DENVER — The City of Denver is seeking bids for service providers who can serve 40 to 100 people at seven to 10 planned "micro-communities" for people experiencing homelessness.
> Video above: Denver installs portable toilet near homeless camp.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and Cole Chandler, who is leading his efforts to address homelessness, spoke about the plans for the sites during a news conference Wednesday.
Johnston said the city is putting out the request for proposal (RFP) on Wednesday and is seeking any organization willing and able to provide the requested services.
> Watch the full news conference below:
Johnston said the RFPs are focused on soliciting smaller, local, community-based nonprofit organizations, which he said is different from how they've been structured in the past.
The city is seeking bids for site operations, wrap-around services, direct provisions from community-based providers and more, Johnston said.
"Typically, in the City and County of Denver, there's only been one organization that's worked in this space, so we're excited about the opportunity to open this up and allow other nonprofit organizations to bid on it," Chandler said. "We know that it's going to take a whole ecosystem of service providers to scale up this effort related to micro-communities."
Chandler also said the city does not have specific costs in mind, and wants organizations to bid what they think it will take to provide adequate services.
Johnston said an RFP is also open for bids on the construction of units for the micro-communities.
"This fits the design of how the services operate," Johnston said. "We want to take what has historically been very concentrated services for a large number of people in a small part of the city, and decentralize those. So you have people in smaller communities spread out in different parts of the city with different kinds of providers who provide different kinds of support."
Johnston also announced the city acquired another property, The Stay Inn on 38th Avenue, for transitional housing for people experiencing homelessness. He said it can house about 100 people at a time.
Johnston said the funding for the acquisition and other similar purchases comes from the federal government.
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