Denver shelter to kick out infant with contagious disease because family member borrowed someone’s phone charger

Denver has less than 303 shelter rooms available for families on the streets. Before May of this year, this number was 30 rooms less, but Volunteers of America doubled capacity from 30 to 60 rooms by renovating the Theodora in City Council District 3. While this should mean that more families are provided for and kept off the streets, extremely rigid rules keep residents in danger. Most recently, two families faced eviction from the shelter for one simple reason – a broken phone charger.

One rule of the shelter is that you cannot go into another resident’s room. However, when a teenager’s phone charger stopped working, she entered another family’s room to charge her phone. That simple action ended up putting both families at a level of risk they could’ve never anticipated. There had been no prior warning, no written warning or notice, nor paperwork of eviction – it’s one strike, and you’re out.

First family already kicked out:

The family whose room had the phone charger was told for the first time on Friday the 18th that they’d be kicked out on Sunday. This allowed for absolutely no time – not even one business weekday – to try and connect them to any other shelter resource. The mom is 24 years old, 6 months pregnant, with a 3 year old son. They are now in a hotel paid for by a concerned community member. She was originally told the reason she was being kicked out was the phone charger, but then they claimed she was there for over 90 days and they were suddenly enforcing a time limit.

Second family about to be kicked out:

The family with the broken phone charger is still at Theodora, but only until tomorrow, Tuesday July 22nd. The single reason they were given a few more days than the other family was because they have a 2 year old infant with a highly contagious disease – Hand-foot-and-mouth disease, or HFMD for short (pictured above). This disease is contagious for up to two weeks, and the infant has only had it for a few days. The mother has been raising the 2 year old alongside 12 and 16 year old daughters by herself ever since her own partner, who was working legally with a work permit as a janitor at Anshutz Children’s Hospital, was detained while headed to work and sent to an immigration detention center, where he is still fighting his case to be free and reunited with his family. They have only been in the shelter for around 1 month – nowhere close to any supposed 90-day time limit.

HAND is still actively learning about other families having been kicked out for arbitrary reasons:

• We learned of another family kicked out 2 weeks ago with a 4 month old baby and 1 month pregnant mom (due to birth control failing) and her partner currently living in their car after only spending one month inside Theodora and being told they reached their 90-day limit.
• We just received videos of a family with young daughters watching as the family is locked out of the building and all their personal items are pushed out the door in trash bags.

What we hope for right now is straight-forward:

1. Justice for these families, a safe place for them to stay immediately to raise their children until they have housing secured, and a
2. Review and rehaul of Theodora’s and Volunteers of America’s punitive processes to prevent other families from being kicked out for arbitrary reasons, let alone without a clear verbal, written, and final warning protocol followed. Otherwise, high-turnover will render these 60 family shelter rooms utterly useless. 

In the long run, this follows a pattern of Denver-contracted shelters imposing unnecessary and unbearably stringent rules on our community members who just need somewhere safe and stable to lay their heads at night. If the City of Denver continues to pay for shelter contracts without applying baseline, across-the-board standards of operations and staff training, including an eviction appeals process, then residents will keep suffering and many will end up back on the streets. 

Our houseless individuals and families need dignity, not deserting! We need doors that lock, not doors that revolve!
To support these families or for media inquiries, please contact HAND at 701-484-2634 or info@housekeysactionnetwork.com