Rodeway Residents Deliver Petition to City of Denver Demanding Housing
Tuesday June 27th 2023, residents of Rodeway Inn delivered a petition to the Office of Housing Stability (HOST) – signed by 44 residents – to secure housing or bridge hotel stays until housing is secured. Residents created this petition to make their voices heard and demand a written answer from the City on providing hotel stays for all residents when the Rodeway closes until they can move into permanent housing.
This petition is also signed by the Gathering Place (who run the Rodeway) and the Reciprocity Collective (who are helping with housing navigation with the approaching closure).
The Rodeway Inn is the only women, transgender, gender inclusive hotel shelter in Denver. It is a critical safe place for people who are otherwise unsafe on the streets or in shelters.
At the meeting Tuesday night when residents delivered this petition to HOST residents shared their fear of being kicked back to the shelters naming that this may lead suidice. Women told of how if they do not get housing secured they will not be able to get their kids back. Residents asked direct questions of HOST about what they are doing to ensure housing for all residents and again and again, residents were told to “engage with their case managers” to seek housing.
While much work is being done by the Gathering Place, the Reciprocity Collective, and some others to secure housing for all Rodeway residents, the needed housing is not secured yet. The City is not providing any housing. And Denver Housing Authority (DHA), who own this property and are responsible for displacing all these residents, has only provided a small number of housing vouchers for less than a quarter of the residents – acting like giving some tokin vouchers will amend for their act of kicking 71 houseless women to nowhere!@#
The Rodeway Inn is owned by DHA, leased to the City, and operated by Gathering Place. DHA bought this property with “D3” dollars (bond money specifically meant for low-income housing in partnership with the City) and yet are planning to sell off this property for private market rate housing!@$ – saying they will use the money made to buy other properties for low-income housing. This “trickle down” housing tactic makes the most ideal housing locations for rich people, and makes poor people wait for some of those dollars to trickle down into housing in worse locations, years later – after they have been displaced to the shelters or streets. All in the interest of profit!%$ DHA should keep this property, do needed renovations/rebuild, and ensure it can remain housing for formerly houseless women and the transgender community!
In this petition all the residents are asking is for the surety that they will have a safe hotel room to stay in until the secure permanent housing. This City has done this before with Aloft residents when that hotel closed and they can do it again for Rodeway residents. Residents just need the City to commit to this now to ensure some mental stability as they face displacement at the end of August.