Swept Away: Five years after federal court settlement critics say Denver still ignoring rules of homeless sweeps

Two summers ago, Michelle Steves found herself caught in yet another city sweep of homeless encampments, this one not far from the Colorado Governor’s Mansion. She had been living on the Denver streets for years by then and the early morning convergence of trash trucks and city workers barking orders had become a regular part of her life.

Shooed from one spot, often with little notice, she would find someplace new only to be chased off again.

And with each sweep, like so many of the city’s homeless population, she would typically lose anything not quickly gathered in the chaos of the moment. All else disappeared into the shovels and dumpsters on site or carted away to a storage warehouse she had no idea how to access.

She and others talk of how it is not only things scavenged for survival that are gone, but also the clung-to remnants of a time before life took a wrong turn: family photos, a child’s crayon drawing, a special letter, the last gift before a parent died, even the cremated ashes of loved ones.

It is the collateral damage of a nation’s homelessness response.

But in Denver, it is not supposed to be this way.

Since 2019 the city has been under a federal court mandate with specific guidelines to not only better notify homeless people that a sweep is coming so they can prepare, but also make retrieval of possessions seized and stored easier and more accessible.

Yet five years and two administrations after the settlement of a federal class action suit, known as Lyall v. City of Denver, critics -- and even the city’s own Auditor -- say compliance with the terms of that agreement is spotty if not sometimes blatantly ignored.

And all the while -- over the objections of abuse and inefficiency -- the city has continued to award a multi-million-dollar contract to a private company handling not only the sweeps but also the subsequent storage of taken possessions.

Current city officials, including Mayor Mike Johnston, insist that the terms of the settlement are being followed and that Denver’s homeless population is treated with respect, offered housing assistance when possible, and that their possessions are preserved unless posing a health or safety risk.

“When Mayor Johnston took over a year ago, he overhauled how the city addresses encampments to ensure we are meeting people’s needs and helping them access stable housing. We will continue to ensure the terms of the Lyall settlement are followed,” a spokesperson for the mayor told The Gazette in an emailed response to questions.

But interviews by the Denver Gazette with dozens of people living in motels, shelters and on the street, along with community advocates, civil rights attorneys, city officials, and a review of years of court documents and reports, point to persistent problems:

Tents and all the possessions within and nearby are trashed when those tasked with the sweep decide everything is tainted under the broadly defined “hazardous” material exception. Other times possessions are tossed into dumpsters or trash trucks if the owner is not immediately in view and the campsite is deemed abandoned.

In one June 2022 case, a man stepped away to grab some water and his carefully packed items that he had moved outside the fenced sweep area were dragged back inside the fence by a city worker and trashed, said Kelsang Virya, a Buddhist nun who founded the non-profit advocacy group, Mutual Aid Monday, who said she witnessed the event and partially captured it on video.

In a more recent incident this spring near 8th Avenue and Mariposa Street, a young woman who also simply crossed the street to get water, saw her packed items outside the fenced area shoved towards a trash truck, said Ana-Lilith Miller, an advocate with Housekeys Action Network Denver (HAND), a non-profit that helps with housing. Miller told The Gazette there was enough outcry that the workers stopped, and the woman was able to grab her things and scurry away.

And even when something ends up in a city-contracted warehouse for the required minimum of 60 days, the process for retrieval can be inconvenient and impractical for those with limited transportation and abilities. Currently the hours are 6 to 8:30 a.m. four days a week and from noon to 6 p.m. on Thursday. When items are confiscated during a sweep the owner is supposed to be given a claim ticket as well as instructions on how to reclaim their items.

“They make things as difficult as possible,” said Amy Beck, founder of Together Denver, another advocacy group. “Most people are in such crisis they are not capable of retrieval.”

The majority never even try.

But Steves, the homeless woman near the Governor’s Mansion, is one who did.

‘I felt like they won’

Steves said she left her belongings for about 15 minutes to find a bathroom, asking a friend to watch her things. When she returned her belongings had vanished. She said when she confronted a city worker she was told: “Oh, we’re keeping it for you,” and was given three claim tickets.

“I was pissed,” she said, rattling off the list of missing items: “My jacket, my tent, my clothes, my purse, my cigarettes, my lighter, my ID, my wallet with my food stamp card. Everything.”

Always before she had taken the losses as inevitable and forever. This time she decided to fight back.

She asked Virya, from Mutual Aid Monday, to help. Together they went to the warehouse at 1449 Galapago St. during the Thursday hours. A worker for Environmental Hazmat Services (EHS), the Wheat Ridge-based company that holds the city’s contract for storage, was sitting in a truck and at first did not know what they were talking about, both women later said.

Eventually he checked, they said, and he told them her things were at another warehouse where items were relocated after the initial 30 days.

Virya remembered being surprised that the items were already moved. She cannot remember for certain if a month had passed, but in retrospect she is skeptical. The women said they were told to follow him to a second warehouse. But once they arrived, they were ordered to leave and return to the first location in a week.

So, they did.

But on that day another EHS worker told them they were not “on the list” and were not allowed to be there. Virya said she became angry and insisted he call his supervisor. The worker, she said, finally admitted they were correct but that the items still were not there. Come back tomorrow, they said they were told.

On their third try, after waiting in the parking lot for more than an hour, the shopping carts appeared, at first looking exactly as they did during the sweep. It struck Virya as odd because she thought items were supposed to be repacked securely for storage, but both women were too relieved to complain.

“Oh my God,” Steves remembered thinking, “I was so happy.”

They took the carts to a nearby park where the initial jubilation dissolved quickly.

“The first thing we noticed was the smell,” Virya remembered as they began to pick through the jumble of things. Steves noticed items were missing, including a bicycle and electronics charging strip. Worse, though, was that what remained was covered in rodent feces and urine that Steves insisted was not there at the encampment because she liked to keep her things clean and organized.

The only thing salvageable was her backpack which had her purse and wallet inside.

“I guess just getting it was an accomplishment,” said Virya later. But she could not shake feelings of sorrow and anger. “I was so sad for Michelle. It was so disappointing. They may have a system, but they don’t bother to follow it. I felt like they won.”

Years of allegations

On Aug. 25, 2016, attorney Jason Flores-Williams filed a class action lawsuit in federal court in Denver against the city and its leaders that immediately grabbed national headlines.

In what was among the first-of-its-kind in the nation, Lyall v. City of Denver contended that during sweeps Denver’s homeless population was deprived of its 4th and 14th Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure and a lack of due process.

All nine plaintiffs were homeless, including Raymond Lyall, a construction worker whose three crushed vertebrae made steady work impossible. The other plaintiffs included a former accountant who had fallen on hard times, a disabled veteran, and a woodworker whose tools were trashed during a sweep.

Andrew McNulty, a Denver civil rights attorney, joined the case about a year later as one of the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs. “Homelessness is one of the most important civil rights issues of our time,” he would later say. But he also admitted ending sweeps and advocating for the rights of homeless people can be an uphill fight, calling it a “politically unpopular issue.”

In February 2019, a settlement was reached with the city and approved by U.S. District Judge William Martinez. In the lengthy agreement the city agreed to standards to be implemented prior to sweeps, including a seven-day notice of a large-scale sweep, when possible, and a 48-hour notice to remove personal property in other areas with an exception for hazardous items considered a public health risk which could be disposed of immediately. Those could include illegal drugs, used syringes, perishable food, or trash.

The settlement further stated that “any items of personal property that could be reasonably assumed to have value to any person will be collected and stored,” including tents, sleeping bags, backpacks, suitcases, phones, bicycles, and musical instruments.

City and contracted employees were to “take particular care to identify, collect and store sensitive personal items and documents such as wallets and purses, prescription drugs, birth certificates and other ID as well as health documents.”

And if questions arose about an item’s worth, the scale was to be tipped in favor of value and those items should be stored, the settlement said.

Storage facility hours were set for early morning Monday through Wednesday and on Friday, and in the afternoon on Thursday. In addition, the “city shall create a formal system to provide public notification when unattended personal property has been removed by city employees or contractors and stored.”

A $30,000 award was also granted to be split at $5,000 each to the six remaining plaintiffs. By then three of the original plaintiffs had dropped out.

But in the years since there have been mounting allegations not only of non-compliance but that the problems have worsened:

October 2020. The city was sued a second time in federal court. “Over the past year, and in a blatant effort to skirt a settlement agreement entered into between Denver and a class of its homeless population, Denver officials have repeatedly showed up at homeless encampments without notice, flatly told homeless residents to move along (to where is the obvious question to this nonsensical command) and seized their property (often discarding it),” the second suit alleged.

A partial preliminary injunction against the city was granted in early 2021 that found the city had not been fully following the 2019 settlement. The case was later reversed on appeal on procedural grounds.

Spring 2021. The advocacy group, Denver Homeless Out Loud, issued a report called “Swept to Nowhere,” which surveyed 150 homeless people between April and August of 2020 – at least six months after the settlement. In its report the group found 89 percent had experienced a sweep or had property taken from them, with more than half of those saying they did not receive advance notice. In addition, nearly three of four said they did not know where their belongings were stored or how to retrieve them. Of the small percentage who tried, more than 80 percent said they were unable to reclaim any or only some of their property.

September 2022. Civil rights lawyer McNulty sent a letter to Mayor Michael Hancock and other city officials alleging “Denver has violated the express terms of the Lyall v. Denver settlement agreement and these violations are ongoing and escalating.”

The letter described “brutality,” against homeless people, including threats, intimidation and assault, and that possessions are routinely trashed “without even the pretense of storing it.” In addition, McNulty alleged that Denver city employees and contract workers were overheard saying the settlement did not need to be followed because it was no longer valid.

City officials did not respond, McNulty said.

April 2023. The Denver City Audit’s Office issued a report that concluded the city was “mostly, but not fully compliant” with the settlement. Among the failures were that personal property was disposed of before 60 days and the data multiple city agencies use to track encampment enforcement and cleanup was “often unreliable.”

The audit further said: “the city cannot ensure people experiencing homelessness have equitable access to services or their stored personal belongings because the storage facility is not easy to reach, personal property can be moved to an off-site facility without notice, and instructions are provided only in written English with no accommodations for people who speak another language or have a visual or learning disability.”

The audit also found “the city is not tracking expenses related to homeless encampments or sufficiently monitoring invoices and contract performance.”

The city defends its actions and disputes allegations of non-compliance:

“The City and County of Denver is following the terms of the Lyall settlement in providing a storage facility and staffing it during the days and hours agreed to as part of the settlement,” a spokesperson for city’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI), one of multiple city agencies involved, said in an emailed statement. “Our DOTI team takes great care during clean-up events, offering people the opportunity to voluntarily store personal items free of charge and providing them with tags they can use to retrieve their items.”

In addition, the agency’s statement said a phone number is given as part of its cleanup notice so people can directly contact EHS, the private clean-up company to help with sweeps and oversee storage. “The city works to be accommodating, allowing people to store items longer when they reach out and let us know,” the statement said.

A spokesperson for Mayor Johnston said in an email that problems highlighted in the auditor’s report predated his administration.

McNulty counters, though, that Denver has been on notice, time after time, year after year. “It was happening under Mayor Hancock and has continued under Mayor Johnston,” he said, “It has been a constant shell game.”

Reports of verbal abuse

In April, Denver City Council -- over the objections of the homeless community and advocates – approved a multi-million-dollar contract with EHS. The three-year contract came with the option of extending it for an additional two years, bringing the possible total to five years.

The company did not respond to requests for comment.

EHS has held a continuous contract with the city since 2018. The most recent contract authorizes payment of up to $4 million over three years and requires on-call services to assist multiple city departments with “clean-up of public property, rights-of-way, and other properties directed by the city that are impacted by abandonment or illegal dumping of materials and wastes from private citizens and households.”

Although the contract encompasses more than just homeless response, it specifically cites the Lyall settlement and requires the company to follow it.

It includes not only clean-up but also overseeing the “short-term care and storage of a person’s belongings if that person is experiencing homelessness and is required to vacate public property or is being placed under arrest, or is transported off-site to receive critical services, and as a result, may not remain in possession of their belongings.”

The contract also requires “identification of all items that have gone unclaimed beyond the maximum storage time and providing for their disposal” as well as “tagging and inventory process sufficiently accurate and organized so a person may be united with their belongings.”

So far this year, Denver has paid EHS $393,344 but the city admitted it was not clear how much of that has gone to homeless response. Invoices are not tracked by the job, but rather per day and there can be multiple jobs per day, a spokesperson for Denver Public Health and Environment (DDPHE), which oversees the contract, told The Gazette in an email.

Critics have complained that under the Lyall settlement, possessions stored and retrieved are supposed to be clearly catalogued to make retrieval easier. But a spreadsheet of storage information given to The Gazette through a public records request is non-specific, often only listing stored items as “personal belongings” or “clothes,” along with sweep location and date.

A spokesperson for the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) which manages the process said in an email the description is intentionally vague to protect the privacy of owners.

“We provide people claim tickets associated with their items that describe the items and include the clean-up date and locate,” the spokesperson’s email said, adding that if a claim ticket is lost the owner can describe the stored item with the location and date it was taken and “the team will work to connect people with their items.”

“We try to make it easy as possible for them to collect their belongings when they are ready to do so,” the agency’s email said.

Advocates and those who are homeless scoff at that, saying that while some people are successful the majority are not.

Serena Salazar, a 41-year-old homeless woman, said she tried to retrieve her items after a sweep earlier this year but could not even after she provided ID and her claim tickets. She said she was told her description of stored items was not detailed enough. “I lost everything,” she said.

Last fall, before the current contract was renewed, council members considered a six -month extension of the 2018 contract. At the time there was public outcry that EHS workers had been abusive to homeless people during sweeps and that there was inconsistency when trying to retrieve items from storage.

Council member Sarah Parady was the lone “no” vote to move the measure out of committee last year and to the full council. The extension was nevertheless approved, and in April, so, too, was a new three-year renewal for EHS.

At the time of the committee vote, a spokesperson for DDPHE said the city was open to looking for a new vendor but did not want to be caught with a gap in services, especially during Mayor Mike Johnston’s initiative last year to clear encampments and move 1,000 people off the streets.

Parady, a long-time advocate for social justice issues, recently told The Gazette she was distressed about reports of verbal abuse between EHS workers and those on the street. Already the city’s contract with EHS had been amended in 2021 to require sensitivity training for company employees.

The current contract now specifically prohibits EHS workers from speaking “with any member of the public on behalf of the City or negotiate with any member of the public to take certain action while working on site.” That includes “journalists and reporters, bystanders to the clean-up, and persons both inside and outside any barrier or fence defining the worksite.”

Parady, who voted for the new contract, said she has lingering concern. She would like the contract split between two entities – one with expertise in clean-up, and a second to a company or organization more familiar with homelessness issues to create a more practical system for storage and retrieval.

“If we don’t get the storage piece right, we are working counter to our own goal of getting people to trust the system,” she said.

When asked about the possibility of two contracts, a DDPHE spokesperson told The Gazette in an email: “The city would consider separate contracts after the current three-year agreement expires.”

A body near the river

June 13, just after 7 a.m. A cluster of police, city, and state vehicles have mobilized in a bank parking lot near 38th and Fox Streets. Waiting.

Down the hill and across the street, the scramble was on as a half dozen or so people who were living at an encampment shoved possessions into shopping carts, into bins, and suitcases. Other things were loaded onto a motorized scooter, propelled by 45-year-old Daniel Teitsort.

He was frantic as he guided the overloaded scooter to the top of the embankment and onto a sidewalk. His girlfriend, Hannah Haight, 26, with her dog, Penny, on a leash, dragged a wagon and duffel bags up the same hill. So did Casey Horn, 35, who also lived in the small encampment.

Most everyone else was already gone because a warning had been posted a week before. But now the deadline loomed. “We’re running from them now,” Teitsort said, balancing two bicycles, across the front of the scooter.

At 7:54 a.m. it began. The assembled cars and trucks rumbled down the hill, joined by a front-loader on a flat-bed truck. With remarkable efficiency, workers swarmed the area and what was left was scooped into a dumpster. The entire area was quickly cleared of all traces.

The half dozen or so people rousted from the site started rolling their things under a highway overpass about a hundred steps away to strategize logistics of what to do and where to go next. “It buys us some time,” said Teitsort.

A spokesperson for the city’s Department of Housing Stability said in an email that homeless people living in encampments are provided with “intensive street outreach and relocation options prior to the encampment’s closure.”

However, the city did acknowledge it might miss people if they were not present during the outreach.

Haight said she had a spot in a city-sponsored motel and was told she could take two bags of items. She did not bother asking for a claim ticket for the rest. “I don’t know anybody who ever got their stuff back,” she said.

Horn said she got a city-sponsored apartment which allowed her to take unlimited items, but she said she lost things anyway because she was unable to quickly sort between her possessions and those of others in the turmoil of the sweep.

Teitsort said he had no choice but to remain on the street because he could not get housing.

A city worker soon found them under the bridge. They were told they had 45 minutes to move their possessions again or everything would be trashed. Because they were still on public property, they were told it was part of the overall sweep area.

So once more Teitsort began loading as much as he could onto the scooter and racing out of immediate view. In the space of two hours, he moved things four times. He was exhausted and defeated.

“We don’t have a home, so the stuff is our home,” he said, “we move from place to place and whenever we lose stuff it’s like losing part of your life.”

There was melancholy in his voice. Maybe a bit of anger. The same echoed in others on the street.

“They look in your tent and if they see stuff like a food wrapper or pee in a bottle, they trash the whole tent and everything around it,” said Daniel Webb, who goes by the street name, Shrek, and has been homeless for about five years. He said he has lost everything over and over in at least eight sweeps, including his birth certificate, medication, a Social Security card as well as clothes, a laptop computer, and a treasured skateboard his brother had given him.

“It’s my stuff,” he said as he waited in line for a free meal in front of City Hall, “it means everything to me.”

Lindsey Torres, a homeless woman battling addiction and mental illness, was living in one RV last year on a Denver street and had stored things in another. When the police told her she had 10 minutes to clear out what she wanted before the vehicles were towed, she panicked and could not grab everything. Left behind in the rush was the container that held her dead mother’s ashes.

“I felt helpless and afraid because there was nothing I could do,” she would later say.

Police bodycam footage from the scene showed her wailing on the sidewalk and confused.

Amy Beck, an advocate who was also at the scene, told The Gazette that Torres was unable to retrieve the vehicle from the impound lot afterward because she could not prove ownership. Beck stepped in and said she pleaded with the police for weeks to at least let them get the ashes. When at last Beck called the city’s impound lot directly, she said she was told the vehicle, and all its contents had been destroyed.

“You get tired of losing everything. You have to detach. I have gotten used to losing so much stuff I have to tell myself not to hold onto anything anymore,” said Lori Lupercio told the Gazette in June at the encampment a week prior to the sweep described above.

She was gone by the sweep but a few days later at a gathering Downtown she told the Gazette she had been unable to get housing and was scared. A 50-year-old mother of six, she became homeless after not being able to keep up with her rent and was trying to escape domestic violence.

On August 1, Lupercio’s body was found near the South Platte River. Her boyfriend was later arrested and charged with first degree murder.

McNulty, the civil rights lawyer, acknowledged it is a complicated issue for the city as leaders must balance the needs of both a vulnerable homeless population and those of a frustrated, complaining public -- including homeowners and businesses who are distressed by nearby encampments. Often the piles of possessions look like trash.

But looks can be deceiving. “If you took anybody’s house and pulled everything out and put it in a pile in the front yard it would look like trash,” said McNulty.

Those living that reality say the city has favored optics over true solutions.

The latest point-in-time time homeless count, conducted in January and released Aug. 14, reveals that despite spending an estimated $155 million to curb the crisis, the overall number of homeless people in Denver grew by more than 12%, from 5,818 in 2023 to 6,539 this year.

And despite the city’s much heralded push to move people into housing, only 150 more homeless people were “sheltered” this year compared to last, which means they were not living on the street, in cars or in public places.

“They’re not really getting rid of homelessness. They just clean things up for the day,” said Teitsort, “It’s like they are trying to sweep us along with our stuff. They want to make it look like we’re not here anymore. But we are.”