DENVER — The city and county of Denver has announced plans to expand its cold weather shelter plan, by opening additional facilities and changing thresholds for them to open.
Beginning this winter, the city will offer three cold weather shelters anytime the temperature drops below 25 degrees. Previously, the forecasted temperature had to drop below 20 degrees for the city’s shelter to open.
Additionally, those shelters will be open 24 hours a day, instead of just overnight.
“People can lose fingers, toes, we’re talking life-threatening cold at times,” said Jon Ewing. “Anything you can do to convince someone to come inside, you’ve got to do it.”
Ewing is a spokesperson for the Denver’s Mayor’s office, which announced the plans Friday.
To open the shelters, the city will be consolidating newcomer shelter operations, as the flow of migrants from the southern border has slowed to a trickle.
“It’s a big day,” said Ewing. “It wasn’t that long ago that we were talking about how do we get 5,000 people out of shelter, and today we’re talking about how can we use the shelter for another purpose now that there are no newcomers in it.”
Denver received fewer than 160 migrant newcomers in August, according to the city. Ewing says one newcomer shelter has been taken out of operation due to low visitation, and another one is seeing just a handful of visitors each day.
“It’s an empty spot,” said Ewing. “So we just said let’s take these sites, we’re not seeing newcomers anywhere near what we used to, and let’s turn those into the cold weather shelters.”
Dr. Joshua Barocas with the University of Colorado School of Medicine said the move could save lives. According to the city, the plan could expand cold weather shelter access from around 40 nights a year to more than 80 days and nights per year.
“Anytime we can raise that threshold, we are protecting people from the cold,” he said. “We’re protecting people for 24 hours, as opposed to just a 12 hour period where they might also be wet, where there might also be wind, we are definitely doing a better job at protecting them from those preventable hospitalizations and injuries.”
The new plan will begin later this month.