A service hub for Denver’s most vulnerable won an award after it was shuttered in city layoffs.
The Denver AID Center was once a place where people dealing with homelessness, addiction and cycles of incarceration could go to find help moving on from their troubles. It offered connections to treatment centers, free phones, access to Medicaid and occasionally free dental care.
But this June, Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration announced plans to shut it down. His office said the AID Center’s services were already being carried out by other public programs, and that budget shortfalls necessitated its closure.
Officials delayed that plan after public outcry, but it finally closed for good last month, when its two full-time organizers were laid off with 170 others.
Then, last Friday, the AID Center received recognition from the Colorado Hispanic Bar Association: its annual Organizational Community Service Award, granted to “a governmental entity or nonprofit organization committed to providing services benefitting the Hispanic community.”
'We’re so disappointed this place has closed.'
The AID Center was created by Denver’s Department of Safety before Johnston took office. Carlon Manuel was hired to lead the center; his layoff marked the project’s end.
But Manuel was present at the Hispanic Bar Association’s gala last week to accept the award. Though he was told in advance that he won, he wasn’t prepared for the reception he’d receive when he arrived.
“I didn’t understand the gravity until I got there,” he told us. “There were judges, lawyers from across the state — this is like a statewide vote for the AID Center. It’s really humbling, they really understand the work. A lot of people knew me that I didn’t know.”
All night, he said, people who intimately understand cycles of incarceration came up to him to lament the AID Center’s closure.
“Federal judges were saying, ‘Man, we’re so disappointed this place has closed down,’” he said. “What I was doing was something that was beneficial to a lot of people.”
Felipe Bohnet-Gomez, a civil rights attorney who was recently elected president of the bar association, said that’s why his organization chose the AID Center for the award. He said it was nominated, “by essentially all of the Denver County court judges, recognizing how important they viewed the work that they do.”
“I felt compelled by the concept of trying to reduce incarceration and recidivism, just by providing and connecting people with a panoply of basic services,” said Bohnet-Gomez, who is a voting member of the bar association’s board.
Bohnet-Gomez added that the board made its decision before Manuel lost his job. At the time, they thought the award might influence the city’s calculus on whether to close it permanently.
“It wasn’t apparent that it would be shut down, but they were in the crosshairs,” he said, “We were hoping to not only recognize their work and thank them for it, but shine more of a light on it — and the hope was that may be taken into consideration in determining whether they’d continue to exist.”
Manuel said the award helped him decide what might be next.
He’d been considering whether to stay in Denver at all. Manuel came to Colorado by way of Los Angeles to start the AID Center. For a time after he lost his job, he thought he might return to California.
But the plaque he received at the gala, and all the well-wishes that washed over him during the event, pushed him to imagine a different future.
“It put it into perspective, that I have to get this started again,” he told us.
Manuel said he’s still feeling burned from the layoff. He thinks Denver needs a brick-and-mortar drop-in center to catch people who need help, but he no longer thinks it should be run by the government.
“I see it in partnership with the government,” he said, adding, “I definitely don’t see it under the mayor’s office.”
And Manuel said he’s thought about other ways to make an impact, in addition to providing resources.
“I may look at running for office,” he said.
