Denver Area Politicians Heading to Houston to Study Its Approach to Homelessness

Houston has generated national praise for the way it's been handling homelessness, and metro Denver politicians are heading to the Texas city on September 14 for a two-day trip to study its programs.

"I’m looking forward to seeing Houston’s approach to reducing homelessness, and we are interested in learning how they brought together key stakeholders from all sections of the community to work on this issue," says Mike Coffman, mayor of Aurora. "The metro Denver region has been working together on homelessness, and this is a great opportunity for us as a region to learn together."

Coffman will be joined on the trip by an array of elected officials, including Aurora City Council members Juan Marcano and Alison Coombs, Denver City Council members Candi CdeBaca and Chris Hinds, Adams County Commissioner Eva Henry and Arapahoe County Commissioner Nancy Jackson.

Attention turned to Houston in June, when the New York Times published "How Houston Moved 25,000 People From the Streets Into Homes of Their Own."

"During the last decade, Houston, the nation’s fourth-most populous city, has moved more than 25,000 homeless people directly into apartments and houses. The overwhelming majority of them have remained housed after two years. The number of people deemed homeless in the Houston region has been cut by 63 percent since 2011, according to the latest numbers from local officials," wrote NYT journalist Michael Kimmelman. "Even judging by the more modest metrics registered in a 2020 federal report, Houston did more than twice as well as the rest of the country at reducing homelessness over the previous decade. Ten years ago, homeless veterans, one of the categories that the federal government tracks, waited 720 days and had to navigate 76 bureaucratic steps to get from the street into permanent housing with support from social service counselors. Today, a streamlined process means the wait for housing is 32 days."

According to that NYT piece, Houston found success by working with county agencies and persuading local service providers, corporations and nonprofits to join together to find a solution for homelessness, specifically by using a housing-first approach. This approach focuses on first getting people experiencing homelessness into housing rather than first requiring them to get off drugs, get a job or worship a certain god.

The Denver Department of Housing Stability, established in late 2019 to centralize the city's approach to homelessness and housing, had already reached out to area service providers, pushing a collaboration that became more important during the onset of the COVID pandemic. Today a variety of entities in metro Denver are working together on homelessness, and many have embraced a housing-first approach.

The State of Colorado, too, is getting more involved in the issue of homelessness, with state lawmakers and Governor Jared Polis earmarking $155 million for homelessness programs and projects during the 2022 legislative session. Some of that money will go toward establishing a regional campus in metro Denver that will integrate emergency, transitional and permanent supportive housing with medical care, behavioral health care, substance use disorder treatment, case management, and employment and skills training in one location.

But unlike in Houston, homelessness has only gotten worse in metro Denver. The annual Point in Time count jumped from 6,104 people experiencing homelessness on a given night in January 2020 to 6,888 on a January night in 2022, a rise of 12.8 percent.

"We have a great opportunity to learn from the successes and struggles of the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston and Harris County, and I am grateful to Mayor Sylvester Turner and the Coalition for their willingness to share their expertise with us," says Aurora councilmember Marcano. "It is my hope that we return from this mission with a commitment to a shared strategy and vision for the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood metro region and get to work reducing homelessness in a way that is both cost-effective and humane."