City Sweeps Homeless Encampment in Baker, Moves 50 Into Temporary Housing

Denver city officials just swept a second homeless encampment in less than two weeks, clearing a site that had quickly grown in a small parking lot in the Baker neighborhood. But, unlike with last week's sweep, the city will be housing fifty homeless residents from the Baker encampment.

"This has gone very smoothly," says Derek Woodbury, spokesperson for the Denver Department of Housing Stability. "Most importantly, we're excited to get more people inside, connected to resources, excited to get people on a stronger path to stability."

The encampment had appeared during the past few weeks on West Fourth Avenue and Kalamath Street, Woodbury says, but the city wanted to sweep it while it was "still a manageable size." According to city officials and encampment residents, the population had reached between 55 and 70 people.

The city refers to sweeps that move people into housing as "move-in days," or encampment resolutions. This is the third "move-in" day of 2024, with two others at West Colfax Avenue and Umatilla Street and West 48th Avenue and Fox Street.

The city is taking fifty residents from the encampment to three different All In Mile High temporary housing sites, though it hasn't specified which ones. All In Mile High is Mayor Mike Johnston's rebranded plan to put more than 2,000 people into housing by the end of 2024, including the 1,000 that the city has already housed through last year's House1000 plan.


As part of the All In Mile High plan, the city is operating eight temporary housing sites, including five hotels and three micro-communities. In total, the city has about 1,300 temporary non-congregate housing units saved for homeless residents swept from encampments; the city had about ninety units available ahead of the sweep on Thursday.

Johnston's administration has moved nearly 1,500 individuals into temporary or permanent housing since he took office in July, according to the mayor's office.

Last week, Johnston green-lit the Tuesday, April 16, sweep of what he called a "massive" and "unsafe" encampment in the La Alma neighborhood populated by 138 homeless residents. None of the residents at that encampment were offered housing, because the mayor said there weren't enough vacancies at his All In Mile High sites to offer them.
Woodbury says that it's "highly suspected" that the residents of the Baker encampment came from the La Alma encampment after it was cleared.

During an April 9 town hall discussion with La Alma residents, Johnston said he expected the homeless residents to either return to their site in La Alma or find another location nearby after being swept. Salas said last week in a statement that identifying where those residents go was "a priority."

One of the residents swept at the encampment says he was moved into housing last year. Asking only to go by Dee, he says he was swept while camping at 16th Avenue and Logan Street in August and given housing at the DoubleTree Hotel at 4040 Quebec Street, which was turned into a non-congregate temporary housing site.

"This shit right here is uncalled for," Dee says about the Baker sweep. "At the end of the day, all that is really happening is the resources that should be going toward the homeless population — Why don't they just put a gate up and leave everybody alone? — they continue to waste resources."

After getting kicked out of the DoubleTree — which he calls "the MurderTree Hotel" because of the double homicides that took place there in March — for being accused of domestic violence, Dee went back out onto the street and ended up at the Baker encampment last week.


Cecilio Duran, a Mexican immigrant who has been in the United States for forty years and has been homeless for about a year, says, "If the city isn't going to help us, they shouldn't bother us.

"They should be giving us a hand," Duran continues. "The city is bad because they take our things, they take people out of their tents. It's happened to me twice."

Alexandra Breaux, a nineteen-year-old who says she's been homeless her whole life, feels like the city "is treating us like rats," she says. "We're not hurting anything. We pick up all our trash. We do our best to make it nice, but they'll still come down here."

Breaux and Dee say they weren't able to get into housing because of recent arrests. Duran says he turned down housing because he doesn't speak English and didn't feel comfortable taking the city resources, though the city does homeless outreach in Spanish as well.

The city is also dealing with the recent discovery of a migrant encampment in the Central Park neighborhood. Jon Ewing, a spokesperson for Denver Human Services, says the encampment, currently estimated at 73 people, is located on private property and will be swept on May 8