Denver will dedicate $5 million in federal COVID-19 recovery funds to efforts to move more than 250 people off the city’s streets and directly into rented apartments over the next two years.

It’s a fast-lane approach to homelessness resolution that would skip over the converted hotel shelters and micro-communities that so far have been the central pillars of Mayor Mike Johnston’s All In Mile High homelessness initiative.

The City Council on Monday voted 8 to 2 to authorize a two-year contract with Housing Connector to power that work.

A self-described “tech-for-good” nonprofit, Housing Connector works directly with landlords and property managers to secure rental housing for people experiencing homelessness and help those people stay housed in the short term. The goal is to provide stability while case managers work with recipients on long-term housing plans.

In a pilot program earlier this year, Housing Connector found rental units for 10 people who had been living on the city’s streets. All of those people remain housed as of this week, Midori Higa, the city’s director of homeless resolution programs, told council members Monday. The organization helped secure units for another 17 people last week, Higa said.

“This is a great program,” Councilman Darrell Watsonc said before casting an affirmative vote. “It is a clear process with real clear… accountability as far as the outcomes and the stability that it provides…”

Housing Connector is obligated to put $4,250,350 of the total contract amount into financial assistance for people living on Denver’s streets.

The contract, which runs through the end of May 2026, includes benchmarks to serve 170 households this year and another 80 in 2025. Households can mean individuals, couples or family units, so the total number of people served is likely to be well over 250.

Housing Connector has helped house 7,000 people across four states since it was founded in 2019, and has an eviction rate of less than 1%, Carla Archambault, the company’s vice president of people and market operations, told the council.

The arrangement ran into opposition from two council members — Stacie Gilmore and Amanda Sawyer — who expressed frustration Monday with what they view as the Johnston administration’s opaque approach to funding the All In Mile High initiative.

Sawyer raised concerns about the Housing Connector program being funded through Denver’s $308 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds, one-time federal COVID relief money that will expire in 2026. She foresees a dangerous funding gap for the mayor’s homelessness work because of the adminstration’s reliance on one-time funding.

Gilmore, who resigned her post as the chair of the council’s Safety, Housing, Education and Homelessness Committee last year over concerns about Johnston’s homelessness spending, noted that the council is scheduled to receive more information about the All In Mile High budget on Tuesday. But without more specifics on Monday, she said she could not continue to support the work.

“I, in good faith, can’t vote affirmatively for this tonight because we haven’t been transparent to the public through presenting to them and our constituents what the All In Mile High budget is,” Gilmore said.

Johnston’s office has estimated the total cost of the All In Mile High initiative at just shy of $90 million for 2023 and 2024, but has so far not provided specific totals for what it takes to operate each hotel shelter and micro-community site despite Gilmore’s repeated requests for those figures.

All In Mile High, formerly known as House 1,000, has moved nearly 1,600 people off the city’s streets since Johnston launched it on his first full day in office last July. While 497 of those people have moved into what city officials described as “permanent housing” — many of them directly from the streets — 775 were living in city-provided shelters as of Monday afternoon.

Just 45 people have graduated from a city hotel shelter or micro-community to a leased unit so far, while 165 people have left those sites to return to unsheltered homelessnessness, 10 people have died and 28 people have gone to jail, according to city data. The outcomes for 47 people were listed as unknown as of Monday afternoon.

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Originally Published: June 18, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.