Mayor Mike Johnston accomplished in 2024 what previous Denver mayors only yearned to do: He visibly reduced homelessness downtown. In the process, he has sheltered more than 2,000 people in numerous hotels the city purchased and tiny home villages it erected.
But now comes the hard part. New homeless people enter the system every day. I find it difficult to imagine that less people will become homeless in 2025 than in 2024. In fact, there could be more homeless people if cuts are made to government programs. While people experiencing homelessness won’t be able to camp downtown – the city now aggressively enforces camping laws – they’ll have to go somewhere. Is the city going to buy more hotels? The plan is to move people in the hotels into permanent housing, freeing up more shelter space. But many are being housed through rapid rehousing. Rapid rehousing recipients usually only get free rent for about a year. Some people find themselves homeless again when the rent subsidy runs out.
The 2,000 people experiencing homelessness that Johnston has housed is sort of like the 800 migrants accepted into the Denver Asylum Seekers Program. They got lucky during a short window of time when such services were offered. But the faucet has not been shut off for either migrants or people experiencing homelessness. And thousands are already on the streets.