DENVER — After spending an estimated $100 million to house people who are homeless in hotel shelters, the City of Denver says it’s found a new plan that might work better. The city now wants to move the homeless population directly into apartments and help them pay rent for a year. The plan would avoid the hotels completely.
"This skips the expensive interim step," Cole Chandler, the mayor's senior advisor on homelessness, told Denver City Council Wednesday. "This takes people directly into housing."
Chandler asked city council for $5 million to move people directly from the streets into leased apartments, partnering with a service called Housing Connector. The city would use $4,250,350 of that sum to pay rent and put deposits down for apartments for 250 people for up to a year.
"Instead of moving folks indoors to a temporary option, we’re skipping over that temporary option and taking people straight to a leased housing unit," Chandler said.
It’s a major change of course for Mayor Mike Johnston’s homelessness initiative. The All In Mile High program, formerly known as House1000, has already moved more than 1,200 people into hotel shelters. However very few of those people are moving on to permanent housing. So far, only 45 have left the hotels for leased units of their own. 165 have left to be homeless again.
Frustration is growing on city council.
"We have put $100 million into a program where we know 73% of the people leaving it are failing," City Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer said.
The new plan to move people directly into housing uses American Rescue Plan money left over from the pandemic. When that runs out, councilmembers fear it’s not clear what comes next.
"You cannot have sustainable programs without a sustainable funding source," Sawyer said. "We now have $100 million in contracts that we could’ve taken those dollars and spent them on a program like this and gotten people directly into housing instead of in shelter. Instead, we declared an emergency on day one and missed this until nine months later."
The mayor’s office still won’t say exactly how much money Johnston’s homelessness initiative has cost since he took office.
"We’re still actively working on that," Chandler said, months after his office promised to have a number by early May.
Our best estimate looking at what city council has approved so far is a cost of more than $100 million.
"Come on. This is bordering on ridiculousness now. It’s embarrassing not to be able to tell a constituent what this costs," Councilwoman Stacy Gilmore said.
With this new Housing Connector program, people who move into leased apartments paid for by the city will be offered services and will be paired with a social worker. However, there are no requirements for people to show up to meetings with their social worker or participate in any rehabilitation programs. It's unknown whether they’re required to have a job or be looking for a job in order to get their rent paid for.
The city doesn’t want to do away completely with the hotel shelters. In fact, Chandler says the city needs the shelters along with this new plan to take people directly into housing.
"This brings another tool into our tool belt that helps us serve more people and helps us to do in a way that’s really fiscally responsible," Chandler said.
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