The Friday announcement of Denver’s new pending hotel-turned-housing project is the latest of several new projects in the works across the city to provide non-congregate shelter options for unhoused people.
Abandoned hotels turned into supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness have existed in Denver for a while now, but their use during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic as emergency shelters showed many community leaders their worth.
Now, the city is in the process of acquiring the Best Western Central Park Hotel at 4595 Quebec St. for $26 million, which will open up the 194-room hotel as a shelter before eventually converting it into supportive housing.
But the city isn’t the only one seeing the benefit of these projects.
For the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, these hotel shelters have become a way to meet the needs of unhoused people in a stabilizing and uplifting environment, said Cathy Alderman, chief communications and public policy officer at the coalition.
“These non-congregate shelter options are a more dignified way to say, ‘let’s bring you inside. Let’s give you a space that is your own, essentially. Let’s help you recover from the chaos of sleeping outside or living in shelters and start working on a long-term housing plan,’” Alderman said.
Non-congregate shelters like old hotels and motels give people a room of their own, unlike traditional shelters where people stay in the same large room as in barracks. Alderman said this provides more stability for people who have been unsheltered, which can help break the cycle of chronic homelessness.
“We found (during the pandemic) that it served as a really powerful platform for rehousing people,” said Angie Nelson, deputy director of housing stability and homelessness resolution for the City of Denver’s Department of Housing Stability. “The nice thing about non-congregate shelter is it ends up feeling more like housing. You have some privacy; you have some autonomy in your stay.”
Sheltering in a non-congregate setting means clients can set their own schedules and have a secure place to store their belongings.
The hotels have also been safe spaces for people who may not be suited for traditional shelters.
Couples and families are often turned away from traditional shelters or asked to separate, and transgender and non-binary people, victims of domestic abuse and people with mental health challenges can feel unsafe in environments with a lot of strangers.
“Housing fits everyone,” Nelson said. “No matter what your unique needs are, no matter what your family composition is. Housing is the thing that really fits.”
Because of that, Nelson said the city has invested about $25 million into non-congregate shelter projects, not including the recent pending purchase of the Best Western, and has about $23 million more allocated for future projects.
The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless also has purchased or helped fund such projects.
The nonprofit purchased the former Clarion Inn at 200 W. 48th Avenue in December 2022 and will convert the old hotel into a supportive and transitional housing center called Renewal Village after recently securing $10.4 million in reimbursement funding from the city through the American Rescue Plan Act.
Renewal Village, when it opens in 2024, will have 108 units of supportive housing and 107 units of transitional housing, as well as clinical care onsite and resources for housing past the shelter.
“Shelter is an emergency response and is great because it gets people safely inside, but people are not always getting connected to services that are going to get them into housing,” Alderman said.
The Park Avenue Inn, another non-congregate shelter that was a La Quinta Inn and opened during the COVID-19 pandemic for vulnerable people, was given new life earlier this year when the city gave the Colorado Coalition of the Homeless a $5 million contract to help support the operations of the facility.
Additionally, two motels in the East Colfax neighborhood are also going to turn into non-congregate temporary housing.
The Fax Partnership (The Fax), an East Colfax-based nonprofit founded in 2004, purchased in September 2022 the Westerner and Sand & Sage motels located at 8405 and 8415 E. Colfax to create the temporary shelters.
“With this acquisition, our organization fulfills its mission to both support those who are in the community now and ensure future redevelopment is affordable so our residents stay here,” said Monica Martinez, executive director of The Fax, in a news release after the acquisition.
The Park Avenue Inn and the two East Colfax motels are slated to eventually be torn down and turned into affordable housing developments to address Denver’s housing crisis.
Another city project, the Stay Inn at 12033 E. 38th Ave., which was purchased in January, is also addressing the housing crisis by being turned into supportive housing immediately without having a temporary purpose as a shelter.
“The point of our shelter programs is to be flexible and meet the needs of the people who are in front of us,” Nelson said. “We just continue to see these as part of that overall ecosystem of support to help people get inside and (get) access to housing.”
Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.
