Through the years, Denver has treated Trinidad “Trini” Rodriguez well.
The city helped elevate him from a point where he and his mother weren’t always sure where they were going to live to a commissioner seat on the Denver Housing Authority. He’s worked with the Downtown Denver Partnership and state agencies alike.
And now he wants to pay it forward, to give back to the city that helped him.
“Denver is clearly facing many challenges today, from affordability and homelessness to rising crime,” Rodriguez said. “I believe in the city. I want to fight for it, to build my vision.”
Speaking of his childhood in west Denver, Rodriguez, 49, will mention housing insecurity, violence, struggles with his mental health and more.
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But for each challenge, there was a balancing force.
The Denver Housing Authority helped him and his mother find a home, which offered them a modicum of stability.
He mentions a break-in, during which the criminals assaulted his mother. Rodriguez, nine at the time, said he wondered how he’d ever feel safe enough to sleep again. But Denver police arrived on the scene and helped him feel secure once more.
These days, after spending decades working in finance and policy and now living in the Country Club neighborhood, Rodriguez said he considers his childhood a gift of sorts. The difficult times propelled him forward, pushed him toward solutions, he said.
Rodriguez acknowledges he’s running for mayor among a crowded field. While he’s never held elected office he’s intimately familiar with the inner workings of government from his time with city and state agencies, which also include Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources and Gov. Jared Polis’s Policy office and the Office of Energy Conservation.
During his career, Rodriguez said he helped secure funding for affordable housing projects, schools, hospitals and clinics.
That experience sets him apart from the other candidates, Rodriguez said. And it all puts him in a good position to push Denver in a new direction.
“My vision is that we will build a city where every Denverite can go on to achieve their measure of success, regardless of the neighborhood they’re in,” he said. “That vision feels like a far-off vision, sitting here today.”
He’d start with homelessness, which would need an investment in the services available to those experiencing trauma and mental health issues. Rodriguez notes that some people living on Denver’s streets have become a danger to themselves and others and resist treatment. So he’d work to enact a system of voluntary and involuntary holds.
Involuntary holds wouldn’t be part of the criminal system, Rodriguez said, but would meet a “humane” standard of care. New York City Mayor Eric Adams has a similar, yet still controversial, plan.
Rodriguez said he’d declare homelessness a state of emergency and set up a temporary field hospital, near which he’d want his mayoral office to be set up.
As for housing, Rodriguez said the city needs more stock, of every kind. The city might have to borrow money to expedite the process and its offices must also help developers cut through red tape for their projects.
The police force must also grow, Rodriguez said. Denver’s much larger now than it was in the late 1990s but the Police Department remains the same size as it was then. He’d hire hundreds more officers and that likely means cuts elsewhere in the city budget.
But he emphasizes that the cuts should be temporary. As quality of life improves in Denver, so too will the city’s finances.
“Business will come back and it will come to Denver,” he said. “The revenue will come with it.”
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