DENVER — For the first time ever, there's now data on exactly how many people have experienced homelessness in Colorado.
A new study by the Colorado Homeless Management Information System (COHMIS) compared data from all four federally recognized Continuum of Care agencies in Colorado to determine how many people sought out their services and removed any duplicates:
- Balance of State CoC covers 54 counties in rural, non-metro regions.
- Metro Denver CoC covers the 7-county metro region, including Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, & Jefferson counties.
- Northern Colorado CoC covers Larimer & Weld counties.
- Pikes Peak CoCcovers El Paso County.
The Metro Denver Homeless Initiative (DMHI) is the lead organization for the Metro Denver CoC.
"This is the first time the four of us have worked together, pulled our information, our data together, made sure that data was unduplicated and of high quality," said Jason Johnson, the Executive Director of DMHI. "The hope is that this will create a baseline so that in 2025, '26, '27 we can use this data to see any trends, specifically, see if things are getting better or worse, but also see what kind of programs across the state are working and should be replicated across the state."
- View a summary of the State of Homeless report from the COHMIS in the embed below.
More than 52,000 people sought out support services for homelessness in 2024, according to the report. Of those, 30% were chronically homeless and around 6% were veterans.
The study is very different from the Point-in-Time Survey that typically gives a one night snapshot of certain communities.
"To have a year long data set is helpful because we can also see people who might have entered our shelter system and how they get into housing, or how outreach has helped people get into permanent housing, and we're starting to see where people are falling through the cracks," said Jamie Rife, the former executive director of MDHI and now current Chief Housing Officer for the Office of Housing Stability (HOST) with the City and County of Denver.
The study also found more than 23,000 students were homeless in Colorado last year. The majority were in shared housing or shelters. More than 5,000 total were either unaccompanied, living in a motel or living on the streets.
"Family instability is one big piece of the puzzle. LGBTQ youth make up about 38% nationally of youth experiencing homelessness. And then foster care youth make up a huge percent," said Christina Carlson, CEO of Urban Peak. "The last time I saw these statistics was: One in three foster care youth are homeless on the day they turn 18, and two out of three in 9 months. So we just have this big cliff that drives sort of why people are ending up on the streets."
Housing costs are part of the issue. Using Colorado's minimum wage of $14.42, the study determined it would take 104-hour work weeks for someone to afford a 2-bedroom apartment at Fair Market Price. For the average Colorado 2-bedroom apartment, someone would need to work 2.6 jobs at minimum wage, according to the study.
"It's really concerning to know that almost one out of 100 people in Colorado experienced homelessness in a year, and we see rising housing costs and people being evicted at record rates," said Rife. "It's really important to get people stable and then provide those wrap around services."
Click here to read the full report.
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