DENVER — Denver Mayor Mike Johnston on Tuesday offered specifics for the first time about the cost of his plan to move 1,000 people off the streets by the end of the year.
Johnston announced his plan will cost approximately $48.6 million and will be fully paid for through a combination of the city’s existing budget and federal resources.
“We know the strategy works. We know how to pay for it. And we know how to do it within our existing resources,” said Johnston.
The city will spend $24.3 million to convert hotels into living spaces. This includes the cost of purchasing and operating a former Best Western, which is estimated to be $18.9 million.
The city will also spend nearly $20 million on micro-communities.
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The city has identified 11 potential sites for micro-communities, but some Denver residents continue to share their concerns about the plan.
One of the micro-communities could be located just a few feet from Joy Fagan’s backyard.
“My home is just the other side of the alley. So we literally sit, our property sits right adjacent to this,” Fagan pointed out to Denver7.
Fagan said she and other people who live in the neighborhood at Santa Fe and Iliff in southwest Denver have already been through enough. She said homeless encampments were located on the very site where the city could build a potential micro-community.
“My car was broken into multiple times. We found someone sleeping in my roommate's car,” said Fagan. “We saw police here all the time.”
Like many of her neighbors, she’s worried that could happen again if a micro-community is built in their neighborhood.
“It's not a matter of judgment or a lack of compassion. It's the fact that we have lived this,” said Fagan. “We've been through it over and over and over again.”
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Denver7 took their concerns to Johnston Tuesday.
“We understand the concerns. We understand the fear,” said Johnston.
But the mayor said micro-communities are safe, pointing to 911 calls.
He said while there have been about 6,000 calls to 911 at unsanctioned encampments this year, there have only been a handful of emergency calls at the city’s existing tiny home community villages, including one at 40th and Monroe.
“You're talking about sites that are literally 1/1000th of the safety risk to the community of what the current situation is,” said Johnston. “The most dangerous thing for communities would be for us to continue to do what we've done in the past. That is actually the single most dangerous strategy, is to keep folks living in encampments that are unsupervised, unstructured, and unsafe.”
According to a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) document published by the city, staff will be on-site 24/7 and violence will not be tolerated. In addition, the document said the trading and selling of drugs would be prohibited.
Johnston said communities that initially had concerns about previous tiny home villages ended up changing their minds.
“These are the safest, most stable structures,” said Johnston. “We'll hear stories from people who fought the arrival of a Safe Outdoor Space or a tiny home village. Once it arrived and years later… those same neighbors fought it leaving because they actually found it to be a really great addition to the neighborhood.”
Fagan and many of her neighbors still have their doubts. She wonders why wraparound services the city wants to offer at the sites couldn’t be offered downtown, where many people experiencing homelessness are.
“We've already had people here taking soil samples. So here we are watching all this take place. They're already on the move, already doing it, and we've never been heard from. It seems like it's being really kind of pushed down our throats. Like this is going to happen regardless,” said Fagan. “If the mayor doesn't live here, the mayor isn't going to experience those consequences.”
Not everyone in Fagan's neighborhood opposes the potential micro-community. Jack Unruh, the co-president of the neighborhood association, believes it could work.
"People don't understand that these are very managed sites with all kinds of professional help," said Unruh. "If you can begin to envision yourself as similar to these folks, as opposed to being appalled by how differently some of them manifest, I think it's a good thing."
Fagan and neighbors who are concerned and still have questions will be able to share those directly with the mayor and their city council member at a town hall meeting Wednesday at 4 p.m. at Ratio Beerworks -Overland, located at 2030 S. Cherokee Street. A town hall for Spanish-speaking citizens will be held Wednesday at Valverde Elementary School starting at 5:30 p.m.
According to a sign posted at the site where the micro-community could be built, a community informational meeting will be held on September 28 at 6 p.m. at the Harvard Gulch Recreation Center.
More information about the mayor’s homelessness initiative, including dates, times, and locations of town halls, can be found here.
