Margie Morris is a relative newcomer to Denver. She moved to the city in 2019 after growing up near Washington D.C. and raising her family in Europe and Chicago. She is running for District 10 after a career in finance, nonprofit leadership and consulting.
"My husband and I had been living in Chicago and made a very conscientious choice about where we wanted to be next," she said. "One of the things that really drew us to Denver, in particular, is the people. It's a great city. It's got a cool vibe. It's super outdoorsy. We love that about it."
Now, she's running for District 10 against incumbent Chris Hinds, along with Shannon Hoffman, Matthew Watkajtys and Noah Kaplan.
Morris is campaigning as a one-issue candidate: solving homelessness.
"We love Denver. We've just so enjoyed being here, but I had been noticing since I got here that the number of unhoused neighbors was continuing to climb," she said.
For Morris, her background in nonprofit work with social services, domestic violence, mental health and addiction organizations - plus her work with mentorship programs for youth and consulting - drew her into the race.
In her plan to tackle homelessness, she's made it clear in campaign material she wants Denver to enforce homeless sweeps.
"[I] probably want to reframe that, not really call it sweeps, but relocation, something that has a more positive connotation," Morris said in an interview.
Her version of enforcing the urban camping ban would involve a "triage" system, prioritizing places where people experiencing homelessness are camping that might be near schools or involve drugs. But they would still involve sweeps.
Morris thinks homelessness should be its own committee on Council, rather than a part of the Safety, Housing, Education and Homelessness Committee as it currently exists. She also wants to make social services and data on homelessness more accessible, and supports Safe Outdoor Spaces (SOS) and STAR, the new program that dispatches mental health clinicians to nonviolent calls to police.
"I helped volunteer one day with the one [SOS] in Montebello, which is an accessible SOS, and I really got a front row seat to what those environments look like," she said.
