A Denver nonprofit that trains people facing housing instability for careers in food service just moved into a kitchen twice the size of its old one, and it's already putting the extra room to work. Team Housed, Working & Healthy, known as Team HWH, can now serve up to 200 people a year through its culinary training, employment coaching, and mental health support, up from what its cramped former space could handle.
The nonprofit held a ribbon cutting to celebrate the opening of its new Swansea facility, according to Denver7, which reported the new building is twice the size of the space Team HWH used before. The old facility simply couldn't keep up with demand, according to executive director Brad Volin, who said it had a waitlist for several years running.
A Three-Month Program With City and Corporate Backing
Team HWH runs what the outlet describes as a three-month culinary training program meant to offer a path out of housing instability, though an earlier account from 5280 in 2023 described the program as lasting three to four months. The City of Denver has committed $1.5 million to the program, the station's report notes, and a new partnership with Brookdale Senior Living means 25 program graduates will have guaranteed jobs there every year.
Location matters here too. The Swansea facility sits four blocks from the A Line, giving students public transportation access, and per the same account, there are 1,500 shelter beds within four miles of the building. The curriculum has previously drawn on material from Emily Griffith Technical College, and students can eventually earn a ServSafe Certificate, the station reported in an earlier 2023 story.
From the Kitchen to Ball Arena to Tokyo Joe's
Geo Roberts is one face of what the program is meant to accomplish. He graduated from Team HWH's program in February 2025 and found his first job at Ball Arena before working his way up to kitchen lead at Tokyo Joe's. Now he mentors current Team HWH students and is working toward moving into his own residence.
“Once you're in the building, you're part of the family,” Roberts said, describing the sense of belonging he found in the kitchen. That family framing shows up elsewhere in the program too, through students like Bonnie Harter, who is preparing to graduate from Team HWH in a few weeks and had a job interview lined up the same day Denver7's story published.
“Sometimes it's just a hug that we get, and it's much needed,” Harter said, describing the kind of support the program provides beyond job training itself.
Numbers That Don't Quite Match, and Why That's Worth Noting
Just how many people Team HWH has graduated and placed in jobs depends on which report you read. Denver7's April 2023 coverage put the total at 68 graduates, with 56 having found employment, while 5280's reporting from the same month counted 70 graduates and nearly 30 participants still in the program at the time, out of more than 130 students enrolled overall. Both figures come from reporting roughly three years into the program's run, and neither account has been updated to reconcile the difference.
Separately, broader homelessness figures in the Denver area come with their own caveats. The Metro Denver Homeless Initiative coordinated the region's 2026 Point-in-Time Count on the night of January 26 through the morning of January 27, but the organization cautions that the count can undercount homelessness and specifically advises against using it to track trends from year to year.
For now, the expansion itself is the headline: a kitchen built to serve 200 people annually, a $1.5 million city commitment, and a standing offer of 25 guaranteed jobs a year from Brookdale Senior Living. Whether those numbers translate into outcomes on the scale of Roberts' story remains something future reporting will have to track.
