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DENVER (KDVR) — When a homeless encampment appeared at 18th Avenue and North Marion Street near Saint Joseph Hospital on Oct. 4, neighbors hoped it would be short-lived.
Instead, residents from the upscale Kendrick apartment buildings told the Problem Solvers it’s been a downward spiral of safety concerns.
“Drug dealers are coming by. Drug deals are happening, open drug use, there’s needles and human waste everywhere. We’ve had residents report that they found people in stairwells doing fentanyl,” said Corrine, a recent transplant from Phoenix.
The 36-year-old is one of three Kendrick residents who spoke to FOX31 but requested we not use their last names because of safety concerns.
Residents describe security concerns
“I feel unsafe in my own home scenario because I can’t go outside without a new thing happening. We’re right next to a hospital. We thought we were going to be safe living near here,” said Connie, a 33-year-old transplant from Chicago.
“Just recently, I was walking my dog and made it maybe 40 feet from the building and watched a man brutally beat another man with a crutch. So that was pretty terrifying for me,” said Reed, a 32-year-who moved to Denver from Dallas.
Corrine, Connie and Reed all moved to Denver in the last year because they each work remotely and chose to live in Denver.
“We can no longer safely go outside by ourselves without feeling very concerned for our safety, as most of us, myself included, have been followed, we’ve been yelled at,” Corrine said. “I lived in Chicago for eight years. I never felt the amount of, like, fear for my safety as I have felt here since I moved in.”
All three of the apartment residents said they are all now second-guessing their decisions,
When asked if he was prepared to break his lease, Reed responded, “Yeah, absolutely.”
The residents said they’ve been told it might cost them thousands of dollars to break their rental leases, but all three told the Problem Solvers they feel like they may soon have no choice.
“I don’t know if I’ve seen anybody move in. I’ve seen a lot of people move out (since the encampment arrived),” Connie said.
Police and fire responses to Uptown encampment
The residents said multiple cars inside their garage were broken into, and FOX31 followed up with records requests from the Denver Department of Public Safety.
Firefighters responded to the area nine times in the seven weeks between Oct. 4-Nov. 21. These calls include a propane tank fire inside a homeless tent on Oct. 7, followed by fires on Oct. 9, Oct. 15 and Nov. 15 and the death of a homeless man on Oct. 23. His cause of death remains under investigation.
The Denver Police Department has responded to the area 81 times in the same seven-week time period, although not always for homeless issues.
The encampment was the most common code cited though, being directly connected to 20 of 81 responses. There were also calls that might be related, such as threats, assaults, suspicious occurrences, narcotics and hazard checks.
Denver’s plan to help unhoused residents
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has been pushing to get 1,000 unhoused people off the street by the end of the year.
Cole Chandler, senior adviser for homeless resolution in Denver, told the Problem Solvers the city has 1,395 units in the pipeline.
“The good news is that the housing units are coming, that we have hundreds of units set to open in the month of December,” Chandler said.
As a result, Chandler said, the mayor’s push to get a thousand homeless people off the streets by Dec. 31 remains an attainable goal. As of Dec. 6, the city’s Homeless Initiative dashboard shows 317 unhoused people have been relocated since July.
“Prior to the Johnston administration, the policy around addressing encampments was really just moving encampments from block to block. And so we never really saw the issue of encampments being resolved,” Chandler said.
Just last week, the city announced it would soon be closing two encampments, one at 20th and Curtis streets in Five Points and the other at 48th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard in Park Hill. Housing all of the residents in these two encampments would get another 200 people off the streets. That would bring the city halfway toward its goal.
“We believe that at the end of this year, 1,000 people that were living on the streets will have come indoors. But that is absolutely not the end for us. That’s the beginning of a long process of making Denver vibrant and safe and really a great city to live in for everyone,” Chandler said.
Trouble finding micro-community locations
Part of the challenge for the mayor’s office is neighborhood pushback when it proposes a location for a micro-community or a converted hotel to provide housing and support services for the homeless.
A neighborhood meeting on Nov. 28 about a proposal to convert a former Comfort Inn into homeless housing generated stiff opposition from District 8 residents, who complained it would become the third hotel on Quebec Street to be converted into transitional housing. City leaders told the Problem Solvers that the location has already been serving homeless families since January.
Regardless, those neighbors fear they will inherit the very safety issues Kendrick apartment renters are already experiencing.
What’s next for the Uptown encampment?
Kendrick residents told the Problem Solvers that if the tents stay near 18th and Marion, upscale tenants will flee and abandon neighborhoods that had been on the upswing.
“For me, it’s disappointing, because Denver has been such a fun place to live. Since I’ve moved here, I’ve met so many people. Everyone’s friendly, wanting to go do things and be active, but that the city itself is just kind of become a scary place to live,” Corrine said.
“I very much understand it’s a complicated issue. And I understand that there’s a lot of layers and a lot of things that need to go into actually resolving this and working through it. But at the same time, I don’t necessarily feel like I’m seeing any progress,” Connie said.
Reed told FOX31 he is sympathetic to the challenges Johnston’s administration has inherited, but he wonders how much is being done to address underlying issues.
“I think one of our big concerns especially is we’re not just here to say, ‘Let’s move these homeless people and just get them out of our sight.’ There’s nobody here actually trying to help these people,” he said.
Chandler, the city’s homelessness adviser, disputed that and said the city has outreach teams visiting the encampments to offer services until the city is prepared to close each encampment.
“It requires asking neighborhoods to be patient with us while we work to get those housing units online. But instead of just moving a camp from block to block, we’re focused on getting people into long-term solutions,” Chandler said.
Denver residents can find the Department of Housing Stability’s 2024 Action Plan online. The mayor’s office has created an 11-person task force known as the Housing Stability Strategic Advisors, which is expected to adopt the city’s action plan on Dec. 15. The public meeting will be held from 10-11:30 a.m. The meeting will be available to join over Zoom.
A spokesperson for the Kendrick apartments told FOX31 that the mayor’s deputy chief of staff assured building management that there will be an increased police presence in the area, and the city is working on a plan to get residents of the encampment housing “in the next few weeks.”
However, both Chandler and a spokesperson for the mayor’s office admitted to the Problem Solvers that there are no plans to close the encampment at 18th and North Marion, because it doesn’t yet have a housing solution for the people living there.
“As more units become available, we are identifying a number of encampments around the city to be included in the House1000 push in December to bring people indoors. However, we have not made final determinations just yet,” said Jose Salas, deputy director of communications for Johnston.
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