As Denver courts see record-high eviction cases, Mayor Mike Johnston is slashing the $23 million his administration promised in eviction prevention funding in 2025 by $9 million.
City-funded eviction prevention services came to a halt Friday morning, leaving dozens of clients the city promised to help uncertain about whether that help would actually arrive.
Service providers were left wondering whether they could offer any additional rental assistance support this year, and spent most of the day in conversations with Denver’s Department of Housing Stability. The funding is used to help people catch up on rent in no-payment eviction cases and is used to keep people housed when they would otherwise face homelessness.
The $9 million cut from this year’s budget will be transferred to next year’s Temporary Rental Assistance and Utility fund, now budgeted at $12 million.
“It hurts us all to see the TRUA numbers, but there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Councilmember Amanda Sawyer in a Wednesday Denver City Council budget hearing. “That money is gone.”
But the $9 million is still there. The new policy is that it can’t be spent until next year, even as Denver is on track to see an increase of more than 5,000 eviction cases this year, based on year-to-date court data.
The city will be able to serve as many as 1,500 fewer households with rental assistance in 2025 and 2026 than it did in 2024, Jeff Kositsky, with the Department of Housing Stability said at the budget hearing.
Nobody knows how permanent the stop-work order is.
On Friday morning, Denver’s housing department sent an immediate stop-work order to organizations like the Community Economic Defense Project contracted to help prevent eviction.
“After meeting with each agency to discuss the changes in the 2025 and 2026 TRUA budgets, we have determined we need to pause spending effective immediately while we reassess where we are with spending to date,” HOST wrote service providers in a letter obtained by Denverite. “To ensure TRUA has $9M remaining to rollover into 2026 as outlined in the proposed 2026 budget, we need to assess projected September expenditures and the remaining funds available for 2025.”
The programs’ suspension left around 60 clients — likely around 150 people — who had been told they would receive city help uncertain whether that would ever come, said Community Economic Defense Project head Zach Neumann.
“While the city had communicated 2025 budget reductions, providers were not aware that a full stop-work was coming,” he said. “We thought there were going to be reductions so money could be carried over. We didn’t think it would be a full stop to all activity.”
Neumann and CEDP were in conversations with HOST through Friday trying to determine if they would be allowed to resume their work this year.
Leaders at nonprofits say families facing eviction are devastated as they try to determine their next steps.
Without the help the city promised, in some cases, people will be forced out of their homes by the Denver Sheriff Department. In others, they may have evictions on their permanent records, making it harder to rent again.
Eviction prevention groups are scrambling for solutions for their clients and pushing the city to keep these programs running under a tight budget.
“We really deeply understand that the city has profound budget challenges and that the city has to make very tough choices,” Neumann said. “I also think that families who are receiving this news today have even bigger problems that they have to face, including the loss of their home. That’s what service providers are grappling with today.”
Neumann said his organization is optimistic HOST will find a way to resume work this year, but he is uncertain what that might look like.
"Later next week, HOST will determine the status of any remaining 2025 funds, and whether additional TRUA applications will be accepted this year," HOST spokesperson Derek Woodbury wrote Denverite in an email.
The context of the cuts
The cuts are part of Johnston’s broader efforts to reduce government spending as he attempts to close a $50 million general fund budget deficit this year and a $200 million general fund budget deficit next year.
Councilmember Sarah Parady told Denverite that she’s disappointed in the 2025 eviction prevention cuts that undermine long negotiations the council had with the mayor’s office last year.
“I know that we save so much money and so much trauma by preventing evictions,” she said.
Restricting how rental assistance can be used could ultimately be more costly, she said. Housing someone who is already homeless is far more expensive than keeping a person facing a financial crisis housed through eviction prevention.
Changing priorities
Johnston recently told Denverite the city will prioritize those most likely to experience homelessness, though he did not specify what metrics the city would use to assess risk.
“Every city is struggling with the same question right now: How do we target our resources in a way that prevents the most homelessness?” said housing department head Jamie Rife at the budget hearing. “And we've worked really hard to do that.”
Without rolling over the money, the administration contends there would only be $3 million available for eviction prevention next year.
Shifting money around to make it appear that the city is not drastically cutting rental assistance dollars next year is “prioritizing optics over human beings,” Parady said.
