The New York Times recently published an article called ‘We Know How to Fix Homelessness. Look at Denver’ claiming that Denver is successfully solving homelessness under Mayor Johnston. The article was written by a man who visited Denver for a few days, doing tours with the Mayor and with police (and ignoring everything they heard from our organizers).
This is false. The Mayor’s strategy is to hide houselessness, not solve it. Thousands of people are houseless in Denver – but now, with the significant increase in policing (150%) of houselessness, they are not seen – in unsafe hiding spots, unable to use tents and gear to protect from the weather, traumatized by enforcers. Mayor Johnston took control of the hotels the city had newly acquired to sweep as many downtown visible camps as possible and put those people in the hotels to create an image of ‘housing people,’ and then to send police on these blocks every day to push any houseless people off. In this way, he has been able to create a facade of housing houseless people.
The Mayor claims great success in housing people, but in reality the number of people housed in these past three years has been consistent with past years. The only additional housing the city is providing is rapid rehousing – which is only one year of rental assistance and then the person is left to pay full rent on their own. This of course does not work – people land back houseless. Furthermore, 47% of people in the hotel sites are exiting back to the streets or shelters, not housing.
The Mayor points to the Point in Time count to claim success in reducing houselessness (a one day count of visible homelessness widely recognized as a flawed undercount) instead of looking at the increase in evictions or the massive increase in houseless families leading to a roughly 400 family long waitlist for family shelter.
Other cities should not look to Denver.
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