Over this winter, hundreds of families lived out of sight in cars, tents and under bridges. When they asked for shelter from the city and nonprofits, many were denied, even as the city expanded its cold-weather shelter program.
Some families called the Salvation Army’s family homelessness hotline dozens of times with no answer. Many struggled to get into cold weather shelters during freezing cold days and nights. Most of those who were brought inside the emergency cold-weather shelters were released back to the streets with no connection with a case worker and no pathway toward a homeless shelter, much less housing.
Families, even those with children as young as six years old, say they’re not admitted to most of the city’s homeless shelters, which serve individuals. They feel invisible — unseen because they’re in cars, not camped out in obvious spots in downtown Denver.
One family told city workers that Denver police officers confiscated their car because they did not have insurance, leaving them with no roof to sleep under. Denver Police Department could not confirm whether this happened with limited information about the woman, but said that impounding a car over a lack of insurance is not normal.
Many families expressed fear of the police pushing them around the metro and potentially impounding their cars. Undocumented families also feared Immigration and Customs Enforcement finding them and detaining them.
Other families shared their stories of getting sick as they stayed outside in freezing temperatures.
Two parents faced truancy court because their kids were missing so many classes, as they criss-crossed the metro. Many of the unhoused families are new immigrants who face additional obstacles: a lack of documentation, no work authorization and a constant fear of deportation.
Denverite interviewed families, advocates, academics, city workers, nonprofit staff, and the mayor. We also sat in on a Denver City Council meeting where families begged lawmakers for support. We also reviewed data from the city’s cold-weather shelters and the Salvation Army’s family crisis hotline, which is the city’s main way to funnel families toward shelter.
Taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions on ending homelessness. Why are families living in their cars not able to receive basic shelter?
A family’s struggle.
Henry Landaeta called the Salvation Army’s Connection Center, the crisis hotline for families, more than 220 times before reaching someone. He was seeking help for his wife and three sons
They arrived in Denver a few months ago after a long journey from Venezuela through El Salvador, where they got a dog, Sherlock, that they brought with them to the United States.
All five family members sleep in an old Honda sedan, the mom and two younger sons jammed in the back, with Sherlock between their legs.
Henry works through a day labor center. His sons are teenagers who are exploring Denver’s best sports teams. None of the kids have been enrolled in school, though they want to be soon. They have to move each night, from Fort Collins to Aurora to Denver, always fearful of losing their car.
The family came into the city’s emergency cold-weather shelters when temperatures dropped below 25 degrees for several days. Like hundreds of other families, after the shelters closed, they returned to their car.
Now, they’re advocating for themselves. They spoke alongside other families at a meeting with the mayor’s staffers, human services and the housing department.
A few days later, they shared their story with Denver City Council, though the armed sheriff deputies outside the chambers scared them so much they decided not to go inside, fearing law enforcement would call ICE and have them deported – a move that would be contrary to Denver law.
Instead, they met in a room crowded with families, mostly immigrants, a few doors down.
Several spoke to council from a laptop with the camera covered with a Post-It note, so they would not be identified. That night the Landaetas again met with staff from the Mayor’s Office and the housing department, who said they would offer services. Afterward, the families left, again, with no offers of shelter. Council took no action, and the family has no idea when shelter will be available.
The Landaetas have it better than some families experiencing homelessness. The kids are older. Nobody’s sick or disabled.
But they aren’t vulnerable enough to be considered for either immediate emergency shelter or housing. And there aren’t enough beds in Denver’s shelter system for the city’s housing department to bring all families inside.
And when family shelter beds did open, the city prioritized other people — pregnant women, people with severe disabilities, families with infants and those living in tents and under bridges, as opposed to in vehicles.
Bilingual city caseworkers are following up with Landaeta and many other families living in their cars.
“They have been communicating with us,” Henry said. “But they have not done anything yet.”
The Connection Center struggles to connect.
Denver uses the Salvation Army’s Connection Center, a hotline staffed by 12 workers, as a “gateway” for unhoused families to find homeless-family shelter beds. The hotline also helps families dealing with eviction and looking for other homeless services.
Individuals can show up to shelters unannounced. But families have to call… and call… and call.
In recent months, Denver’s hotline has had a waitlist of as many as 410 families during the coldest week of the year, according to the Salvation Army. Currently, with warmer weather, that number is about 120.
When you call the hotline, a voice instructs you to hang up and call again or leave a message.
One mom called the crisis line more than 40 times before speaking to a caseworker who helped her family come inside from sub-25-degree weather, as she told Denverite.
The crisis line sometimes receives as many as 40 voice messages in an hour, said Salvation Army spokesperson Jennifer Forker. A single staff member responds to them all. The other employees are answering the flood of calls as best they can.
There are never more than six of the twelve employees working the line at any one time, and sometimes fewer. It’s only staffed from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. on weekends. Intakes take at least 40 minutes. There is not enough staff to meet the demands of the hundreds of families calling.
Even after a meeting with a caseworker, shelter is not immediately available.
“Most of the sheltering options in the Denver area are for single men or single women, so there are not a lot of options for families,” said Don Burnes, the founder of the Burnes Institute for Policy Research at the anti-poverty nonprofit the Colorado Center on Law and Policy. “And when you get a large, increased crowd of families, they just don't have places to go.
The caseworkers that are available have overloaded dockets of clients. The few nonprofit family shelters that do exist are over capacity.
Since the beginning of the year, the Connection Center caseworkers have helped 39 families avoid eviction. During all of this year’s cold weather events, they have provided 562 families with hotel vouchers. Others have been placed at the city's few family homeless shelters.
Once a family is on the list, waits for shelter can take around six weeks, according to Forker. Families whom Denverite spoke with said they waited far longer, living in their cars.
The mayor who wants to end homelessness.
Mayor Johnston declared a homelessness state of emergency on his first full day in office and said he planned to end unsheltered homelessness by the end of his first term.
Denver cut unsheltered family homelessness significantly from 2023, when there were 193 families on the streets, to 2024, when there were 76, the mayor later said.
That number is based on an annual count of unsheltered homelessness across the metro on a single night, and refers to people living outside and in cars. It’s an imprecise accounting at best.
That fall in family homelessness happened mostly because the city opened a new family shelter – one that is now full, as many of the families staying there, particularly new immigrants, are hard to place in long-term housing.
Johnston, who prides himself on closing large-scale encampments, has brought more than 2,200 people indoors in total, including individuals and families.
“Vehicles will be our next focus,” he said. “But we still have work to do on street homelessness.”
For Johnston, street homelessness means people living in tents or on the sidewalk — not families living in vehicles.
Homelessness researcher Burnes said that living in a car and living in a tent both mean homelessness, including in the eyes of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“I’m not sure it’s a very useful distinction either,” he said.
Johnston has declared many times that the city of Denver offers immediate help to families it finds on the streets — meaning people sleeping on the sidewalk or in tents. That does not include those living in cars.
“That has dramatically changed the landscape,” Johnston said. “As soon as we find someone, they are moved.”
But families clamoring for services say the city isn’t doing enough.
How Denver compares nationally
Burnes said many cities are behind in addressing family homelessness, and Denver is neither a model nor the worst.
According to a January report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, across Colorado, family homelessness rose by 34 percent from 2023 to 2024 (from 3,641 families to 4,878). How that has changed from 2024 to 2025 won’t be known until summer.
What is known is that Colorado’s growth in family homelessness is sharper than most other states. Burnes attributes this to the state’s policy of welcoming new immigrants, who face language barriers and difficulty finding work.
The number of families experiencing homelessness, including people living in shelters and doubled-up in homes, rose in Denver, even as unsheltered family homelessness plunged. The city’s courts saw record-high eviction cases last year, and many more people likely moved out because they couldn’t pay rent.
Denver has no nonprofit working solely on family homelessness, and the issue is just one of many competing priorities for nonprofits like the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities.
Fixes to the problem
While families are stuck in their cars, the city could do more to ensure their health and safety, Burnes said.
He would like to see Denver invest in more safe-parking initiatives, where families living out of their cars have secure private space, avoid police, and have toilets, showers, and food.
Were families to at least have a single place to park, they could more easily enroll their children in school and ensure they had access to a stable education.
Public toilets are few and far between in Denver. Security and police often ask families in their cars to move on. And bypassers often harass families.
Ultimately, Burnes would like to see families – especially those working minimum-wage jobs who cannot afford Denver’s cost of housing – get long-term housing, not just shelter, and in many cases supportive housing, where they can have basic needs met.
Denver already spends significantly on homelessness. The city spent $155 million on All in Mile High, Johnston’s plan to bring 2,000 people in from street homelessness. Another $57.5 million is budgeted for All in Mile High in 2025 — a decrease because the city has finished making some upfront investments in shelters.
Johnston’s 2025 budget notes Denver now has “one of the lowest carrying costs for homelessness resolution in the country.”
The spending number would be much higher if it included spending at Denver Health, Denver Public Schools, and various city departments.
The missed opportunity at the cold weather shelters.
City staff touted the 2024 expansion of cold weather shelter as a major improvement, offering a network of shelters that were open to nearly everyone in cold weather, more often and for more hours. Individuals can get in by simply showing up at a shelter when the temperature is low enough.
But it doesn’t work that way for families. Their only way in is through the Salvation Army’s understaffed Connection Center.
On average, the shelters had 206 families in the cold-weather shelter network each night, according to the city’s housing department. The city brought 392 families in from the cold on the busiest night.
Most of those families who came inside got only shelter, but not any long-term support.
Of the 266 families who came into cold weather emergency shelters between Feb. 8 and 22, some of the coldest nights of the year, 27 were put on a path toward shelter or housing:
- Eleven received shelter placement through the Connection Center.
- Six were reunited with other friends or family.
- Seven were given money for rent and deposits
- Three were placed in bridge hotels.
When the weather warmed above 25 degrees, most families returned to wherever they were staying before, often a vehicle, without a connection to someone who could help them find long-term housing.
“What happens in cold weather sheltering is it is not a long-term case management system,” Johnston told Denverite. “You're often there for 24 hours. We don't house. We don't do intake or build a housing plan. This is really an emergency. We keep people from freezing to death on the streets.”
Where did all those families who had come into the city’s emergency shelters go?
“We don’t know where those families went at this moment,” Johnston said. “But we are constantly looking.”
