Mayor's House1000 Plan Makes Concrete Progress, Picks Up Federal Liaison

Mike Johnston campaigned on a vow to end homelessness, and as mayor he's been aggressively pushing his plan to house 1,000 homeless individuals in Denver. And House1000 made some concrete progress this week.

Site preparation and construction has already started at two of his eleven proposed micro-communities, city officials confirm, even though one of two locations planned for the Golden Triangle has been nixed.

And today, October 18, Johnston announced that he will also have a "fully embedded federal leader" in his office, making sure he has direct contact with the White House to get the resources he needs for his plan.

"We're clear-eyed about the challenges that a community like Denver is facing on this particular issue," Chad Maisel, a special assistant to President Joe Biden, said at a press conference with Johnston. "From day one, President Biden has made it a priority to lower housing costs, prevent folks from becoming homeless and really provide communities with the resources they need to prevent and end homelessness."

According to Johnston, the liaison will help "bust through those regulatory barriers" that the state and federal government have around resources in order to help move housing policies forward. He describes the job as a "direct line to the White House to reach out and say, 'Here's what we're trying to do. Can you help?'"

Denver is the seventh community to get a federal liaison through Biden’s ALL INside program, which is aimed at giving direct federal support to local homeless initiatives. Other places in the program include the cities of Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Seattle, along with metro Phoenix and the State of California.

The federal employee, who will join Johnston's team in the next couple of weeks, will be with the mayor through the end of 2024. While federal officials say that it's "a long-term commitment," Biden is up for re-election that November.

The night before the announcement of the federal liaison, Johnston paid a visit to the Montbello neighborhood for a community informational meeting at McGlone Academy. Successors to the town halls Johnston held in all 78 neighborhoods, these meetings provide residents with a last chance to air concerns regarding incoming micro-communities.

The meeting, which attracted around 35 residents, focused on the micro-community planned for 12033 East 38th Avenue in the Central Park neighborhood, adjacent to Montbello. The site is the parking lot of what used to be the Stay Inn, which was purchased last year with federal funds for use as housing.

Johnston and his senior advisor on homeless resolution, Cole Chandler, revealed a few more details about the proposed micro-community. It will be "interim use for a maximum of four years on that site that will eventually become long-term supportive housing," said Chandler, who noted that when the motel project is finished, the site will have 95 units.

In the meantime, the parking lot will host 54 pallet shelters, which Chandler described as smaller than the micro-sleeping units planned for a site at 1375 Elati Street. It will also have a pair of community spaces "where the community can gather, where services will be provided, where staff offices can be."
Twelve of the units will be for people with disabilities. The site will also have two pet-relief areas, air-conditioning, heat and bathrooms. "It includes showers, it includes laundry facilities," Chandler added.

The meeting was also an olive branch between Johnston and Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, whose District 8 includes both Montbello and Central Park. Lewis had voiced concern about how Johnston was carrying out the House1000 plan, saying, "I don't think we should be sweeping folks when they don't have anywhere to go."

"We shouldn't tell people to move along to nowhere, and this is an opportunity for us to not do that," she noted at the meeting. "I'll continue to push back on those sweeps, because folks have nowhere to go."

That aside, Lewis likes the plan for a micro-community and long-term housing in her district. "I think it's a really good example in which we are having the short-term use at the micro-communities and at the same time rezoning to have that long-term permanent supportive housing," she said.

But as at other community meetings, there was pushback. Neeru Jain, who owns the Phillips 66 next door to the site, said she was worried about property values plummeting. "Who's going to buy our property with a shelter next to it?" Jain asked. "Its value is going to go down."

Ralph Dockery, who also owns property next to the site, said that he asked Johnston: "What if somebody came up, fenced off the property next to you, bulldozed it and put up 150 homes? How would that affect your property values?"

Dockery was also concerned that the city bought the motel and parking lot property for $9 million, even though the previous owners had paid just $3.8 million, which city records confirm.

But according to Jeff Olivet, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, "Denver is already moving in the right direction."

"The urgency with which you've tackled this problem is extraordinary, and we're behind you in this," he told Johnston at today's press conference. "Denver gives me hope right now."