Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration says the city is struggling with a shortage of emergency beds in its cold-weather shelters ahead of single-digit temperatures arriving this weekend.
Last month, Denver City Council members rejected a proposal to run a cold-weather shelter at a former DoubleTree hotel at 4040 Quebec St. that Urban Alchemy operates as a long-term non-congregate shelter. The argument is an old one: The city had launched too many homelessness services in northeast Denver, concentrating poverty in an already struggling council district.
The council’s decision took about 250 cold-weather beds city officials said were used in previous years off the board, leaving the city with 670 in total.
Now, the administration is pushing the council for a fix while figuring out what to do if the current shelters overflow.
“We're trying to maximize space wherever we can,” said Jon Ewing, the mayor’s spokesperson. “We've never turned anyone away. We have no intention of doing that this year. But, yeah, we're running up against some capacity issues.”
The city’s cold-weather shelter program allows people who are staying outside to come into a group shelter when temperatures drop and year-round shelters risk filling up.
Advocates wrote city officials on Tuesday to demand the city open the shelter, arguing the council’s vote is putting hundreds of houseless people in danger by denying them easy access during cold weather.
A rare alliance
It’s the rare instance when advocates, who are highly critical of the Johnston administration’s approach to enforcement and shelter, and the mayor’s office actually agree.
The DoubleTree makes good sense, advocates argue.
“This location is prime for serving the need as countless houseless people are living in this area on the streets,” Housekeys Action Network Denver, Mutual Aid Monday and Together Denver wrote in a joint statement. “Depending on periodic cars to pick people up from this area and take them to other cold weather shelters leaves countless people on the streets as they miss the ride or don’t know it is there.”
With the mayor’s push to end encampments and the city’s aggressive removal of tents, unhoused people have lost their winter gear and will be trying to survive without cover, advocates wrote.
Councilmember Shontel Lewis led the charge to vote against the contract, arguing the city has opened too many shelters at the border of Northeast Park Hill and Central Park — an area rich in underused hotels built when the Stapleton Airport was operating — and not enough in wealthier parts of the city.
But Cole Chandler, the mayor’s senior adviser on homelessness, told council members cold temperatures are threatening the lives of people living outside in her district.
“Part of what we've seen is more people staying outside, not coming inside during extreme cold weather, especially people that are living in northeast Denver,” Chandler said at a meeting last week.
Advocates plan to take action if the city doesn’t open the DoubleTree for cold-weather shelter.
Advocates plan to take winter gear to the shelter Thursday afternoon in an effort to save lives they say the city council is endangering.
Amy Beck, one of those advocates, is sympathetic to Lewis’s push for the Johnston administration to spread homelessness response across the entire city as he initially promised to do. But she is concerned about the council playing political chess with people’s lives in a cold-weather emergency.
“In subzero temperatures, that's putting the lives of our unhoused community at risk,” she said.
Lewis and her spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Beck is optimistic that the city council will change its mind and open the shelter Thursday night.
“We would rather not hand out tents and blankets to people that are not allowed inside,” Beck said. “However, that's what we are going to do this afternoon to keep people safe.”
The time, advocates say, is now.
Denver is on the cusp of its first lengthy cold-weather shelter activation of the year. And with temperatures dropping into single digits, the city expects it will need to open up additional space somewhere.
In past years, that has been the National Western Coliseum, but the building is currently occupied by the Stock Show. Recreation centers have also been used for shelter, as has the McNichols Building in Civic Center Park.
Those spaces are not operated as 24/7 shelters, and during the day, guests are sent back out into the cold, where they are at risk of frostbite and death.
The city opens its cold-weather shelters when the National Weather Service declares a cold-weather advisory or an extreme cold watch, temperatures are forecasted to drop to 25 degrees or below, or more than two inches of snow are predicted.
Ewing said the city plans to open additional shelters, perhaps in recreation centers, but the city has not decided where yet.
Conversations between the Johnston administration, the council and advocates are ongoing as temperatures drop.
