DENVER — For nearly two years, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston's administration has been working to find solutions to the city's homelessness crisis.
According to the 2024 Point-in-Time Count, the number of families living on the street dropped last year. However, data from the Department of Housing Stability (HOST) shows the overall number of families experiencing homelessness has increased by 150% since 2022.
During a presentation to the city's Safety, Housing, Education, and Homelessness Committee, Jeff Kositsky, the deputy director for HOST, said the family shelter waitlist increased 78% in the past year. He attributed the increase in families experiencing homelessness to a rise in eviction filings, a growing number of unhoused newcomers, and a "deterioration of the social safety net," which includes Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
"We're in a situation now in this country where only one in five families who are below the poverty level are receiving any kind of housing assistance, and that ultimately leads to children sleeping on the streets or sleeping in shelters," Kositsky said. "This has become a growing problem in the past few years, not just in Denver but around the U.S."
Kositsky described the problem as "incredibly heartbreaking and concerning."
- View the full presentation below
Joy McGuire-Olsen, a clinical director at Denver Rescue Mission's The Crossing location, told Denver7 that she's noticed an increase in families experiencing homelessness over the past few years.
"There are lots of factors that contribute to that," McGuire-Olsen said. "Largely, it's related to finances, people being able to be kind of priced out of wherever their housing is. Some of it is due to employment opportunities that have either shifted or changed, and they're not keeping up with those things. Sometimes it's all about gaps."
Kositsky said the city is working to solve the issue. One solution is an eviction prevention program alongside Denver Public Schools.
"We are doing a partnership with the Denver Public School system in order to find families who are at risk of being evicted and also at imminent risk of becoming homeless, and providing them, not only with rental assistance, but with wraparound support services to help stabilize that family so they can stay in their housing because prevention needs to be a part of any solution to homelessness," he said.
The city is also working to expand its rapid rehousing program.
"There were 43,000 newcomers that came through Denver, and we should be really proud of the fact that a vast majority of those households have ended up either moving on somewhere else or finding a successful place to live and work in Denver, but there are some families that are still struggling. We estimate that about 200 newcomer families are still in need of our services," Kositsky said. "We are going to be expanding what's called a rapid rehousing program, which is a 12-month rent subsidy plus pretty robust support services to help at least 50 newcomer families who are staying in our shelters to be able to exit those shelters into stable housing."
While the city's budget has a big question mark next to it, leaders are looking at currently available solutions in order to tackle the homelessness crisis.
"We're, again, in a tough budget year, trying to figure out how to best use what we already have," Kositsky said. "One of the things we're going to be doing is that there are some families who are living in their vehicles. In Denver this summer, we're going to start a special program that will identify those families and help them move into housing or move into shelter. If they want to give up their vehicles, we'll figure out a way to make that work for them and take those vehicles off the street. We have some hotel vouchers we can use as a bridge program in emergency situations."
Denver
Shelter for families, veterans experiencing homelessness opens on Colfax Ave.
"At the end of the day, what we need to do is build as an effective homelessness response system for families as we can that looks at all the pieces — the prevention outreach, shelter, and housing — and we've gotten some additional resources to do that," Kositsky added.
Ultimately, Kositsky and McGuire-Olsen said they want to ensure every family without a home gets into one.
"Not having a place for your child to be safe, I mean, it just makes you want to cry just thinking about it," Kositsky said.
