Aurora moves forward with navigation campus for the homeless

Aurora City Council members voted on Wednesday to move forward with plans for the Aurora Regional Navigation Campus, a 13-acre homeless shelter purchased by the city in January.

The proposed regional navigation campus will consolidate services for homeless people in one location once it is established in early 2025, according to city plans.

Wednesday night’s discussion laid out the legislative intent for operating the navigation campus and appointed city council members as overseers of the operation, meaning that council members will be in charge of annual performance audits on the success of the shelter.

All council members approved allowing the plan to move forward except for Councilmembers Rubin Medina and Crystal Murillo, who did not state reasons for their disapproval.

Councilmember Dustin Zvonek restated and affirmed Aurora’s work-first approach to homelessness with the shelter, meaning that it will offer services at levels that depend on how much individuals are willing to work for them.

Mayor Mike Coffman called this strategy a “tough love” approach in a June council meeting, arguing that Aurora measures success by employment and self-sufficiency, rather than how many people are taken off the streets.

The navigation center will offer a variety of services, including transitional housing, employment services, workforce development, emergency shelter, a medical clinic, addiction counseling, mental health services, medical respite beds, housing navigation, case management and meals, according to a news release.

The campus at Crowne Plaza will have three tiers, the first of which will be a "low-barrier" shelter with congregate housing for people who need services but aren’t working with case managers yet.

The second tier will require people to work part time, including jobs in and around the facility, and participation in programs for addiction and mental health recovery and job training. The second tier will have “materially better” living conditions, Coffman said.

People in the third tier will have “even better” living conditions, including a private room.

“The goal is to have a facility where each tier is fully aware of the other in order to encourage work and the participation in programs,” Coffman added.

The shelter is only available for people over 18 and does not accommodate families under the reasoning that it is better to have separate shelters for families and singles, according to the city’s website.

Zvonek stressed the importance of measuring the success of the shelter by self-sufficiency and defined it as, “Using the lowest level of public subsidies as possible and producing self-support through employment.”

After some debate, the council voted at a meeting in January to move forward with the purchase agreement for the site of the navigation campus.

In total, the city will pay $26.5 million for the property at 15550 E. 40th Ave., based on an appraisal prepared by a third-party firm in November.

Coffman expects the facility to be operational in early 2025.

The city has collected almost $40 million in funds for the project so far, with funding coming from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA), Aurora American Rescue Plan (ARPA), Aurora Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Adams County ARPA, Adams County HUD, Arapahoe County ARPA, Douglas County ARPA, and Community Development Block Grant COVID funds.

Councilmember Francoise Bergan said that while she has struggled with the idea of the navigation campus because it will cost a lot of money, she has decided to support it.

The campus is a "good solution" to help homeless people get the help they need and eventually transition into work and permanent housing, she said in the January meeting.

Councilmember Curtis Gardner expressed concern in previous meetings about whether the campus would be the best use of taxpayer dollars, saying spending on homelessness in the Denver metro area has increased and so has the number of homeless people.

He said the approach was similar to Denver and "other cities," which haven't seen a decrease in homelessness.

Zvonek called Denver's housing-first approach an "abject failure," saying the navigation campus Aurora is working on is completely different.

"This isn't money going just toward housing homeless," Zvonek said. "Denver's going around buying a bunch of hotels and people view that as we're doing the same thing. It's not. We have a different system, a different model and an entirely different plan for this campus."