Mike Johnston’s signature homelessness initiative quietly surpassed the sheltering goal he set for it this year, but the Denver mayor and his top advisers are eyeing a more challenging milestone in 2025.
As the city brings at least 2,000 people off the streets next year — roughly matching the number sheltered in the initiative since its launch last fall — the bigger goal, in some ways, will be to place at least 1,000 participants in more permanent housing situations. That means shifting them beyond the tiny homes in micro-communities or rooms in converted hotels that the city has used as temporary shelters so far.
Adjustments to the program in August put the city more firmly in the driver’s seat when it comes to coordinating housing placements. Officials say the rate of those placements ticked up in recent months — giving the mayor and his advisers confidence that the systems are in place to make moving 1,000 people into full housing next year a reality.
The administration’s ability to hit that mark will help determine if the All In Mile High homelessness initiative, as it’s now called, is considered successful and sustainable. By the end of 2024, the initiative will have cost the city more than $150 million, according to official estimates. The stated goal was never to warehouse people who otherwise would be living on the streets, but rather to give them a stepping stone on the path to housing and stability.
“(We’re) definitely ahead of schedule this year, so we’re excited about that — excited to keep going and keep bringing people indoors — and getting people connected to permanent housing as the year goes on,” Cole Chandler, the deputy director of the initiative, told The Denver Post. “We’re really tracking to try to produce a total of 500 permanent stable housing outcomes by the end of the year, and then looking at continuing to increase that in 2025.”
But a recent report from the Denver Auditor’s Office amplified lingering questions about the program’s cost-effectiveness and safety in the converted hotels that make up its backbone.
And while Johnston has touted All In Mile High’s success in closing 350 blocks of downtown Denver to camping, neighborhood residents and City Council members outside the city’s core say they have seen increases in visible homelessness and related drug activity this year.
It’s an indication that, at least in some cases, people are moving around the city rather than moving indoors.
“If trust doesn’t exist, you can’t get things done,” said Tony Frey, a West Colfax resident and a safety committee co-chair for the West Colfax Association of Neighbors. “If facilities like those in this program aren’t managed in a way that promotes safety effectively, more people are going to refuse help in the first place. And then they are going to travel down the (RTD) W-Line and into my alley and do nefarious things.”
Johnston administration officials emphasized that the November audit hinged on months-old data and covered security practices that had already been updated and upgraded.
The mayor compared the program’s evolution this year to the Denver Broncos becoming more successful under coach Sean Payton in his second season on the job.
“It’s like (during) the first year, you build the system and get the right personnel. The second year, you start to see the improvements,” Johnston said in an interview. “What we know now is we have the raw ingredients we need to be able to put ourselves on a path to end street homelessness.”
The Salvation Army, the city’s largest partner in the All In Mile High program, is echoing that optimistic outlook on the program as well as its impact on both the city and people who are homeless.
“We’ve improved our case management of individuals so that people are getting focused attention and care so their transition phase is smooth and far more systematic,” said Major Nesan Kistan, the nonprofit’s divisional commander based in Denver. “I’m telling you, we’re winning.”
“Housing command center” improves outcomes
Johnston’s big goal for All In Mile High in 2024 was to move another 1,000 people out of street encampments and into the program’s shelters and communities. That meant doubling up on the initial 1,000-person goal the mayor set — and the administration and its partners reached — in the second half of 2023, when the initiative was still called “House 1,000.”
The initiative quietly crossed that threshold of bringing a combined total of 2,000 indoors early this fall. The city sent out a news release on Oct. 21, but there was no celebratory press conference or public event.
The figure that has city officials more excited is 37%.
That’s the share of previously homeless people served by All In Mile High who, as of the most recent data update on the city’s dashboard on Nov. 18, have now been placed in more permanent housing — not just sheltered in tiny homes or hotel rooms.
That 37% comprises 804 people out of the 2,169 counted as having moved indoors. Not all of them spent time in All In Mile High shelters and communities. Some moved directly from the streets into housing, according to city officials.
That rate has ticked up from 29% in late April, an increase administration officials and outside partners attribute to a better-designed system and better cooperation among all organizations and city agencies involved in All In Mile High.
At a meeting of the council’s Safety, Housing, Education and Homelessness Committee in mid-November, Chandler provided a rundown of the new housing placement methodology he calls the “housing command center” or “housing central command.” The setup hinges on the city’s Department of Housing Stability, or HOST, taking on the role of system coordinator.
It provides better-defined roles for other participating city agencies and city contractors, such as Housing Connector, a tech-centered company that works with landlords to find apartments for people exiting homelessness, and shelter operators like the Salvation Army, the St. Francis Center, Bayaud Enterprises and others.
That command-center approach involves multiple meetings with on-site service providers each day, Chandler said. Through that focus, the partners are able to zero in on between 80 and 100 residents and work intensively to connect them with appropriate supports, like federal housing vouchers, and match them with apartments.
The work doesn’t stop after move-out. The city and its partners now also connect those people with “housing stabilizers” who are assigned to work with them over the following 12 months to keep them housed.
“At the beginning of the year, we had a bunch of new programs sort of operating independently,” Chandler told The Post. “Now we’re working with the site-based (housing) navigators, we’re identifying units in partnership with Housing Connector, we’re getting people access to furniture — and just really orchestrating the whole environment to ensure that people are moving out and into permanent housing.”
The Salvation Army operates three of the four largest facilities in the All In Mile High shelter network. The 289-room former DoubleTree hotel, 4040 Quebec St., is the largest. The organization now calls that facility The Aspen.
That shelter was the site of the program’s most painful failure. In March, two people in the program — Dustin Nunn, 38, and Sandra Cervantes, 43 — were fatally shot in that hotel.
It was later revealed that the Salvation Army had not spent any of the $800,000 authorized by the city for security on the property. After the shooting, the city stepped in to take over that piece of the operation, hiring security guards, securing doors, installing metal detectors and beefing up cameras in the building.
While no homeless shelter can guarantee 100% safety, the Salvation Army’s Kistan said that since the city stepped in with more resources, The Aspen and the organization’s other facilities have become much safer.
Tyler Burwell, who oversees all three of the nonprofit’s All In Mile High shelters, said living in the shelter setting had saved some residents’ lives, including when staff members provided lifesaving responses during what could otherwise have been fatal overdoses.
The benefits and results of the city’s more clearly defined approach to housing placements have also been evident to the Salvation Army. At The Aspen, the organization has served 546 people since it opened last December. In that time, it has moved a combined 210 people into apartments of their own, a success rate of 38%. As of November, the organization was counting 130 successful housing placements, meaning many of those 210 people moved into units together, including couples.
“Previously, I would say my experience with some of these housing resources is (that) many organizations were left to implement them on their own,” Burwell said. “And now we are working more closely with the city and other community partners to … split up the responsibilities,” allowing each “to focus in and tailor our services to specific individual needs.”
Mayor is confident in “formula”
The initiative has been expensive. Including the start-up costs of acquiring and retrofitting properties like the former DoubleTree to turn them into suitable shelters, city officials expect to spend $154.8 million by the end of this year.
Next year, that startup spending will be in the rearview mirror. The program is expected to cost $57.5 million in 2025, city housing officials say.
Johnston has touted the city’s homelessness spending going down next year as a sign the program is stabilizing. But the recent audit cast a negative light on the city’s bookkeeping practices around homelessness shelters at large.
The audit covered not only the All In Mile High program but also emergency overnight shelters. Auditor Tim O’Brien’s office found that over more than two years, going back to before Johnston took office, the city didn’t clearly track how nearly $150 million in shelter spending was used.
“Without regular tracking of the department’s overall spending on homeless shelters, the department cannot effectively monitor or enforce accountability for shelter spending,” the audit report reads.
That report gave pause to people like Frey, in the West Colfax neighborhood. Over the last six months, Frey has heard from numerous neighbors about an increase in visible homelessness and aggressive behavior linked to drug use.
He and the neighborhood association are focused on making small differences, including by using micro-grants to improve lighting in alleys and encouraging neighbors to get to know each other and communicate about safety concerns. They’re also using the city’s 311 system to report problems, including neglected properties that have become magnets for bad behavior.
Frey emphasized that he views the problems in West Colfax as temporary and he wants the mayor’s homelessness initiative to succeed.
But, he added: “If you can’t tell the voters what their money is going toward, how can you demonstrate a return on investment? And we want that.”
Chandler, at the council committee meeting last month, laid out how forthcoming contracts for All In Mile High service providers will build on lessons learned this year. They will set standards for how many intake specialists, housing navigators and housing stability staff members will be needed to successfully hit housing placement goals. And they will set expectations for the generation of security needs assessments and plans for each site.
Johnston campaigned last year on a promise of ending street homelessness in Denver by the end of his first term in 2027. He says now that he believes the city has what it needs in the All In Mile High program.
“The formula is quite clear. We built it. We have the (shelter) units. We have the case management,” Johnston said. “The challenge is now to make sure the case management works really well — and then, of course, the next challenge is to make sure there are enough affordable units for people to move out to. That is the same challenge we see across the city.”
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