Elderly women increasingly becoming homeless in Denver

Photo byDanie Franco/Unsplash

Elderly women increasingly are becoming homeless in Denver, according to an official from the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative, or MDHI.

MDHI is a regional group working to better understand and combat homelessness. Dr. Jamie Rife, executive director, made a presentation Wednesday to the Safety, Housing, Education and Homelessness Committee of the Denver City Council. Rife said she recently heard from a colleague of a 98-year-old woman entering the shelter system for the first time.

"That's just a population in which we are seeing tremendous growth," Rife said of senior women.

City Council member Stacie Gilmore said assisting seniors needs to be more of a focus in Denver. Rife agreed. “On a fixed income, you can’t afford to live here. And they're also being pushed further and further away from medical care, support systems, and I think that is just one of the challenges we are facing."

Gilmore told the story of an elderly woman in Green Valley Ranch. Her rent recently skyrocketed to $1,700 for a one-bedroom apartment but she only gets $1,300 per month from Social Security. She relies on food banks, Gilmore said.

The woman is receiving some rental assistance, but still is struggling, according to Gilmore. She said her situation is “tenuous at best.” Gilmore said people in her district increasingly are becoming homeless as houses are foreclosed upon in Green Valley Ranch.

Homeless services short 'hundreds of millions' of dollars in 2026

A plethora of homeless projects, services and campuses are in the works for Colorado, but the funding for much of this assistance will dry up in 2026 when American Rescue Plan Act money runs out. Council member Paul Kashmann asked Rife what the shortfall will be. Rife said it will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Rife said MDHI is moving toward a more regional approach to addressing homelessness. As a pilot program, MDHI has changed the way it approaches homelessness among veterans. Using information from the Homeless Management Information System, or HMIS, the agency can pull up the name of every homeless veteran in metro Denver. There are 438 homeless veterans in the seven-county region. The framework will be rolled out soon for the entire homeless population.

Rife said a person in downtown Denver experiencing homelessness likely has different circumstances causing them to lose their housing than someone in Jefferson County. She said it’s important to “create a framework for local response” across nine sub-regions in the Denver metro area. The sub-regions have monthly case conferencing, Rife said, to see how they can work with other agencies to serve their clients.