Denver mayor to tout homeless response in Monday's city address

Mayor Mike Johnston on Monday will paint a picture of a city on the upswing after years of battling a homelessness crisis and reversing a decade of violence, with a downtown that's poised for revival.

He will argue that, within a year of assuming office, the strategies he put in place have already begun to transform his city and Denver will overcome the challenges many major cities across the nation grapple with.

He will cite declining crime statistics, notably in the area of car theft, as well as his work to "revitalize" downtown Denver. He will say he has hunkered down to avoid the pitfalls of major cities where affordability is out of reach for residents.

All told, Johnston will say Denver is on its way to his "dream of Denver" — the theme of his inaugural speech as mayor last year — as a city where its residents can afford to live, work and raise a family.

"For us, it's really important to think about where Denver was a year ago," said Johnston, who on Friday offered a quick preview of his main talking points for his first state of the city address. "We felt like we needed to come out with an aggressive agenda to turn the city around."

Johnston will deliver that speech at the historic Paramount Theatre on Monday.

Of particular concern when he assumed office, he said, was general unease about safety in downtown Denver. He said he had to tackle that first — and quickly.

His twin strategy of sweeping encampments and moving people to shelters since has yielded fruit, according to the mayor.

"For the first time, for as long as I can remember, there is not a single encampment in all of downtown," he said. "You could walk from Five Points to Coors Field to Union Station to the Ball Arena to the Civic Center Park, and there is not a single tent or encampment anywhere."

All that work, he said, means "300 square blocks" without encampments.

Johnston secured the mayor's seat following a runoff election election with Kelly Brough. Both had emerged atop a crowded field of mayoral aspirants seeking to replace then-Mayor Michael Hancock, who had been in the driver's seat for a dozen years.

In an interview on Friday, Johnston outlined the major problems that he inherited when he took office, though he didn't expressly blame Hancock or previous mayors for those woes. They included, he noted, a homelessness crisis that was spiraling out of control and a struggling downtown. The city, he added, was also coming off a decade of the "highest increases in violent crime of any city in America."

At that point, the influx of immigrants who illegally crossed America's southern border was already threatening Denver's fiscal stability. That crisis would explode under Johnston, costing the city tens of millions of dollars.

Johnston defended both his strategies and their philosophical underpinnings.

On offering a shelter to homeless people without any preconditions as opposed to Aurora's "tough love" approach, he said getting people off of the streets first is key. He appeared to suggest that substance abuse occurs or gets amplified because of the "stress" of living in the streets, as opposed to what some advocates have maintained — that people ended up in the streets because of their drug addiction.

"If that stress is living on the streets or in a tent, where you're in danger of being shanked or robbed or shot in the middle of the night, the people that have baseline either mental health needs or substance use issues, those get amplified dramatically," Johnston said.

The philosophical difference in Denver and Aurora's approaches to homelessness has become starker over time. In Denver, Johnston is a big proponent of "housing first." The idea is to respond to an individual’s most acute need first — to proponents, that is housing — and then offer other services later. Housing, therefore, is offered without preconditions, such as mental health treatment or work.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman, on the other hand, insists on a "work first" approach, the goal of which is stable housing "earned through employment."

"Success is not getting the unsheltered homeless off the streets only to make them permanent wards of the state at taxpayers' expense," Coffman said in his own state of the city address last December. "The taxpayers of our city, who are asked to foot the bill, who get up every morning to go to work, and who share in the adult responsibilities of life, deserve better."

Other critics argued that Johnston's strategy only temporarily lifts people out of homelessness.

A review by The Denver Gazette of homeless provider contracts, invoices, performance outcomes and federal data showed that metro Denver trails many other major metropolitan regions in tackling homelessness with permanent housing. Indeed, just two out of every 10 people exiting homeless programming in Denver in 2023 found long-term permanent housing, a rate far worse than most other areas in the nation, according to the records.

Other metro regions, including Seattle and Houston, have had greater success during that period prioritizing permanent housing rather than the quick fix solutions critics say simply perpetuate homelessness.

On illegal immigration, Johnston described the city's response as ethical and responsible, and insisted that the "tradeoff" — taxpayers have spent scores of millions of dollars and Denver had cut some services — was worth it.

The city should not stand by, he said, when hundreds of immigrants are dropped off in a bus in the middle of Denver's winter.

Denver has so far spent $72 million to feed, provide shelter and assist more than 42,000 immigrants who arrived in the city. That cost is roughly the same amount that Denver councilmembers want to generate by raising sales taxes to help pay for the operations of Denver Health, the city's safety net hospital system.

Johnston's administration has maintained that Denver is a "welcoming city," while surrounding local governments have avoided the "sanctuary" label and many have argued that Denver's policies have only worked to draw more immigrants to Colorado's most populous city.

Officials in El Paso, Texas, earlier pointed the finger at free shelter and tickets for onward travel in Denver as a major draw for the immigrants. Denver recently doubled down on those policies by offering immigrants, at taxpayers' expense, six months of rental, food and utility assistance, a computer, prepaid cell phone and metro bus passes.

In his address on Monday, Johnston is expected to say he has put in place the infrastructure to position Denver for the next decade: On homelessness, a mechanism is in place to sweep encampments and offer people shelter. On crime, the city is zeroing in on "hot spots." On downtown Denver, the city is giving people reasons to come back and that the 16th Street Mall is on a "path" to reopen by next summer.

He is expected to mention the expansion of the Downtown Development Authority, which would allow the city to invest up to $500 million in the area, which has struggled to attract visitors since the pandemic hit.

He will also likely note his push for a $100 million sales tax increase, which his administration wants to earmark for affordable housing. If approved, Johnston's proposal — as well as another sales tax increase that the council already sent to the ballot — would make Denver's sales taxes the highest in the region.

The tax is necessary, he is expected to argue, to help build an inventory of affordable housing units.

Denver, he said, is incredibly attractive to young people.

"But if we can't keep the city affordable, then we lose the very working class that runs the city," he said.

"And so a top priority for us is how we make sure that we do not become a San Francisco or an Austin or a Boston that grew so fast that your cops and firefighters and nurses and teachers can't afford to live in the city anymore," he said.