AURORA, Colo. — With the weather cooling down, Denver is getting ready to open its shelters to help keep the unhoused warm. A local coffee shop is also working not just to keep people warm but also to help those unhoused learn new skills.
Denver7 learned how the coffee shop is helping and how the Denver mayor is handling his initiative to end homelessness.
"I mean, honestly, it's been like a blessing. It's like a fun learning experience," Change Please Coffee employee Christine Sisneros said.
Change Please Coffee in Aurora has one mission: making sure that employees like Sisneros have the resources they need to get back on their feet. She recently got out of prison and said the Coffee shop has given her new skills, setting her up for success.
"It feels good to actually sit there and say, 'Oh, you know, I got paid,'" Sisneros said.
With Change Please Coffee helping keep people off the streets, Denver7 checked in with Denver Mayor Mike Johnston to see how his initiative to end homelessness is going.
"Since I've taken office, we've now crossed the mark of more than 2,000 people brought off the streets and indoors. That was our goal of 1,000 people in 2023. We've now done another 1,000 people in 2024. What that means is, over the last year and a half, we've now dropped the number of families experiencing street homelessness by more than 83%," Johnston said.
Mayor Johnston said that this year’s goal has already been met, so now the focus is shifting to helping people who might live under a bridge or on the sidewalk.
"We've really changed the landscape of what it means to be homeless and connecting these folks to services and to permanent," Johnston said.
While housing efforts are ongoing, Denver is expecting a big cool-down, with snow in the forecast. The Mayor says cold weather shelters will be activated to keep those without permanent housing safe.
"So we all we now have opened those 24-hour shelters, and they're open 24 hours a day during cold weather, so you don't have to leave at six o'clock in the morning on a cold morning and go back out into the streets, which is what the previous plan used to be," Johnston said.
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