After weeks of closed-door discussions and negotiations, Denver’s city leadership has shown some of its cards when it comes to just where it hopes to provide temporary housing as part of Mayor Mike Johnston‘s attempts to end unsheltered homelessness.
But the new mayor emphasized the list of addresses his administration released on Thursday morning is just the beginning. There is still work to be done before the city is ready to relocate entire homeless encampments into housing as he described on the campaign trail earlier this year. He remains hopeful those “moving days” are coming in November and December.
Johnston released the location of 11 sites across the city Thursday, nine of which are possible locations for so-called micro-communities of tiny homes or other types of prefabricated shelters and two of which are hotel conversions that the city has already committed money to.
All told, the 11 properties, owned either by the city, other public agencies or private owners willing to work with the administration, could provide enough space for Johnston to hit his goal of offering shelter to 1,000 people living on the street, the mayor said. He set that target on his second day in office when he declared homelessness an emergency in Denver.
But the preliminary list does not mean the administration’s work is finished, Johnston emphasized. There is still permitting and site work required at many of the 11 preliminary options and the administration is continuing to negotiate with other property owners privately to secure more locations.
“We think all of these are promising sites that could work and they provide us a path to 1,000,” Johnston said Thursday. “But we will also continuously work on sourcing more sites so that we have a pipeline for those.”
The preliminary locations are:
Address: 1498 N. Irving St.
Potential Use: Micro community
Owner: City and County of Denver
City Council District 3
Address: 5500 E. Yale Ave.
Potential Use: Micro community
Owner: Private
City Council District 4
Address: 1380 S. Birch St.
Potential Use: Micro community
Owner: Private
City Council District 6
Address: 2301 S. Sante Fe Drive
Potential Use: Micro community
Owner: Colorado Department of Transportation
City Council District 7
Address: 950 W. Alameda Ave.
Potential Use: Micro community
Owner: Colorado Department of Transportation
City Council District 7
Address: 12033 E. 38th Ave.
Potential Use: Hotel/Micro-Community
Owner: City and County of Denver
City Council District 8
Address: 4595 N. Quebec St.
Potential Use: Hotel
Owner: Denver Housing Authority
City Council District 8
Address: 3700 N. Galapago St.
Potential Use: Micro community
Owner: Colorado Department of Transportation
City Council District 9
Address: 1375 N. Elati St.
Potential Use: Micro community
Owner: City and County of Denver
City Council District 10
Address: 1199 N. Bannock St.
Potential Use: Micro community
Owner: Private
City Council District 10
Address: 5000 Tower Road
Potential Use: Micro community
Owner: Denver Health and Hospital Authority
City Council District 11
The city has already put money behind the two hotel properties on the list. That includes backing bonds the Denver Housing Authority intends to use to acquire the 194-room former Best Western hotel at 4595 N. Quebec St. That hotel could be converted to a homeless shelter run by the Salvation Army before the end of the year before eventually becoming long-term supportive housing, city officials said last month.
Last week, Johnston touted the city finally acquiring the former Stay Inn hotel also in the city’s Central Park neighborhood at 12033 E. 38th Ave. That purchase, in the works for two years with financial backing secured in part by U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, brings another 96 bedrooms into the fold for homelessness resolution.
Johnston on Thursday rejected the notion that the administration’s map was focused on northern and western portions of the city, areas that make up the so-called inverted L of lower-income neighborhoods that for decades were epicenters of the city’s Black and Latino communities because of discriminatory housing practices.
The city remains in negotiations with private property owners in other corners of town. If those talks come to fruition, Johnston is confident there will be communities set up in all 11 Denver City Council Districts, another priority of his.
“What we’ll see is they actually do represent geographic diversity across the city and they do represent socio-economic diversity in where they’re located,” Johnston said of a more “exhaustive” list yet to come.
District 5 City Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer has been critical of the Johnston administration’s approach to homelessness. She has twice voted against extending the emergency declaration that is helping speed up some of the work. She also said that residents of her affluent east Denver district are not interested in subverting existing land use plans to make way for micro-communities.
This week, Sawyer lauded the Johnston administration for bringing forward a $7 million contract to buy 200 prefabricated, quick-to-setup housing units from shelter provider Pallet, structures she views as far superior to the tents that are now being used in temporary Safe Outdoor Spaces.
Johnston on Thursday said he recently toured District 5 with Sawyer and believes she is open to partnership.
“We do have a site in District 5 that we’re excited about,” Johnston said. “We’ve talked to the councilman there about it. We’ve talked with private landowners there who are willing to be partners and so we’re optimistic that we have a path to a potential site in District 5 but we’re still working on negotiations.”
The site announcement came on the same morning that city crews performed a sweep, or cleanup, of a large encampment near the corner of East 18th Avenue and Logan Street.
Johnston has emphasized that he plans only to authorize sweeps in special circumstances. He views them as largely ineffective, only moving unhoused people and their tents from one block to another, unless there is housing available to offer them.
But in this case, Johnston said the sweep could not wait.
The camp was cleared with less than 48 hours notice after a shooting there on Monday wounded two people living there, including 28-year-old Josef Steele. The Army veteran said he was hit in the back while shielding his sister from the bullets.
Denver police are offering a reward for one suspect in that shooting, 55-year-old Eugeneo Hinojosa. Hinojosa did not live in the camp but the mayor said Thursday there was a second shooter involved in Monday’s violence and there was a separate “gun incident” in the camp about a month ago that factored into the decision to order the sweep.
Johnston visited the large encampment, estimated by advocates to be home to more than 50 people earlier this week, on Tuesday and spoke with Steele. That conversation helped hammer home for the mayor that the camp was not safe for the unhoused people living there or for the people living in apartments nearby, he said.
“What we know most of all is this underscores the urgency of why this strategy is so important,” Johnston said of the shooting, the sweep and his micro-community focus. “Right now, when we look at the places where we have tiny home communities, where we have Safe Outdoor Spaces, we have dramatic reductions in police activity.”
On Thursday morning, one of the encampment residents who was packing up his tent was Wilfredo Gomez. Gomez met Johnston on Aug. 3Â at an encampment in the 2200 block of Stout Street that was swept because of a rat infestation.
“Lucky, huh?” Gomez said of being swept for a second time in a matter of weeks. Asked what he planned to do next, he replied “I don’t know.”
Another resident of the camp, Dina Weller, broke down her tent with help from advocates from the grassroots group Housekeys Action Network Denver on Thursday. Her tent had a bullet hole in it. She believes the bullet that nearly hit her was the one that wounded Steele.
Weller, 58, planned to move to an encampment near 20th and Champa Street with her dog, Sparkles. That encampment has portable toilets provided by the city, she heard.
Weller had to take several breaks from packing her belongings to be sick. After city officials notified residents they planning to sweep the encampment on Tuesday her nerves got the better of her. She couldn’t even keep down liquids.
“We were keeping it clean. We weren’t blocking the sidewalk,” Weller said. “I think the shooting was an excuse to move us.”
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