DENVER — Homelessness, affordability and safety were among the top priorities Denver Mayor Mike Johnston discussed for the upcoming year at Monday afternoon’s 2026 citywide goals announcement from the La Alma Recreation Center.
The city’s top goals for 2026, Johnston said, include decreasing gun-related homicides, increasing the number of affordable apartment units and reducing street homelessness.
Before discussing the city’s priorities for the coming year, Johnston called the past weekend one of "significant loss” and “a hard one for many residents of Denver” after 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis.
“I think, not just watching the heartbreak for Minneapolis, but the uncertainty and the fear that we know settles in members of our community across the city who are worried about what happens if they too are targeted, or if they too stand up to support neighbors who are at risk,” he said.
Johnston said that despite "a serious number of headwinds" the city has faced since he became mayor — including a budget crisis, federal funding cuts and a "very hostile federal government" — he is proud of the progress the city has made over the past two years.
"We think Denver is positioned, actually, for a golden moment of recovery and revitalization that will be a defining gift we leave for the city over the decades to come," Johnston said.
Here are some of the concrete goals the mayor and city set for 2026:
Reduce gun-related homicides by 10% and reduce shootings in high-risk areas by 20%.
Johnston pointed to the La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood, where he delivered the address, as one of those high risk areas where the city saw “dramatic” change after providing wraparound services. Shootings in the neighborhood dropped by 100% from 2024 to 2025, and the neighborhood has now gone nearly a year and a half without a shooting, Johnston said.
The city as a whole has also seen “historic drops” in violent crime and saw a 57% drop in homicides last year, the mayor said.
However, in a “word of caution,” Johnston said that only two years in the city’s history has it seen such a low level of homicides and in both of the years following, there were significant increases in the number of homicides.
“Our first goal is to hold this new low baseline we've created and try to incrementally drop it,” he said.
Delivering another 10% drop in gun-related homicides would put Denver “at or among the lowest violent crime rates of any city in the country,” Johnston said.
Reduce street homelessness by 75% since 2023 and be able to address all homelessness reports in one business day.
Denver has seen a 25% drop in homelessness overall, and a 45% reduction in unsheltered homelessness over the last two years, representing nearly 700 fewer people “who are out on the streets at any given moment,” the mayor said.
Johnston said the city is “tracking toward that goal” it set in 2023 of ending street homelessness in four years.
Meeting that goal, Johnston said, does not mean “never, ever” seeing a person “who may have just been evicted from their home or maybe in a relapse and is struggling with addiction.
”What it does mean, he said, is that the number of people experiencing homelessness is fewer than the number of shelter beds available. “That means as soon as you enter homelessness, we can find you, we can connect you to services,” he said. “We can get you up and out, so that every month, if there's 200 people that enter homelessness, 200 people exit.
“That is what we would call an end of the cycle of street homelessness.”
Add 2,500 more affordable units and permit an additional 5,000 units to bring in apartments at all income levels.
Nearly 5,600 affordable units have been added to the city over the last two and a half years, the mayor said.
"The vision is that everyone who wants to live in Denver can afford to call it home," Johnston said.
Fill 3 million square feet of vacant downtown retail and office space. Meeting that goal would mean filling nearly half of the 7 million square feet of currently vacant office space over the next year.
The mayor said among the ways the city plans to close that gap are converting vacant offices to apartment space, attracting new businesses and keeping current ones, and using vacant offices creatively for things like child care facilities, non profits and artist work spaces.
In a similar vein, the mayor also said the city wants to make sure major developments can be delivered on time, including bond projects, 5-year capital improvement projects and projects like Park Hill Park, the Denver Summit stadium and new Broncos stadium.
- Install 5,000 clean energy systems citywide and develop 50 acres of green infrastructure.
- Connect 5,000 more young people to quality out-of-school programming and work opportunities and deliver a comprehensive citywide framework to expand affordable, reliable childcare.
Watch the mayor's full address here:
View the presentation:
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