Mayor Mike Johnston has announced what's being celebrated as one of the most substantial drops in the number of unsheltered homeless individuals within a major U.S. city, as indicated by the results of the annual Point-In-Time (PIT) Count. In a significant move in the fight against homelessness, Denver has displayed an 83% reduction in unsheltered family homelessness and a 23% decrease in tent and vehicular homelessness. This improvement marks Denver's largest single-year decline in homelessness since the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative (MDHI) began documenting specific data. According to the City and County of Denver, the total population of unsheltered homeless individuals has seen a reduction of 11%.
The statistics show that Denver's efforts are bearing fruit in ways that outpace many peer cities, with remarkable comparisons to cities such as Seattle, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta. MDHI's data shows a contrast to past trends, where incidences of unsheltered homelessness had been on the rise across the broader Denver Metro, yet notably faltering within Denver's jurisdiction. "We have always believed that homelessness is a solvable problem, and now we have the data to prove it," Mayor Johnston stated, as per the City and County of Denver.
Denver's All In Mile High (AIMH) initiative, which has been operational for more than seven months since the January PIT Count, has played a crucial role in these developments. Aimed at moving people into sheltered situations, AIMH has successfully closed 17 encampments and transitioned 1,673 individuals indoors, a move that has expanded the sheltered population by approximately 20%. Currently, the city counts around 117 tents, a decrease from 242 at the time of the count, an impressive 52% drop.
The AIMH initiative has also achieved the permanent closure of more than 350 blocks in Downtown Denver to camping, resulting in the absence of large encampments downtown for the first time in multiple years. Despite grappling with the largest per capita influx of newcomers from the southern border of any interior city, Denver anticipates reaching "functional zero" for unsheltered veteran homelessness by the end of the current year, as indicated in the mayor's statement. On the day of the PIT Count, over 4,300 newcomers were accommodated in shelters, contributing to the nearly 43,000 who have received city support since December 2022.
