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Residents point to homelessness as top issue facing new Denver mayor

While campaigning to lead Denver, Johnston pledged to end homelessness by the end of his first term.

DENVER — Mike Johnston focused extensively on Denver’s homelessness problem during his campaign. It was the top issue among a list of priorities on his campaign website. And Monday, people who live, work in and visit Denver made it clear they feel the same way.

“We need housing,” said Ana Gloom, standing outside the Elle Caulkins Opera House during Johnston’s swearing-in ceremony. “We don't need tiny homes. We don't need SOS camps. We need housing.

“Those are temporary solutions. We need actual long-term solutions.”

Gloom was among a group of people demonstrating outside the inauguration. A 9NEWS reporter asked each of them the same question: What should be Johnston’s top priority now that he’s taken office?

All of them gave the same answer: homelessness.

Gloom lived on the streets for three years before obtaining stable housing – and, along with others, listed homelessness as the most pressing concern Johnston faces.

“The Denver mayor has a lot of power, a lot of sway in the city,” Gloom said. “He can be pushing city council and other agencies to be doing the things that are needed.”

A couple blocks away on the 16th Street Mall, Kelly Loud had just come from cleaning a kiosk. What he sees on the streets, he said, makes him fear that visitors won’t want to come to Denver if changes aren’t made.

“Everybody wants to come to Denver, everybody wants to experience Denver, but we want them to go back with a great experience, not a bad experience.” Loud said.

It was the same story in the Civic Center, where Jerrold Miller said that he wants the new mayor to take on the difficult issue in a way that hasn’t been done in the past.

“It'd be nice to see Denver at least do something,” he said. “They haven't even begun to address homelessness. It’s rampant.”

As he spoke, he pointed a few hundred feet to the east.

“I mean, just look at Broadway and Colfax,” he said. “It’s unreal. Have you ever gotten on the bus? Have you ever tried to navigate that corner right there? I would think most people, the general public, would just avoid that corner.

“That's what most of downtown Denver's like, or just on the outskirts of downtown.”

Johnston has pledged to build 1,400 new housing units, enough that he said would allow him to end homelessness in Denver by the end of his first term in 2027.

Miller said given the city’s history with homelessness, he doesn’t have a lot of hope the issue will be solved anytime soon.

Neither did Gloom.

“He's got the power to do that,” Gloom said. “But I just – again – I don't hold out enough hope that he will actually do it.”

Dina Kemp was more hopeful.

A resident of downtown, she said homeless and issues intertwined with it – public safety, drug use, and the high cost of housing – all worry her.

“I used to be annoyed because of the issue of the unhoused,” she said. “I make a really good living, and I'm having a very difficult time making it. So I, as a divorced empty nester, unless I want to get married or have somebody come with me, I'm having a very hard time.”

As a result, she looks at the issue differently.

“I've kind of gotten a new perspective on that. And I have a little bit more sympathy. So I'm hoping that those changes really happen,” she said. “Because, again, this is not the city that I grew up in.”

It’s also not the city that Jenna Cavuto and Kristian Mendez grew up in.

Visiting from New York, they notice the homelessness issue as they visited Coors Field for a game and explored downtown.

“We travel a little bit,” Mendez said. “From what I can tell, because it's similar in New York to us, it seems like there's a lot of homelessness on the streets.”

Still they plan to come back and, as Cavuto said, “see the improvements that the mayor makes to the city.”

“Good luck,” she said.

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