Updated 11:31 a.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023:
City crews will sweep the camp located on East 18th Avenue and Logan Street at 7 a.m. Thursday morning, according to a statement provided to Denverite by Denver’s Joint Operations Center on the homeless emergency.
The cleanup was originally planned for Wednesday morning, but advocates with Housekeys Action Network Denver said they appealed to Mayor Mike Johnston late Tuesday night, and he agreed to postpone the sweep.
“We did this in an effort to ensure we could equitably reach all members of the camp to provide referral resources to existing shelter resources,” the statement from the JIC read.
Our original story continues below.
Josef Steele served in the U.S. Army, and he reacted like a soldier when gunshots rang out on Monday afternoon near the sidewalk camp at E. 18th Avenue and Logan Street, where he’s been staying for weeks.
“I was in the tent with my sister,” he recalled. “I didn’t think, I just reacted, just from training. I woke up, I heard where it was coming from and I put as much of my body between the sounds and her as I could. As soon as my leg wrapped around her is when I got hit in the back.”
A woman named Dina, who declined to share her last name, told Denverite that the shooting was preceded by shouting.
“A guy walked up, going on about. ‘Where’s my keys, b****, gimme my keys!’ She said she didn’t have them, and then he just started shooting,” she said.
The Denver Police Department (DPD), nor anyone Denverite reached out to for information or comment, could say who fired the weapon. Steele and one other person living in the camp were victims. Now, they’re being forced to leave a slice of land that, until this week, has been viewed as kind of a haven for people with nowhere else to go.
In a statement DPD said the shooting that was reported on the 1700 block of N. Logan Street is still under investigation, but preliminary findings show that, other than being hit by stray gunfire, the two victims at the camp were not involved in the disturbance that preceded the shooting.
On Tuesday afternoon, Denver Police officers and members of Denver’s Street Enforcement Team showed up telling people to pack their bags.
Police officers arrived on Monday, as Steele bled, and sent him to Denver Health for treatment. Physically, Steele said he was OK, but he and others were rattled.
“It’s just crazy. We were just sitting there talking and minding our business,” Dina, who’s been living on the block for a few weeks, told us. “I’ve never had anything like that happen anywhere I’ve been.”
She hadn’t heard that authorities would clear the block as a result.
Amy Beck, an advocate who’s worked with unhoused residents all over the city, said a group of uniformed officers and city workers came to sweep the block on Tuesday afternoon without any notice, but backed off after she and her colleagues pushed back.
Instead, the authorities returned with notices about an impending sweep on Wednesday, but apparently copied the wrong document. Around 2:30 p.m., they finally came back with the correct paperwork, which they handed out to residents one by one.
“AREA CLOSED EFFECTIVE 8/23/2023 at 10:00 a.m.,” the notice read.
The timing caught Beck off guard.
“Under the last mayoral administration, when there was violence in camps – a shooting or whatever – they would give anywhere from 48 hours’ notice to seven days notice, typically seven days notice,” Beck told us, “so this is very unusual that they intend to just show up here and sweep people.”
It meant an unwelcome rush for people living in the camp, too.
Danny C., who said he became homeless three months ago after the shelter where he was living decided to ban dogs, said he was scrambling to figure out where to go. But his distress was about more than where he’d land; he was losing something, too.
“It’s like a community, and we’re good people over here,” he said.
“I don’t think they should blame it on us, you know?” Dina told us. “If there had been other incidents, or if there had been problems up here, that’s one thing, but there hasn’t. They want to take some place that’s been peaceful.”
Housekeys Action Network Denver, a group that advocates for unhoused Denverites, released a statement calling the impending sweep “unjustified” and a violation of the “Lyall settlement,” the result of a 2016 class-action lawsuit that required the city to give people “at least seven days’ notice” before a large-scale sweep related to blocked right-of-ways.
The settlement does allow for faster timelines if “a public health or safety risk exists which requires it.”
Both Jordan Fuja, Mayor Mike Johnston’s spokesperson, and Denver’s Joint Information Center (JIC), the city’s communication apparatus for Johnston’s emergency declaration over homelessness, said authorities needed to issue a “24-hour notice” for an “emergency closure” of the camp due to “significant public health and safety concerns.”
Both Fuja and the JIC wrote to Denverite in separate statements that “All residents of our city deserve to feel safe, and our work today underscores the importance of the work the city is doing to bring people indoors and close encampments.”
Fuja said Johnston visited the Logan Street camp on Tuesday morning, fulfilling his promise to meet with people bound for a sweep.
Advocates and unhoused Denverites are all waiting to see how Johnston’s administration handles homelessness at large.
Days prior, a woman named Badger, who declined to share her last name, spoke to us about the city’s recent trash pickup program for sidewalk camps and said things on this block were better than most. People were respectful. Leaders had emerged. Neighbors looked after each other and ensured that things were clean and orderly.
“There have been rapes in other camps. There hasn’t been anything like that here. I’ve been in camps where there were daily beatings. Not here,” she said. “We have almost our own little republic.”
Yes, drivers passing the block still honked at them all night long, but people who lived in apartments nearby also came by to thank campers for keeping things tidy. Badger had dreams of pooling money for a WiFi connection, so residents could apply for jobs and keep track of housing lotteries. She hoped they could prove that they could handle their own security, their own lives.
“That’s what we’re trying to do in this camp, is show we are capable of taking care of ourselves,” she told us.
Monday’s shooting and Wednesday’s looming sweep may have shattered those dreams, though the city probably wouldn’t have sanctioned an autonomous camp. Mayor Johnston has promised to house 1,000 people by the end of the year, many in tiny homes or hotels and possibly even pallet shelters that will soon be considered by Denver City Council. All of his plans include supervision by third-party vendors.
Beck said police, city and state workers have been quietly moving people off land in south Denver, often using the threat of a camping ban ticket to make them leave.
While the Johnston administration will carry out just its second official, posted sweep on Wednesday, she said the idea that he generally ended these “traumatic displacements” just isn’t true.
But though she was angry with police on Tuesday, Beck said Johnston is still making a better approach than his predecessor. She said the mayor probably hasn’t had enough time to influence DPD’s way of doing things, just yet.
“I support his 1,000 housing surge that he’s undertaking right now,” she told us. “I think he’s going to reach this goal. Even if he only reached 800, I would be happy with that. Because that would be the opposite of what the last mayoral administration was doing. So I support him.”
Whether Johnston’s administration feels nicer or not, a lot of people living outside know they can’t stick around one block for long.
“When you’re homeless, you know everything is temporary, that’s part of the life,” Badger said. “Your place is temporary. Your tent is temporary. Your possessions are temporary. Everything is temporary.”
Kyle Harris contributed to this report.
Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to reflect that DPD’s statement said the two victims were not involved in the disturbance that preceded the shooting. Police are still investigating who the shooter was.
