot and no stick. Not surprisingly, the homeless keep coming.

An eyeopening, in-depth report by The Gazette’s news staff last week shed new light on the scale of Denver’s woes. As the front-page story summed it up after diving deep into national data, “Metro Denver’s homeless crisis has worsened and become among the most acute in the nation despite the city of Denver contracting for at least $274 million from 2021 through 2024 to keep people off the streets.” Indeed, the Denver area has grown its homeless ranks more than any other major metro area since 2018, The Gazette report found.

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

It doesn’t bode well for Denver’s freshman Mayor Mike Johnston. Tackling homelessness was a top campaign theme for him and has been his chief preoccupation since taking office last July. His administration spent $45 million in tax dollars by the end of last year, followed by millions more to date, to acquire hotels, buy “tiny” shelters and set up “micro-communities” to accommodate the city’s urban “campers.”

Yet, his effort is failing. That also was the case for his predecessors in office, who employed similar policies though not on as grand a scale. Longer-term data reflects how it all backfired.

Denver saw a big increase in the number of homeless people — 5,818 as of January last year, up from 4,794 a year earlier, according to the latest annual “point-in-time” survey of homelessness.

On the other hand, Colorado Springs and surrounding El Paso County saw a 17% drop in the 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 was 572 in the same survey, down from 612 the year before.

What explains the two cities’ relative success compared with Denver?

One recent analysis credits a successful strategy advanced by Mayor Yemi Mobolade and other leaders in Colorado Springs to partner with local nonprofits and homeless shelters. Notably, the city’s Springs Rescue Mission and its comprehensive “treatment first” approach includes addiction recovery programs, health services, meals, showers, laundry services, facilitating job placements, emergency shelter, permanent housing, and transitional housing.

In Aurora, meanwhile, Mayor Mike Coffman and the City Council are developing an approach that combines a hand up and “tough love” to rein in, then help, the city’s homeless. Plans include a “one-stop shop” for homeless services — a campus to house, feed, employ, heal and ultimately uplift. The city also is implementing stiffer penalties for violations of the camping ban along I-225 and will create a new court for low-level offenses by homeless lawbreakers.

The approach contrasts starkly with Denver’s “housing first” dogma, which moves the chronically homeless indoors but makes little attempt up front to get them to change the behavior that landed them on the streets to begin with.

Surely, Johnston doesn’t want to be regarded as the mayor who loved the homeless so much, he drew them all to Denver. He should watch what works in Colorado Springs and Aurora and take notes.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board