DENVER — Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and his team unveiled a new dashboard Tuesday for measuring the success of his House1000 program.
The new dashboard comes amid controversy over the old dashboard which was criticized as deceptive and misleading.
“Really, just in the last several days we’ve had more clear conversations about what exactly it was depicting,” Johnston said. “What it wasn’t depicting and what we thought we were missing. And that was what was going into this refresh, was to get clearer on that.”
The new dashboard includes a pie chart showing how many homeless individuals have been housed for under 30 days, how many have been housed for over 30 days and how many have moved from hotels and other shelters into permanent housing.
So far, 179 people have been permanently housed.
The 30-day metric is new from the previous 14-day metric, and measures exits from the program and how and why those individuals exited.
“So, this is actually a more accountable, more rigorous, more transparent system that would have been happening with a 14-day timeline, or a 30-day timeline,” Johnston said.
As for those exiting the program, the dashboard includes what the city considers "unsuccessful exits" — including four who went to jail, 13 unknown and 5 who are back on the streets.
“The real key is — what is the nature of the exit and was it a successful or unsuccessful exit?” Johnston said.
The mayor also addressed rumors that he somehow stands to gain financially on the city’s purchase of the Embassy Suites hotel on Hampden Avenue, which he denies.
“Obviously, I worked for Gary Community Ventures. I have no equity, I have no ownership, I have no shares in that it’s a philanthropic organization that supports kids and families in the city,” Johnston said. “I think both on the facts — those numbers are inaccurate, and on the insinuation that there’s any connection — completely inaccurate.”
The mayor said the dashboard will be updated again after the new year to reflect the city’s new goal of housing 2,000 people by the end of 2024.
