DENVER — The first homeless encampment sweep of new Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration will happen Friday which comes two weeks after a community meeting sparked some confusion as to whether the mayor planned to pause large sweeps.
During a press conference Wednesday, the mayor updated several components of his plan to address homelessness in the city and provided some insight into his decision-making process into how the sweeps will happen in his administration.
“We will be doing seven-day notice postings in all these locations. We have focused really on places where we have significant public health risks,” said Mayor Johnston. “This is a place where we had a significant rat infestation in the encampment and we were really worried about the health and safety of the folks that were in that encampment, as well as the surrounding neighborhoods”
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The location of the first homeless encampment sweep is at 22nd and Stout St. and is expected to happen at 7 a.m. Friday.
Part of the mayor’s plan to address homelessness includes a goal of providing housing to 1,000 unhoused people by the end of 2023.
And while plans have been approved for the purchase and conversion of a Best Western Hotel in Central Park into permanent supportive housing, the mayor said there will be no housing units in place for the people displaced during Friday’s sweep.
“And this is the challenge of our current scenario,” said Mayor Johnston. “We don't yet have the units up and ready for people to move to and so we are in the unfortunate situation of having to move them off the location where they are knowing they're gonna have to go someplace else.”
As to whether the new administration would continue homeless encampment sweeps, confusion arose during a June 20 community meeting in which a city representative said a hold would be placed on large encampment sweeps.
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At that meeting, residents voiced concerns to Denver7 and the mayor’s office later clarified that the sweeps would continue and that the confusion amounted to a miscommunication.
“I myself will be personally visiting each encampment that we decide to make a cleanup decision on,” said Mayor Johnston. “ I'll be visiting tomorrow to talk to unhoused neighbors and answer questions or make sure they have the connection to services that we know that they may need.”
On how the new administration will determine which homeless encampments to sweep, the mayor said he would be directly involved in each decision weighing several factors.
"Which is how significant are the public health risks? How severe are the public safety risks? How significant are the impact on either public rights of way or on private property?" Added Mayor Johnston. "I think we're trying to look at the balance of the circumstances and make sure the benefit of public health and safety outweighs the impact of dislocation on people who are at risk."
The mayor said physical and mental health services, including Wellness Winnie, the city's mobile mental health support vehicle, would be available on site of the homeless sweep on Friday.
Addressing homelessness in Denver has been Mayor Johnston's priority since taking office in July. Less than a day after being sworn in, his administration issued an emergency declaration in an effort to gain access to more resources and includes the activation of an emergency operations center in an effort to "more much more quickly and swiftly through what could otherwise be a slower regulatory process," Johnston said the day of the annoucement.
In Wednesday's press conference, the Mayor Johnston laid out more of his vision on what the operations center is intended to achieve.
"We have more than 50 city employees who are down in our EOC each day working on laying out timelines, projects, deliverables on this," he said. "It's really quite inspiring to see them hard at work from all departments, all backgrounds committed to this singular deliverable."
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By an 11-1 vote, the Denver City Council on July 25 extended the mayor's state of emergency on homelessness by four weeks. During that vote, members of council voiced some concerns, shared by some people in the community as to a lack of specific details laid out in the weeks since the new administration came into office.
“We kind of wrote a bit of a blank check for the mayor. And so in the next four weeks, I want that check to have some description to it," Councilman Hinds said during the July council meeting. "So I want to understand, what is the plan? So the goal is 1,000 of our unhoused into housing by the end of the year. All right, how are we going to do that? What steps are we going to do? What interim goals are we going to have in the process? And how can we measure that success and in that measurement, including interim goals, is how I will base my votes on extending the emergency declaration each time.”
The single 'no' vote was from District 5 Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer who wanted more concrete answers about the plan before extending the declaration.
Mayor Johnston noted on Wednesday his administration continued to hold community town halls to address questions from the community and lay out plans. The town hall meetings are expected to continue through August.
Johnston said his administration is seeking insight and perspective from a wide group of voices in the community including seven different groups of around 200 Denver residents working on plans to address homelessness.
