DENVER — Around 130 people were staying at the Comfort Inn hotel that was turned into a homeless shelter when Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced last September that the facility would close.
"Our plan is to transition all those folks out of those shelters into permanent housing. None of those folks will return to the street. They'll all go into permanent housing," Johnston said at the time, while unveiling his proposed 2026 budget.
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With one month to go until that shelter closes, Denver7 followed up to see how the rehousing efforts are going.
"We have 134 units here," said St. Francis Center CEO Nancy Burke. "We've been full most of that time."
The St. Francis Center operates the shelter for the City of Denver. They note that over the last two years, they have helped 117 people find permanent housing after they stayed at the shelter.
The shelter is set to close at the end of March and has been winding down in preparation.
"We did have to stop accepting residents, except for when it's cold," Burke said.
Currently, she said there are 72 residents at the shelter.
"There's about 70 of those people who are able to go out into community housing. So, it's sort of a combined effort of looking for new placements for people if they're not quite ready for that next step," Burke said.
Raenell Ficenec lived at the shelter for two years before finding an apartment back in May. She still visits her friends at the Comfort Inn and has even been chosen to lead art classes there.
"It feels good," Ficenec said. "Just keep on going."
It's because of cases like hers that the city said they no longer need a big hotel to be used as a shelter.
"Are you concerned at all that once the shelter's closed, that people will just end up back on the streets and those encampments will pop back up?" Denver7's Danielle Kreutter asked Jon Ewing, press secretary for the Denver Mayor's Office.
"No, we'll have other areas for people to go if we absolutely need them," Ewing said. "We don't see that huge need for thousands of beds. What we do see is a need for a different approach."
That approach includes investing in more affordable housing instead of shelters.
Another part of the potential solution is performance based contracts.
"The focus for this year is to move people into shelters and out of shelters and into permanent housing on a quicker timeline," said Ewing, "We've added performance based contracts, where all of our providers now get paid more for delivering that outcome. They are actually incentivized to ensure that they're meeting with their caseworker every week, that they're getting folks into housing, and that they're staying in that housing. This is a real permanent solution."
