Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Denver residents continued to voice their concerns about the closure
of certain hotel shelters send the overall work to address
the city's homelessness initiatives.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Mayor Johnston held a town hall yesterday at the Central
Park Recreation Centers Jim to discuss the latest moves and
housing opportunities, and Mayor Johnston joins us now in the
KOA Common Spirit Health Hotline the town hall, Mister Mayor,
what were some of the concerns that you heard from
some of the residents.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I mean, for us, this is a good news step,
which is I remember, we opened eight hotels and shelters
and we started the homeless effort, and we believed and
that was to help with the surge of getting folks
off the street and into housing. But long term, we
wanted to wind some of these down and not have
us be paying rent of ten million dollars a year
or something at hotels when we could have people in
(00:43):
permanent housing. And so what we've started to do now
is close some of these hotels and we were paying
rent to and work on getting people moved more quickly
from temporary housing into permanent housing. So we'll close one
of the tiny home villages, we'll build apartments there for
work in Denver at need acts us to housing. We'll
stop renting one of the hotels, We'll move all those
(01:03):
folks into permanent housing. And then we're really focused on
getting people moved more quickly through these transitional sites with
better case management. And so if someone's in our site
for three months instead of six months, we can get
twice as many people through on the same number of
units are fewer. So this is kind of the next
phase of the work that we're really making progress and
we want to be able to get more people into housing. Obviously,
we had some activists there who still want us always
(01:26):
to be bringing on more and more units of housing,
and we think we agree we ought to focus on
permanent housing, but we do not think we need to
keep this number of transitional housing units, and we want
to bring down the total cost of the program, which
this helps us do.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
With the comfort in hotel shelter and the Monroe Tiny
Home village, like you mentioned, how many people are we
talking about in those shelters and then will they all
be able to instantly move into permanent housing or is
there still the permanent housing being built in order to
have them have those homes.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, there's about one hundred and fifty people across both
those and we have seven months to do it. It's
not anything urgent. We're preparing with a good long runway
to get them all transitioned to housing, and they won't
be moving into newly built housing, but we'll help connect
them through the affordable housing that we have available now
and or through vouchers that we have to help people
get access to housing. So we did this already this year.
(02:16):
We closed the hotel over in the Global Aero Swampson
neighborhood Oratison, moved all those folks successfully into housing. So
this is part of this stage of the work now
is to reduce the amount of dollars that go into
these transitional shelters and more into permanent housing and move
more and more people into that permanent housing. So that's
what we'll keep doing and just seeing again we'remind folks,
you know, right now we have the largest decrease in
(02:38):
street homelessness of any city in the country. We've eliminated
entirely street homelessness for veterans with the largest city ever
to do that. We now are the lowest city in
the country on the number of people counted outdoors in
this year's count, and so what we're doing is clearly working,
and this is a good time that we're ready to
move to the next stage of you know, there are
no encampments left in the city now, and so we
(02:59):
don't need a large and camp went resolution strategy. We
have to move people from temporary housing into permanent housing.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Mister Mayor, as you can imagine, we have a number
of our listeners that would be activists on the other
end saying why do we continue to help some of
these people because there's a group I don't know what
the percentage is that are chronically homeless. What does your
response to that? Trying to make it work, but some
people maybe refuse to take the services and the help.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah, and I think we have an obligation to taxpayers
to do that too, you know, which is why we
are saying we're not satisfied anymore with someone just coming
into one of our transitional housing sites and just staying
there for six months or nine months or twelve months
and not doing the work to look for housing or
get treatment or get addiction support. And so you know,
we're bringing in now the new providers will have at
these sites. All these contracts are performance based contracts now,
(03:44):
so we're not going to pay you just to run
a transitional housing site. We're only going to pay you
if actually people are coming to counseling every week, they're
getting support, they're in housing assessments, they're getting placed into housing.
We'll measure every single provider, we'll hold them accountable to that.
And we're also at more what we're calling street ambassadors,
which are folks that are out on the street making
sure there aren't people setting up tents, there aren't people
(04:07):
that are selling or using drugs on the streets. You know,
we do think those quality of life measures really matter.
You know, there's some actors the other side who think
that that's unfair, but we think everyone in Denver is
entitled to feel safe when they walk down the street,
or they take their kid to the park, or you know,
they go to their business. And so we think there's
a balance of both providing housing and really providing accountability,
(04:27):
and we think this transition will do both.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Mister Mayor. Earlier this week we saw a letter from
the former Deputy Executive Director of Parks and rec Scott Gilmour,
who was laid off during those furloughs that we saw.
He expressed some concerns when it came to just the
upkeep of certain parks. He says that due to this
decrease in city services from the layoffs, he's seeing some
parks that are not in adequate condition. Is that noticeable
(04:51):
or residents seeing more of that? Are we going to
see some of the impacts of just fewer staff members
in certain departments.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
I know, we feel great about the work that we've
done reserve and protect the parks. We actually did a
presentation on the budget of parks yesterday, and I think
it's quite remarkable that. I think in every other recession
the city's faced, we've had rec centers that are closed,
we've had libraries that are closed, we've had hours cut back.
We've not done that in any of our rec centers,
or our libraries, or our parks. And so I think
(05:19):
this team has done a tremendous job of keeping those
services in places, not cutting them back. And so I'm
really excited and grateful for the work they done. As
you remember, I mean we add to a year ago,
do things even like cut back the planting of flower beds.
So when we were facing some fiscal challenges, we're not
doing that this year either. And so the Parks and
rec team and Joel and Clarkroy director there, did a
really tremendous job of finding a way to manage the
(05:41):
budget without cutting any of those public facing services. And
so people should expect the same great experiences at rec
centers and parks they've had before.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
I probably asked you this question last week, but I'll
ask you again for the course correction with the budget.
Are we in the right direction or are you starting
to see a little bit of daylight now moving forward?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
I do really feel like this is the decisions we
had to make to right size the budget, so we
weren't every year trying to live out of the savings
account or trying to figure out how to make ends meet.
I think now we know we've reduced about a thousand
positions across the city. We've right size about two hundred
million dollars the budget. We've stayed focused on the core services.
We're still investing in public safety. We're not scaling back
(06:18):
our officers. In fact, we'll continue to add more officers
to the street this year. So we're really focused on
those core tenants of public safety. I think this gives
us a path to be able to now grow our
way out. That's also why investments and things like the
bond measure that we'll create ten thousand jobs, and in
the future of Mile High Stadium, which will create revenue
in our soccer facility, for our women's franchise, those things
(06:39):
are all revenue drivers for the city. So we both
want to grow our way out at the same way
that we manage costs. And you've probably seen, you know,
cities around the country are facing this. Cardal Springs announced
layoffs this week and budget cuts. The states worried about
another round of budget cuts, so all the twenty major
cities are facing it. So I think we saw it early.
We made the course correction early, and I think you'll
(06:59):
see a lot of the cities struggling through the hard
work we've already done, but we now think we're in
a position to start recovering.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, appreciate your time as always, you.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Bettyell, thanks for having me. Also super excited about full
sixteenth Street reopening next weekend, so it'll be a great
party in downtown. So we'll talk about that next week.
Denver residents continued to voice their concerns about the closure
of certain hotel shelters send the overall work to address
the city's homelessness initiatives.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Mayor Johnston held a town hall yesterday at the Central
Park Recreation Centers Jim to discuss the latest moves and
housing opportunities, and Mayor Johnston joins us now in the
KOA Common Spirit Health Hotline the town hall, Mister Mayor,
what were some of the concerns that you heard from
some of the residents.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I mean, for us, this is a good news step,
which is I remember, we opened eight hotels and shelters
and we started the homeless effort, and we believed and
that was to help with the surge of getting folks
off the street and into housing. But long term, we
wanted to wind some of these down and not have
us be paying rent of ten million dollars a year
or something at hotels when we could have people in
(00:43):
permanent housing. And so what we've started to do now
is close some of these hotels and we were paying
rent to and work on getting people moved more quickly
from temporary housing into permanent housing. So we'll close one
of the tiny home villages, we'll build apartments there for
work in Denver at need acts us to housing. We'll
stop renting one of the hotels, We'll move all those
(01:03):
folks into permanent housing. And then we're really focused on
getting people moved more quickly through these transitional sites with
better case management. And so if someone's in our site
for three months instead of six months, we can get
twice as many people through on the same number of
units are fewer. So this is kind of the next
phase of the work that we're really making progress and
we want to be able to get more people into housing. Obviously,
we had some activists there who still want us always
(01:26):
to be bringing on more and more units of housing,
and we think we agree we ought to focus on
permanent housing, but we do not think we need to
keep this number of transitional housing units, and we want
to bring down the total cost of the program, which
this helps us do.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
With the comfort in hotel shelter and the Monroe Tiny
Home village, like you mentioned, how many people are we
talking about in those shelters and then will they all
be able to instantly move into permanent housing or is
there still the permanent housing being built in order to
have them have those homes.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, there's about one hundred and fifty people across both
those and we have seven months to do it. It's
not anything urgent. We're preparing with a good long runway
to get them all transitioned to housing, and they won't
be moving into newly built housing, but we'll help connect
them through the affordable housing that we have available now
and or through vouchers that we have to help people
get access to housing. So we did this already this year.
(02:16):
We closed the hotel over in the Global Aero Swampson
neighborhood Oratison, moved all those folks successfully into housing. So
this is part of this stage of the work now
is to reduce the amount of dollars that go into
these transitional shelters and more into permanent housing and move
more and more people into that permanent housing. So that's
what we'll keep doing and just seeing again we'remind folks,
you know, right now we have the largest decrease in
(02:38):
street homelessness of any city in the country. We've eliminated
entirely street homelessness for veterans with the largest city ever
to do that. We now are the lowest city in
the country on the number of people counted outdoors in
this year's count, and so what we're doing is clearly working,
and this is a good time that we're ready to
move to the next stage of you know, there are
no encampments left in the city now, and so we
(02:59):
don't need a large and camp went resolution strategy. We
have to move people from temporary housing into permanent housing.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Mister Mayor, as you can imagine, we have a number
of our listeners that would be activists on the other
end saying why do we continue to help some of
these people because there's a group I don't know what
the percentage is that are chronically homeless. What does your
response to that? Trying to make it work, but some
people maybe refuse to take the services and the help.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah, and I think we have an obligation to taxpayers
to do that too, you know, which is why we
are saying we're not satisfied anymore with someone just coming
into one of our transitional housing sites and just staying
there for six months or nine months or twelve months
and not doing the work to look for housing or
get treatment or get addiction support. And so you know,
we're bringing in now the new providers will have at
these sites. All these contracts are performance based contracts now,
(03:44):
so we're not going to pay you just to run
a transitional housing site. We're only going to pay you
if actually people are coming to counseling every week, they're
getting support, they're in housing assessments, they're getting placed into housing.
We'll measure every single provider, we'll hold them accountable to that.
And we're also at more what we're calling street ambassadors,
which are folks that are out on the street making
sure there aren't people setting up tents, there aren't people
(04:07):
that are selling or using drugs on the streets. You know,
we do think those quality of life measures really matter.
You know, there's some actors the other side who think
that that's unfair, but we think everyone in Denver is
entitled to feel safe when they walk down the street,
or they take their kid to the park, or you know,
they go to their business. And so we think there's
a balance of both providing housing and really providing accountability,
(04:27):
and we think this transition will do both.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Mister Mayor. Earlier this week we saw a letter from
the former Deputy Executive Director of Parks and rec Scott Gilmour,
who was laid off during those furloughs that we saw.
He expressed some concerns when it came to just the
upkeep of certain parks. He says that due to this
decrease in city services from the layoffs, he's seeing some
parks that are not in adequate condition. Is that noticeable
(04:51):
or residents seeing more of that? Are we going to
see some of the impacts of just fewer staff members
in certain departments.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
I know, we feel great about the work that we've
done reserve and protect the parks. We actually did a
presentation on the budget of parks yesterday, and I think
it's quite remarkable that. I think in every other recession
the city's faced, we've had rec centers that are closed,
we've had libraries that are closed, we've had hours cut back.
We've not done that in any of our rec centers,
or our libraries, or our parks. And so I think
(05:19):
this team has done a tremendous job of keeping those
services in places, not cutting them back. And so I'm
really excited and grateful for the work they done. As
you remember, I mean we add to a year ago,
do things even like cut back the planting of flower beds.
So when we were facing some fiscal challenges, we're not
doing that this year either. And so the Parks and
rec team and Joel and Clarkroy director there, did a
really tremendous job of finding a way to manage the
(05:41):
budget without cutting any of those public facing services. And
so people should expect the same great experiences at rec
centers and parks they've had before.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
I probably asked you this question last week, but I'll
ask you again for the course correction with the budget.
Are we in the right direction or are you starting
to see a little bit of daylight now moving forward?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
I do really feel like this is the decisions we
had to make to right size the budget, so we
weren't every year trying to live out of the savings
account or trying to figure out how to make ends meet.
I think now we know we've reduced about a thousand
positions across the city. We've right size about two hundred
million dollars the budget. We've stayed focused on the core services.
We're still investing in public safety. We're not scaling back
(06:18):
our officers. In fact, we'll continue to add more officers
to the street this year. So we're really focused on
those core tenants of public safety. I think this gives
us a path to be able to now grow our
way out. That's also why investments and things like the
bond measure that we'll create ten thousand jobs, and in
the future of Mile High Stadium, which will create revenue
in our soccer facility, for our women's franchise, those things
(06:39):
are all revenue drivers for the city. So we both
want to grow our way out at the same way
that we manage costs. And you've probably seen, you know,
cities around the country are facing this. Cardal Springs announced
layoffs this week and budget cuts. The states worried about
another round of budget cuts, so all the twenty major
cities are facing it. So I think we saw it early.
We made the course correction early, and I think you'll
(06:59):
see a lot of the cities struggling through the hard
work we've already done, but we now think we're in
a position to start recovering.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, appreciate your time as always, you.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Bettyell, thanks for having me. Also super excited about full
sixteenth Street reopening next weekend, so it'll be a great
party in downtown. So we'll talk about that next week.
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