The city had purchased hotels and warehouses for housing the homeless before Johnston took office, but his administration opened the coffers even more, relying largely on leftover federal COVID relief dollars. These multimillion-dollar leases and purchases include two hotels bought this year in deals worth a combined $64 million. The hotels were used mostly for Johnston's effort to house 1,000 people before the end of 2023, and are now housing people in his next phase of combating homelessness, known as All In Mile High.
A map of city-owned facilities is available online, and the Johnston administration has a dashboard to track the mayor's progress in his efforts to house thousands of people. However, there is no tracker showing which hotels the city bought or leased, which swallow up millions in taxpayer dollars.
Westword broke down the costs and history of Denver's hotel portfolio, and found that the city has spent approximately $138 million since the beginning of 2023 on hotel shelters for the homeless and migrant populations. This figure doesn't count the money spent to operate or staff those shelters.
Most of the money to lease, purchase or service these hotels are leftover COVID relief funds from the federal government as part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The federal government delivered two tranches of ARPA funding in 2022 and 2023 worth a combined $200 million, according to the 2023-2024 city budget. However, ARPA funds will expire in 2025, leaving Johnston without a source of money that he's relied heavily on, an impending challenge he's acknowledged.
So far, the hotel-buying strategy has been a success by Johnston's measure. Only two weeks ago, he announced a milestone was hit by bringing 2,000 homeless people indoors since he took office. More than half of them are living in the hotels listed below.
The Stay Inn in Central Park — $9 million
While Johnston was running for mayor, former mayor Michael Hancock's administration was securing the purchase of the 96-unit Stay Inn at 12033 East 38th Avenue in Central Park. The $9 million purchase of the property and two adjacent pieces of land was finalized in January 2023, a couple of months after the city accepted a $2 million federal grant to cover part of the cost. The rest of the purchase was covered by a mix of community development block grants and leftover funding for federal COVID relief. The building hasn't been used since it was purchased, but the parking lot is home to the first micro-community that Johnston opened. Micro-communities are temporary housing sites where homeless people can get services and more privacy than at hotels, but they're much smaller than hotels and house less than half as many people.
The micro-community site in front of the Stay Inn hosts 54 people, according to the mayor's office, but the building itself has 96 unused rooms that the Hancock administration bought to fill right away. The building was meant to be transitional housing to get homeless people on their feet, but it needed structural repairs, which the city made during Johnston's first year in office, the mayor's office notes.
The city still has plans to use the building. According to the mayor's office, the idea is to turn it into permanent supportive housing where homeless residents can live for more than just a few months. There would be on-site case management services, but residents would have to pay rent, usually with the help of housing vouchers. The "Stay Inn would be for permanent supportive housing, like an apartment," says Jon Ewing, a spokesperson for the mayor's office.
After securing a permit for a temporary managed community in December 2023, the city opened its first micro-community in the former motel's parking lot on the last day of 2023. However, in order to turn the vacant building into permanent supportive housing, the city would need to rezone the property, a process that Denver City Council has recently started to get off the ground.
"The city is still working to transform this property into supportive housing for people transitioning from homelessness," Ewing says. "A rezoning is one step in the process to bring this needed housing forward, and we fully anticipate the rezoning process to commence at a future date."
Currently, the property at 12033 East 38th Avenue is zoned light industrial, which means the city has to use it for commercial properties like offices or short-term lodging. The mayor's office is seeking a mixed-use zoning designation to build a multi-unit dwelling.
On August 16, members of the Denver City Council Land Use, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee requested a rezoning for 12033 East 38th Avenue to mixed-use. It was originally anticipated to have been approved by the council by the end of September, but the rezoning request hasn't moved since it was made by councilmembers Amanda Sandoval and Shontel Lewis.
Meanwhile, temporary managed community permits can only last for up to four years, so the permits for all three of Johnston's micro-community sites, including at the Stay Inn, will expire by the end of his first term at the latest.
The DoubleTree in Central Park — $43 million
One of the most well-known city-owned hotels is the DoubleTree at 4040 Quebec Street in Central Park. In March, two people were killed at the hotel, leading it to garner nicknames like the "MurderTree" or the "TroubleTree." No one has been charged in that incident despite two arrests made in April, and the investigation is ongoing, according to the Denver Police Department.On August 28, the city closed a deal to purchase the DoubleTree for $43 million. According to the Department of Finance (DOF), that purchase was made using money left over from the American Rescue Plan funds.
The city prefers to call the hotel the Aspen Shelter. It's by far the largest former hotel involved in Johnston's efforts to solve Denver homelessness, with 300 units as well as a restaurant and two ballrooms on the ground floor used as congregate and cold-weather spaces to house another 150 people. The building comprises about 175,000 square feet and sits on five acres of land.
Originally, Denver signed a lease-purchase agreement in November 2023. Under the agreement, the city could rent the property until the end of January 2025, or spend $10,000 for an option to buy it. The city took that option and bought the building for $39 million. With closing and holding costs, acquisition fees and payments for a few improvements to the hotel, the final price came out to $43 million, according to the Department of Finance. Denver paid $43 million in full, rather than in parts, according to the Rocky Mountain Mutual Housing Association, which sold the building to the city.
Denver was paying $83,333.33 a month to rent the hotel for about ten months, costing the city $833,333 before it purchased the hotel.
A $10 million, one-year contract with the Salvation Army to run and service the site will expire at the end of December. That contract is being funded with money from the Homelessness Resolution Fund, which raises money through a sales tax approved by Denver voters in 2020.
Denver was paying $83,333.33 a month to rent the hotel for about ten months, costing the city $833,333 before it purchased the hotel.
A $10 million, one-year contract with the Salvation Army to run and service the site will expire at the end of December. That contract is being funded with money from the Homelessness Resolution Fund, which raises money through a sales tax approved by Denver voters in 2020.
The city spent $9 million on the Stay Inn in Central Park in 2023, but it hasn't been able to start using the building as a homeless shelter like it planned.
Conor McCormick-Cavanagh
The Embassy Suites in Hampden — $21 million
The city purchased the former Embassy Suites at 7525 East Hampden Avenue on April 10 for $21 million from East Hampden Hotel Fee LLC, an entity set up by an out-of-state company. A lease-purchase agreement was completed in December 2023, when Johnston rushed to move hundreds of people indoors to meet his House1000 goal.Johnston revealed his plans to use the 205-room Embassy Suites as a shelter for families experiencing homelessness at a December 16 community meeting with the Hampden neighborhood, where he had pushback from dozens of residents.
Two days after that meeting, Denver City Council approved a lease with the building owners to rent it for $825,000 a month. By December 28, the Johnston administration had renamed it the Tamarac Family Shelter and moved several dozen homeless families in, which meant the mayor was fifty people short of his House1000 goal three days before its deadline.
A few months later, the city used the shelter to house migrant families, Johnston said at a May town hall. Now the former hotel is sheltering around 200 homeless people for Johnston's All In Mile High goal.
As with 4040 Quebec Street, the city originally secured the property with a lease-purchase agreement that was active for about three months, which cost the city close to $2.5 million in rent. It then funded the $21 million purchase of the property in April with money from the city's Homelessness Resolution Fund. The city also has a $2.6 million contract with the Salvation Army to run the site until June 15, 2025; that contract is funded by leftover COVID relief funds.
Best Western in Northeast Park Hill — $15.7 million
All In Mile High relies on a former Best Western hotel at 4595 North Quebec Street to shelter about 200 people. Although the city is using the hotel, the current owner is the Denver Housing Authority (DHA).The DHA calls itself a "quasi-municipal" city agency whose mission is to develop quality affordable housing for Denver. It has a board of commissioners that makes decisions independently, but they're appointed by the Denver mayor and approved by the city council. The DHA relies on city funding but can also raise its own funds.
The former Best Western cost the DHA $26 million to purchase in August 2023 from Denver Hotels LLC, a local company, and the City of Denver agreed to cover more than half of that cost with a $15.7 million grant. The city funded the grant with leftover ARPA money.
The city already had an agreement with the DHA dating back to 2018 in which it backed up a DHA-issued bond with $120 million raised by city property taxes; the DHA's end of the bargain was to deliver affordable housing projects. The agency opened the doors of the Best Western to Johnston's House1000 effort as part of that agreement, known as the DHA Delivers for Denver program.
The city gave the DHA the $15.7 million grant on the condition that it agrees to a 99-year covenant requiring the agency to keep using the Best Western as housing until 2122 for people experiencing homelessness. The DHA's long-term plan for the property is to use it as a non-congregate shelter for three years and then transition the hotel into permanent supportive housing, according to the Department of Housing Stability (HOST).
The Radisson in Globeville — $10.3 million
In December 2023, Denver City Council approved a $10.3 million one-year lease with Central Lodging LLC, a local company, for the Radisson Hotel at 4849 Bannock Street in Globeville. That lease expires on December 19 and is being funded by leftover COVID relief funds and by HOST's budget, according to the DOF.The site is currently hosting 220 homeless people as part of All In Mile High, according to the mayor's office. Bayaud Enterprises, a local organization, runs the hotel and its homeless services. The City of Denver completed a six-month, $2.1 million contract with Bayaud to service the hotel and is currently on a second, identical contract with the group that expires at the end of December, a couple of weeks after the lease, according to city contracts. Those contracts were both funded by leftover COVID funds.
The Comfort Inn in Northeast Park Hill — $11.6 million
The City of Denver already exercised the one-year contract in January 2024, which put the city on the hook for another one-year, $5.8 million lease with the owners. Funding comes from HOST's budget, according to DOF. The contract expires at the end of January 2025, but the City of Denver will have another three chances to extend the contract for the Comfort Inn. More than 130 people are currently housed there for All In Mile High.
The St. Francis Center, a homeless service provider with a congregate shelter downtown, is running the hotel and its homeless services after agreeing to a one-year, $3.1 million contract that expires at the end of December. Funding for that service contract comes from leftover COVID relief funds.
Migrant hotels — $27 million
Eight months before Johnston took office, the City of Denver declared an emergency because of the influx of migrants straining its shelter system. But once Johnston was in office, he took on the migrant crisis by duplicating his strategy for solving homelessness.Since December 2022, about 43,000 migrants have come to Denver, mostly from Venezuela. While the city doesn't keep track of exactly where migrants end up, more than half of them are expected to still be somewhere in the metro area, according to the mayor's office. Thousands of them have stayed at city-operated hotels at some point; during a cold-weather emergency in January, more than 5,000 migrants were in those hotels or other city-run shelters.
Unlike with his homelessness strategy, Johnston wasn't buying or leasing the hotels he used for migrants. The city rented them by the room with the help of six-month purchase orders approved by the city council. Purchase orders, unlike leases, allocate funding to city agencies for large or bulk purchases, and the funding is returned if not all of it is used.
According to the Department of Human Services, the Johnston and Hancock administrations spent $27 million from December 2022 through October 2024 to use about a dozen different facilities for emergency migrant housing, including seven former hotels, a warehouse and a church. The main vendor of rooms for the city's migrant strategy was Quebec Hospitality LLC, which owned most of the hotels or motels the city used at the height of the influx.
