Editor’s note: This is the third in a four-part series looking into Mayor Mike Johnston’s priorities for 2024. This installment focuses on the mayor’s goal of getting homeless people out of the city’s streets.  

A startling statistic emerged last year as Denver Mayor Mike Johnston pushed to reach his goal of moving a thousand homeless people from the city’s streets into temporary shelters: Only one person took advantage of substance abuse treatment.

That only a single person opted for treatment out of roughly 600 housed in shelters at that point illustrated several things, notably the wide gulf local government and its service providers must bridge in order to persuade drug-addicted homeless people to go into rehabilitation. It also hints of the long road ahead for Johnston and the people he said he wants to help, particularly if his ultimate goal is to move them from temporary shelters to stable, long-term permanent housing. 

At the time, the Johnston administration scrambled to explain the situation, maintaining that on-site treatment and mental health services were available at the temporary shelters, even as the mayor insisted that “a great deal of those needs can be met successfully by first bringing them indoors, getting the stable shelter, services and support, getting wraparound services and getting them back to work.”

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Fast forward to today and there are hints within City Hall of a push toward substance abuse treatment and mental health services. The Johnston administration is also now saying the “main focus” is to get people into permanent housing.

Council to mayor: Move beyond temporary shelters 

The push for permanent housing is also coming from the Denver City Council. Outlining its budget priorities for 2025, the elected body told Johnston last week that, while his administration has made “laudable strides,” providing temporary shelter to homeless people is insufficient.

“If we are to move people from sheltering toward stability, and if we are to prevent displacement and enable residents to ‘age in place,’ we must recognize that providing shelter is not enough,” the council said, adding that the city’s approach must be accompanied by “appropriate” programs and services, notably support for mental health and substance abuse treatment, as well as work training and placement.

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The council identified several ways the city could achieve that goal. Specifically, next year’s budget should focus on investing in “comprehensive support services to ensure long term housing stability,” the council said. 

The council is pressing for the shift in emphasis toward substance treatment as metro Denver’s homeless crisis has worsened and become among the most acute in the nation, despite the city contracting to spend at least $274 million from 2021 through 2024 to keep people off the streets.

A new point-of-time count of the city’s homeless population is due to be released this summer, which will provide insights into whether Johnston’s strategy is making a dent.  

“The main focus is helping get people from our sites into permanent housing,” Cole Chandler, the mayor’s senior advisor on the homeless crisis, recently told The Denver Gazette.

“We’re very focused on case management and project managing people through these sites and into permanent housing, and that’s where we’re going to see great success kind of coming up in the second half of this year,” he said.

And each of the city’s homeless shelter sites offer “wraparound support services,” which are aimed at creating a path toward permanent housing, according to Department of Housing Stability spokesperson Derek Woodbury.

“Case management is a key component to this work,” Woodbury said.

At the sites, case managers offer mental health support, employment counseling, and benefits navigation, Woodbury said, adding that department staffers meet regularly with site service providers to review the progress of individual case management.

“We are encouraged to see an increased level of engagement with support services, and we anticipate this progress will continue as people stabilize and transition toward permanent housing,” Woodbury said.

“In addition to case management, we have a contracted provider to deliver physical and behavioral health services across the sites,” he said.

A $100 million campaign 

Johnston, a former legislator and educator, came to power by defeating a crowded field in last year’s mayoral race. He unveiled an audacious goal — eliminate Denver’s housing crisis within four years, his first term in office.

He wasn’t the first Denver mayor who made tackling homelessness a major part of the city’s agenda, but his aggressive campaign to get 1,000 homeless people off the streets by the end of last year set him apart from his predecessors.

That campaign has been expensive. It cost the city $45 million last year.

This year, Johnston plans to move a thousand more into shelters at a cost of another $50 million, which would bring the total cost to taxpayers to nearly $100 million.

To support that campaign, the Johnston administration built “micro-communities” — where the homeless reside in “tiny” units — and Denver acquired hotels and turned them into shelters. His administration also dismantled encampments, offering residents a place at the micro-communities and shelters. 

Today the city funnels homeless individuals to eight sites, including two former hotels run by The Salvation Army.

As the Johnston administration is finding out, the problem is more complicated than giving homeless people a roof above their heads. Notably, the city’s hotel-turned-shelters have been a hotbed of criminal activity, underscoring the behavioral and social woes of homelessness.     

Hundreds of 911 calls have been made within 1,000 meters of the hotel-turned-shelters, according to data obtained by The Denver Gazette. In particular, the shelter at 4040 Quebec St., a former DoubleTree hotel, has seen the most trouble: Seven people have died there, two of them by shooting. Between Oct. 1 and Jan. 12, some 1,212 emergency calls to 911 were made within a 1,000-meter radius of the hotel.

The Johnston administration claimed security measures have been increased at all of the sites, especially at the former DoubleTree hotel.

“Obviously, we’ve had taken some real dramatic steps on safety for folks in the sites,” Johnston said. “We know these sites are dramatically safer than the outdoor unsanctioned encampments people were living in a year ago.”

Johnston said 311 deaths occurred outdoors last year.

“We know we have people who’ve come from the streets with histories of violence,” the mayor said. “So, we have to both protect them and hold them accountable and we’re going to do both.”

Define ‘permanent’

The change of emphasis from both the Johnston administration and the City Council is coming on the heels of The Denver Gazette’s investigation into the efficacy of the city’s homeless strategies. 

Broadly speaking, Denver’s metro area successfully found permanent housing solutions for only 21% of those exiting homeless programs in 2022, well below the 33% rate that was the average that year for the 48 most populated metro regions, according to federal data.

And a review by The Denver Gazette of homeless provider contracts, invoices, performance outcomes and federal data showed that metro Denver trails many other major metropolitan regions in tackling homelessness with permanent housing. Indeed, just two out of every 10 people exiting homeless programming in Denver in 2023 found long-term permanent housing, a rate far worse than most other areas in the nation, according to the records.

The Denver metro region has added more homeless individuals than any other metro region in the country since 2018, according to key metrics collected by the federal government.

Other metro regions, including Seattle and Houston, have had greater success during that period prioritizing permanent housing rather than the quick fix solutions critics said simply perpetuate homelessness.

In Denver, the spending that flowed through the city’s Department of Housing Stability, known as HOST, has relied disproportionately on emergency shelter beds and temporary transition services, records show. Of the $274 million the city spent on homelessness in the 2021-24 period, almost half went to one provider: The Salvation Army. The group invoiced the city for $12.7 million in contracts in 2023 that generated just 17% in permanent housing outcomes for individuals receiving services.

As of Monday, the city’s homeless housing dashboard said out of 1,564 homeless people moved indoors, 497 have moved into permanent housing, while roughly 700 people remained in temporary shelter for an average of 114 days.

Some homeless advocates have maintained a skeptical eye toward the mayor’s homeless strategies.   

“Those people would’ve gone back to permanent housing regardless,” said Terese Howard, lead organizer for Housekeys Action Network Denver, a nonprofit that advocates for permanent housing over temporary solutions.

“(Johnston) cannot take credit for that,” Howard said of the city’s permanent housing numbers. “That’s part of the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative housing system that our service providers have been doing for years.”

Howard claimed that the people who moved into leased units after exiting the shelters — 45, according to city data — are the actual number who transitioned into “permanent” housing and not the 497 showing up on Denver’s dashboard.

HOST Executive Director Jamie Rife, a former executive director of MDHI, said that, in either case, the city counts it as a success.

“I think it’s important to understand that what we’re trying to do is not only move people indoors, but also, in some cases, move them directly into leased housing, which is just as successful as moving them into an ‘all-in’ shelter site,” Rife said.

“We count both of these things as successes,” she added.

Rife said the city is currently focusing on applying for housing waivers to get people into units much more quickly. So far, HOST has acquired 195 permanent housing vouchers from the state of Colorado, 100 vouchers from the Denver Housing Authority, and 200 rapid rehousing vouchers under a contract with The Salvation Army, according to Rife.

More permanent housing vouchers are in the works, she said. 

“It’s really a movement to get some of our most vulnerable into permanent housing. And there are different ways to do that,” she said. “What we’re trying to do is really have this person-centered approach, get people to safety and security in many cases first, so that we can stabilize and understand what their needs are, and then get them into permanent housing.”

A ‘public image’ campaign? 

Howard of Housekeys Action Network Denver offered a pointed criticism of Johnston’s housing strategy, calling it a “public image effort to look like he’s doing something about homelessness.”

“In reality, he’s not,” Howard said, adding, “It’s just kicking the can down the road.”

To Johnston, a lot more needs to be done in getting those struggling with drug addiction, trauma or mental health the services and independent housing they need.

“That means we’re working on both bringing another 1,000 people indoors, which we’re already halfway there. But also going to people who are currently in are all to incite the transition up and out to permanent, independent housing,” the mayor said.

When asked about what is falling short in the city’s campaign, Chandler pointed to Denver’s internal programming at the eight temporary housing sites.

“The programs are continuing to grow. They’re continuing to mature. We’re still putting pieces in place around all of this,” he said.

“I wouldn’t say that the initiative has fallen short,” Chandler said. “I’d say where we experience some pain points is just getting all the pieces in place and getting everything to click. And that takes time. And you know what, I think we’re starting to see that now.”

Craig Arfsten, founder of Citizens for a Safe and Clean Denver, insists that, unless Johnston directly tackles drug abuse and mental illness, which he believes to be the root cause of Denver’s homeless crisis, the mayor’s plan is “not going to be effective at all.”

“They have not done anything to address mental illness and addiction,” Arfsten said. “If you put these people in permanent housing, all you’ve done is just moved from one location to another location and have not addressed the high risk nature of this population.”

As of Sunday, 165 people — out of the 1,564 homeless people who initially moved into shelters — are back on the streets.

The city does not know what happened to 47 others.

28 went to jail.

10 died.

Four opted for substance treatment. 

Denver Gazette investigative reporters Chris Osher and Jenny Deam contributed to this report.