On a late August morning in downtown Denver, cleanup crews and police moved along a tree-lined street, shoving tents, furniture, bedding and other household items into garbage trucks as they cleared out an encampment of unhoused people.
“I'm trying to help people salvage things,” Sarah Glade, one of the people living in the encampment, said.
Glade has learned from experience to keep everything in a suitcase, ready to move. But that’s not the case for everyone.
“A lot of people are just ditching things that they need just because they can't carry it or don’t have a place for it right away," Glade said. "They're putting the pressure on us right now, so I'm just trying to help everybody get their stuff out.”
The cleanup was scheduled to start at 10 a.m., but police and city workers showed up two hours early. The people living there scrambled to collect their belongings while cleanup crews moved through the camp and ended up leaving a lot behind.
Officers on the scene said the downtown Denver encampment had become a safety issue for the surrounding community as well as for the people living in the camp.
“Anytime there's a safety concern, or health concern, we're conducting a cleanup,” Denver Police Department homelessness outreach team lead Sgt. Jaime Lucero said. "The safety concern here was, a couple of days ago there was a shooting. So the mayor's office decided we conduct the cleanup.”
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston declared a city-wide state of emergency over homelessness last summer, the day after he was elected. That state of emergency was extended this week by the City Council. Johnston’s senior advisor around homelessness, Cole Chandler, said part of the administration’s strategy involves relocating people instead of clearing them out.
“Our strategies for doing so involve a new approach to encampment outreach and encampment resolution,” Chandler said. “We're focused on surrounding a whole encampment and helping a whole encampment move indoors.”
There are about 1,400 unhoused individuals in Denver who lack consistent access to shelter. The Johnston administration’s goal is to shelter 1,000 of them by the end of this year. So far, they’ve successfully sheltered 101.
To provide shelter, the administration's plan is to create almost a dozen micro-communities across the city. Most will be made up of so-called tiny homes that can be constructed quickly and cheaply, while other shelters will consist of converted hotels. The strategy relies on state funding for homelessness programs that was set aside by a voter-approved ballot measure last year.
The administration is using other U.S. cities that have had success addressing homelessness as models—especially Houston, Texas. Chandler's team is also collaborating with six neighboring counties through the Metro Denver Homelessness Initiative.
“We recognize that we can't do that all alone as a local government,” Chandler said. “So we have to push on regional solutions, we have to push on state solutions, and we also have to push on real federal solutions and federal investment as well.”
Local collaborations to address homelessness also exist in other parts of the state, like the Northern Colorado Continuum of Care that covers Larimer and Weld counties. But while homelessness advocates say these collaborations are a good start, they’re not the regional or statewide approach that’s needed. Cathy Alderman with the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless said the onus can't fall on local initiatives alone.
“For far too long, we have assumed that homelessness is a local issue only,” Alderman said. “We've just expected local governments to come up with the resources, the strategies to address it."
Some places, including Weld and Douglas counties, have resisted implementing homelessness services out of a concernthat doing so will attract unhoused people to their communities. Alderman said the state needs to step in with more leadership towns and cities can rely on.
“If the state could help devise a strategy that then local governments could plug into, we'd have a much more cohesive and comprehensive approach,” Alderman said. “And it has to come with resources.”
Alderman said advocates like her remain anxious to see if the administration will be able to execute the lofty goals set out at the beginning.
Still, Alderman is encouraged by Mayor Johnston’s attention to homelessness and acknowledges he inherited an incredibly challenging situation.
“It speaks volumes to the community that on day two, he declared an emergency declaration," she said, "And that he's devoted a lot of staffing resources to figuring out some of these solutions.”
