Housekeys Action Network Denver Scorecard for Mayor Johnston
In order to evaluate Mayor Johnston’s actions around houselessness over his first 5 months in-office for 2023, we created a scorecard that lists specific promises made by the Mayor during the campaign trail (Mayor’s campaign commitment), commitments he made while in-office (Mayor’s in-office commitment), and asks the houseless community and advocates have made of him (Community demands). This method of evaluation allows for all to review specifics about what the Mayor has done (or not) in response to houselessness, how his actions align (or don’t) with his promises, and how that aligns (or doesn’t) with what the community has been asking for.
This scorecard shows that Mayor Johnston has continually made promises he has not kept – including the promise to support no freezing sweeps which he vetoed once in office. It shows that he has taken credit for the work of others – most significantly in the case of the hotels used for his “house” 1000 initiative which he had nothing to do with securing as they were all being acquired by the City before he even came into office. These hotels would have been used to put up houseless people regardless of who was Mayor. Mayor Johnston just took them as his own and used them to put the most visible houseless people and take credit for “clearing the streets.” The scorecard also shows that we (the on ground houseless advocacy community) have tried to work with him over these first months, making countless specific asks for small doable things, and the Mayor has not done almost any of these asks. All of this has led to an Overall Grade of D for Mayor Johnston in 2023.
HAND qualifications for scoring: Over the first five months of Mayor Johnston’s time in office, we (us in HAND as well as Mutual Aid Monday, Together Denver, and other on ground mutual aid and advocates) have met with him and/or his staff frequently to keep them informed of our outreach results, which include thousands of unhoused voices on various aspects of the issue. Early on, we had weekly meetings with Mayoral staff, laying out details of our recommendations for action to improve life for houseless people in Denver. This scorecard includes some, but not all, of the recommendations and asks that we made to the Mayor over this timeframe. By looking at what was asked for and what he has done, you can see that the Mayor only partially did an 9% present (4 of 42 asks listed were partially done) of what was asked. No ask was done completely. The Mayor and his staff did make time and space to listen to us, but did not put what we told him into action.
This could always still change! We would love for the Mayor to see this scorecard as an opportunity to improve his score over the next few months. Even if he just did a few of the small asks we have made of him, he could improve his score!
Mayor’s overall grades: Through this scoring system, the Mayor received an Overall Grade of D. This was a combined scoring of his stated commitment to the topic, the current status of his actions, and whether or not he listened to the community. These things range from small asks like not using fencing during sweeps or posting information about storage, to bigger asks like stopping sweeps and camping ban enforcement. They also include asks about transparency and accountability for shelters, like posting reasons for exits from hotel shelters and overhauling unjust rules at these sites.
The Mayor was separately scored on his level of tendency to follow-through on his own commitments, and received a C- for Follow-Thru on his promises. This is a measure of honesty to his own word – not alignment with community asks.
Specific scoring methodology: For the purposes of this score card, grades were assigned accordingly – A=1.0=100%, B=0.75=75%, C=0.5=50%, D=0.25=25%, F=0.0=0%.
The Follow-Thru Grade was determined separately by counting the number of TRUE occurrences when the Mayor fulfilled his commitment/promise (19.5) out of the total categories (42). Half-scores (0.5) were assigned in cases where it was both TRUE & FALSE or MISLEADING, with context provided in the comments.
The Mayor’s Overall Grade was determined by using the other 3 columns (Mayor’s Commitment, Current Status, Mayor Listened) and assigning a score between 0 to 1 (for example, a “No” commitment on the people’s demand would result in a binary score of “0” while “Yes” would positively reflect as “1”). Partial scoring was applied in instances where partial progress was made – indicated by words like “In Progress”, “Partial”, “Somewhat”. These scores were then averaged between the 3 columns (Mayor’s Commitment score + Current Status score + Mayor Listened score, the sum of which was divided by 3) to attain an overall score for the individual demand. These were averaged again for each section, when applicable (Mayor’s campaign commitment, Mayor’s in-office commitment, Community demands) to create scores for each, which were then again averaged to determine overall scores for the overarching categories (SWEEPS, HYGIENE, DRUG USE CRIMINALIZATION, etc). Finally, these category scores were averaged to determine the Mayor’s Overall Score of ~29% and Overall Grade of D.
Part of being an elected official is being accountable to the people. Evaluating the Mayor’s performance since being voted into office is part of this critical piece of democracy. We will continue to ask the Mayor for action based on the direction of people without housing, we will continue to hold him accountable to his promises, and we will hope for change in 2024!
Credit: Thanks to “LUNA, a Woman’s Uprising Initiative” for inspiring the general template we used here!
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