DENVER — Denver Mayor Mike Johnston spoke Thursday afternoon about efforts to address homelessness in the city and the continued arrival of migrants from the southern U.S. border.
Johnston is facing two crises simultaneously. The needs presented by people who are unhoused, and a new surge in migrant arrivals overlap, because people need places to stay.
"From the beginning we have said we think these are distinct populations with very different sets of needs, that use different interventions to support them," Johnston said during the press conference.
A surge at the southern U.S. border has increased the number of migrants being sheltered in Denver. The number of migrants staying in shelters in Denver has more than tripled since the mayor was sworn in. On Thursday, more than 1,900 migrants are in non-city facilities.
"We have had a significant influx of migrants mostly due to Governor Abbott in Texas who has been chartering buses full of buses to arrive in the city and county of Denver," Johnston said.
A recent development that Johnston said he believes will help is the Biden administration's approval of Temporary Protective Status for Venezuelan immigrants, which gives asylum seekers a pathway to employment.
"We have people who want to work," he said. "I also get calls from employers around the city who want the hire the people who have arrived, and we had the federal government getting in the way."
On Sept. 15, the City of Denver issued a Request for Proposal to contract out five types of services: program management, running the reception center, shelter operations, transportation and donation management.
Johnston also said the city is working with migrants to send them to their preferred destinations in appropriate situations.
"We still continue to see, particularly in what I would call these involuntary arrivals, which are folks that have been put on a bus by Gov. Abbott and sent to us, many of those folks had no plans on coming to Denver," he said. "For many of these folks, we're helping either connect them to family or services where they wanted to arrive … and for folks that do want to stay, we're getting them connected to work options."
The mayor's office said capacity in migrant shelters is strained as the city sees more arriving. It's why Johnston said they are working on opening new facilities and talking with community partners who have expressed interest in helping.
Johnston said placements for the unhoused are deliberately all non-congregate shelters, such as hotel rooms or micro-communities. For migrants, the federal government only reimburses Denver for congregate shelter sites.
"We are looking at space at the same time for different populations," he said.
Families have a 30-day limit at migrant shelters. Community partners are trying to work with them to find permanent housing options, and even potentially paying first month's rent.
When it comes to long-term needs, Johnston is focused on finding long-term housing for people experiencing homelessness.
In his first action as Denver's mayor in July, Johnston declared homelessness a city emergency. The goal of the emergency declaration is to get 1,000 people who are currently experiencing homelessness on the street into housing by the end of the year. The city has budgeted $48 million for this so far.
For the first time, Denver offered hotel rooms to people living on the streets ahead of a scheduled camp sweep in the area of 7th and 8th avenues and Grant and Logan streets on Monday.
The city said nearly everyone who was offered housing at the camp chose to accept it and move into the hotel. Johnston said on Thursday that 83 people were offered housing and they all accepted.
"That is a site we will now keep closed to future camping with the knowledge that those individuals that were there, we were able to transition them off the streets and into housing," he said.
>Video below: Johnston's full news conference on Thursday:
He said the city wasn't able to offer housing to everyone at the camp because the population increased after a point-in-time count was done.
"People are so anxious to get access to [housing] that we will see in-migration into encampments where we're doing rehousing," Johnston said. "We're prepared for that. We'll adjust for that."
Johnston said the city collected information from people who were not housed, and they are on priority lists to be sheltered as units become available.
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