The city of Denver will aim to place 2,000 people into permanent housing this year as it moves more people out of temporary shelters — a figure that is double the city leaders’ original goal for 2025.
The decision to strengthen the goal came after internal discussions within the city council over the past month, said Cole Chandler, deputy director of Mayor Mike Johnston’s homeless initiative.
“The reality is that we’ve always set big, bold goals — not necessarily about what we think we can do, but about what our community needs,” Chandler said in an interview. “We will do our utmost to achieve this in 2025.”
The plan is part of Johnston’s signature homeless initiative, called All in Mile High, which began when he declared a state of emergency on his second day as president in July 2023. That year, the city moved 1,000 people off the streets and into temporary housing. , including small houses and hotel rooms.
Last year, the total number of arrivals reached more than 2,000 people. As of December, more than a third of these people had moved to more permanent housing.
This year, the city plans to move 2,000 people off the streets into city-run temporary housing and another 2,000 into more permanent housing, Chandler said Wednesday in a presentation to the City Council’s Safety, Housing, Education and Homelessness Committee from Denver. Part of that second group could come from temporary shelters.
Some on the council were skeptical of the new goal.
“I’d like to know how you’re going to accomplish this,” Councilmember Stacie Gilmore said. “I just wonder if it can really happen.”
Councilman Kevin Flynn questioned whether the city’s overall goal of “ending street homelessness” was even possible.
“It’s cyclical,” he said. “Unfortunately, someone ends up on the street every day.”
Chandler responded by saying he believes it is possible.
“What it means to do that is design a system that can respond to the needs of individuals – that we are able to get more people off the streets than go back into homelessness on any given day,” he said.
By 2024, the initiative was estimated to cost the city more than $150 million.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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