Funding to pay for hotel rooms and ballrooms to accommodate overflow from the city’s emergency shelter beds during cold-weather activations will have to wait until next week.

A resolution was delayed that would have added $450,000 to an existing contract between the city and U.S. Motels North, LLC, for short-term shelter when city-owned emergency shelter beds become full during cold-weather activations.

District 8 Councilmember Shontel Lewis called out Council Resolution 25-2070 for postponement on Monday, asking for more time to understand what the resolution was funding.

“As cold weather shelter demands increase, we utilize non-city-owned sites as necessary, and then for families, because we’re providing them with a non-congregate option for cold weather,” Jeff Kositsky, deputy director of Denver’s Office of Housing Stability, told the council. “We use those hotels, expanding as we need to, based on the demand for cold-weather shelter.”

The city uses an established voucher system when its emergency shelter beds are full, allowing homeless individuals and families to have safe accommodations at pre-identified locations owned and operated by U.S. Motels North, Inc. 

Funding for the additional cold-weather shelter space would not need to come back to the council for approval.

“This is a very similar contract to what we had last year,” Kositsky said. “We’re just adding additional funding to that (existing) contract.”

While HOST has several existing options for cold-weather sheltering, Kositsky said some may not always be available.

“We’re just trying to have as big a footprint as we possibly can to meet the demands for cold-weather shelter,” he added.

Kositsky told the council that his office has anticipated a 15% to 20% increase in demand for cold-weather shelter. 

While he’s not sure the city will actually see that increase, he did state that HOST wanted to make sure “that no matter what, we have enough space and we don’t have to turn anybody away ever.”

According to Kositsky, the city would not be “master leasing” and would not have control over the hotels, but would simply call the hotels before activating cold-welther shelters and provide them with estimates of the hotel rooms and ballroom space needed.

The resolution will return to the Denver City Council for further consideration on Jan. 12.