Denver homeless people who live in their cars won't get more safe parking spaces after all

Photo byColorado Safe Parking Initiative

Two much anticipated safe outdoor parking spaces for people experiencing homelessness in Denver won’t be opening after all.

A contract with Colorado Safe Parking Initiative will become final at Tuesday’s Mayor-City Council meeting. The new contract removes the requirement for the initiative to add two more lots serving a total of 16 vehicles. That leaves just two lots that the initiative already operates. The city will pay $350,000 for the initiative to operate the lots.

The Safety, Housing, Education and Homelessness Committee of the council approved the reduced contract last week. The item was on the consent calendar. Consent calendar items pass in a block vote without discussion unless a member calls the item out. Council member Jamie Torres was absent from the meeting. Everyone else voted in favor of the consent calendar.

When city staff announced last June that they intended to expand the lots from two to four, the initiative told the council they received more than 1,700 calls for help between October 2017 and May 2022. The existing lots are in council districts four and ten.

At least one of the new lots would have accommodated people with recreational vehicles. Council members said last year calls about RVs parking illegally in the city have multiplied. The planned added lots, which barely would have made a dent in the problem, were proposed by the council after it strengthened the city's clunker ordinance.

Homeless advocates blast council

Advocates for people experiencing homelessness blasted the council last April for strengthening the ordinance. Mary Anna Thompson held up a picture for the council. The picture showed a police officer cordoning off an area containing an RV and homeless encampments with crime tape before a sweep.

“Where’s the crime,” boomed Thompson. “Denver, how come you hate the poor? You’re making it harder and harder for poor people to survive.”

V. Reeves said she served as one of the first case managers for the Colorado Safe Parking Initiative. She said it proved difficult keeping everyone’s vehicles running so they could remain in the program.

Ana Miller told the council the proposed law “is another way for people to end up yet again having their property taken away by the city,” much like the encampment sweeps.