State of the Streets: July 2026

Press releases are provided to Yellow Scene Magazine. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole.

Contact Housekeys Action Network Denver [email protected] or 701-484-2634 with questions

State of the Streets

July 2026

Before the Mayor’s State of the City Address on July 21st, it is necessary to preemptively correct the lies that we know he will be telling in this address.

There has not been a 64% reduction in street houselessness, rather there has been a 150% increase in anti-houseless enforcement. This increased enforcement combined with migration changes, cold weather shelter access, and other factors is the reason for the reduced street houseless count. (Read the release by Mutual Aid Monday to dig into this more). It is not due to an increase in houseless people getting housing. Data and direct experience from houseless people show this reality.

Since January of 2024, when the Mayor wrapped up his initial “house 1000” initiative, there has been a 150% increase in police of anti-houseless laws including the camping ban, trespassing, park curfew, and the like. And that is just in tickets, not counting the majority of enforcement that goes untracked through move on orders without tickets. Mayor Johnston used this “house 1000” initiative to pave the way for him to police the City at unprecedented levels. Now houseless people on the streets are approached by police or other enforcers as soon as they set up a tent, use cover, or even just sit on a public sidewalk. There is nowhere to set up and rest for a few days and no protection from the elements. Houseless people on the streets are pushed into hiding and out of the public eye. In this way, Mayor Johnston created the illusion of significantly decreased street houselessness as reflected in the Point in Time count. Where in reality people are still living on the streets just not where they will be counted.

Over the past year we have now interviewed 114 houseless people about the enforcement, or rather street terrorization, that is going on. All these people have shared about the effects of being forced to move along, having their property taken in sweeps without notice, significant police abuse, and other harm this treatment is causing. Here are three quotes (see housekeysactionnetworkdenver on Instagram to listen to any of the interviews).

• “We are dying out here, we don’t want to be out here but we are. They [police] don’t find us no place to go, they just tell us, we gotta go. They promise us resources but then they kick us out.” (Woman who was kicked out of Best Western shelter to the streets)
• “It’s gotten bad. We are not allowed anything under us or over us. [A year or two ago] we were allowed tents, we were allowed comfortability, we were allowed privacy, we were allowed stability at least a little bit. Now we are not allowed to have blankets underneath us or over us even to cover us at night.” (Woman who was staying on the streets at 22nd and Stout area)
• “The City comes and there’s no more giving us warning, they just come by and sweep everything. Grocery cart, they are throwing it in the trash. The whole cart and whatever you put in the cart, its going straight in the trash. The way to keep these streets clean over here is to get us off the streets but we can’t get in there.” (Man staying on the streets near Doubletree)

Mayor Johnston has claimed that “there are no more families on the streets” yet we work with many families who are on the literal streets – sleeping in parks, abandoned buildings, or hidden spots on the streets. When the cold weather shelters closed down, hundreds of families staying at those shelters because they had nowhere else to go were kicked back to the streets or other unsafe places. There is a waitlist for family shelter that hovers around 400 families. Claims by the Mayor to have provided shelter to all houseless families is simply false.

Over the past year we have raised thousands of dollars to put families in desperate need up in hotels for as long as possible. Here is what some of these families have shared about the situation.

• “Have called & talked to everyone in this system.” [Got no help] (Houseless Family)
• “Don’t promise something you can’t complete because then you are disillusioning us, my young child has been saying yes they’re going to help us and it is not right.” (Houseless Family)
• “Yesterday I went to Home Depot & met [city outreach worker] there w/ a suitcase & my kids, she asked me where I was staying, I was in the streets b/c I didn’t have help. I told her that my time finished b/c [HAND] doesn’t have money to keep paying cus there are other people who need help & are receiving those donations, she said she’s going to send them a letter to the shelter but to keep calling for the waitlist & they’re going to call me soon to ask some more questions, but she said they can’t help.” (Houseless Family)
• “If it was my city, I wouldn’t permit this because they’re mistreating people who are desperate for support.” (Houseless Family)

Mayor Johnston will make grand claims about how amazing the non-congregate shelters he commandeered for his ‘All In’ initiative are. Yet the City’s own dashboard shows that 47% of residents at these shelters are being kicked/going back to the streets. The data shows 32% ‘negative exists’ and 15% ‘unknown’ (which almost always means someone leaving of their own accord back to the streets). That means roughly half of those in these non-congregate shelters are going right back to the streets – a disturbingly and uncommonly high number.

It is understandable that many people are leaving these sites of their own accord given the issues at these sites. The Doubletree (Aspen) is now run by Urban Alchemy. When they took the contract, they changed many rules – this included taking away people’s key cards so they can no longer let themselves into their own room, disallowing residents to visit other residents in their rooms, increasing room checks to 3 times a day, and other prison-like rules. Serious issues abound at these sites.

The Mayor will tout how open and accepting Denver is, but meanwhile shelters are discriminating against queer people. Recently, a trans woman was refused shelter at the Samaritan House because she did not have access to a razor to shave. Another trans woman was just kicked out of a shelter tied to hate and discrimination from residents and staff. Hate acts against queer folks in shelters are constant. There is no place safe for trans or any queer people to stay when houseless.

Furthermore, Denver shelters are not meeting standards of accessibility for people with disabilities. Denver is facing a lawsuit for the inaccessible shelter system, which is not making necessary accommodations for people with disabilities (which we as HAND are a plaintiff in this suit along with 7 individual disabled houseless people). As a recent example, a family was just kicked out of the Tamarac family shelter for getting a service dog for their disabled child. The shelter rules state that you cannot get a new pet while in the shelter, and no accommodation was made for this child in spite of letters from the doctor verifying this child’s need for an emotional support dog – a legal right in housing. People with disabilities are continually being kicked out of or excluded from Denver shelters because the shelters are not taking needed steps to accommodate people’s disabilities.

This brings us to the Mayor’s misrepresentation of houseless housing progress in Denver. Mayor Johnston’s “Homelessness Progress Dashboard” states that 8,142 houseless people were permanently housed since he came into office three years ago. To understand this number, it is important to understand what it counts and how it compares to past years. This number only counts houseless people housed from city-funded programs. This does not necessarily mean the housing the person moves into is funded by the city, such as when people get vouchers which are almost all federally or state funded, but rather just that the person was in a city-funded shelter or connected to housing from the streets by a city-funded outreach worker. The shelters also have other funding streams beyond the city, but these are the places or programs the city is investing in and therefore counting as their housing successes.

It is important to understand also that the majority of these city-funded programs are not new under Mayor Johnston but have been in Denver funded by the City for many years. The only new shelter programs that have come on since Johnston was in office were some of the non-congregate shelters and a couple of micro communities. Currently, there are 3 non-congregate hotel shelters and 3 micro communities left that were added since Johnston came into office (as he opened and then closed some shelters). (The non-congregate hotel shelters were acquired with ARPA dollars prior to his coming into office, and these two micro communities were acquired once he came into office.) All the rest of the city-funded shelters have been around for years, funded in part by the city.

Metro Denver Homeless Initiative is responsible for tracking houseless housing data for Denver total. They do this through a federally required database called the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). Whenever someone who is in HMIS (which includes most houseless people but not all) moves into housing from houselessness, MDHI tracks this information. Here is the data showing housing rates for the past 5 years:

MDHI

Year Clients Households

• 2021 – 6,540 clients, 4,366 households
• 2022 – 7,624 clients, 5,251 households
• 2023 – 9,247 clients, 5,887 households
• 2024 – 9,537 clients, 6,412 households
• 2025-  9,929 clients, 7,036 households

There has been a steady increase in households housed since 2021, but this increase remains at between approximately 600 to 900 more a year, with the recent year closer to a 600 increase. This shows a consistent pattern of houseless housing rates – not an increase under Mayor Johnston.

By quoting that ‘we have housed 8,000 houseless people’ in his time in office, Mayor Johnston makes it sound like his office has directly funded housing for these people and that this is a big number to tout. When in reality it is mostly not City-funded housing, and it’s a normal pattern of housing that has been going on for many years prior to Mayor Johnston – it is nothing new.

It is also important to note that some of those counted as housed are housed temporarily through Rapid Rehousing. Rapid Rehousing (RR) moves people into private housing and pays for 1 year or sometimes more of housing costs. The Mayor’s RR assistance has only been for a year (with a few people extended, but also with the Mayor pushing to reduce the time even less than a year). Mayor Johnston has depended heavily on RR to house people, but this housing often ends in the person being kicked back to non-congregate shelter or even the streets. Data on RR exits is still not transparent, so we cannot give fully accurate information here, but we can note from experience that many people we know land back in houselessness after their time in RR.

So… When Mayor Johnston gets on stage and touts big success in getting people off the streets and into housing, question him on where all those people are going from the streets since the housing records show they are not getting into housing. Question him where the 47% of people kicked out/leaving the non-congregate shelters with no housing are going. Question him why there are so many sweeps happening but none of them are posted as required in the Lyall agreement. Question him how he can say there are no families on the streets when hundreds of families stayed at the cold weather shelter when it was open because they had nowhere to go, and when it closed, they were not given any shelter options. Question how he can say Denver is so open and accepting if the shelters are not safe for, or don’t even allow, trans and queer people. Question the Mayor’s claims in his State of the City Address. The truth must come out to open the door for change…

###