PRAGMATIC ISSUES

When Shelter Becomes Another Form of Neglect – Denver’s Homeless Deserve Better Than Infested Housing

Denver’s political leadership loves to pat itself on the back for “moving people indoors.” The mayor holds press conferences about “compassion” and “progress,” Council members tout the millions poured into housing initiatives, and developers rake in contracts to slap up converted motels and “transitional” units.

But, let’s call this what it really is, nothing more than a dirty shell game.

Denver leaders like to measure progress on homelessness by counting how many people they can move “off the streets” and into “housing.” On paper, it looks good, fewer tents, fewer encampments, a cleaner cityscape for commuters and tourists. But beneath the statistics lies an uncomfortable truth, in too many cases, the “housing solutions” we offer are scarcely better than the streets themselves, and sometimes they are far worse.

The Reality Behind the Door

Ask those who have spent nights in city-sponsored shelters or transitional apartments, and a different picture emerges. About a week ago I caught a news story where a homeless woman told reporters that she’d rather stay on the street than live in a Salvation Army run shelter.

This is not a story about ungratefulness, it is about broken promises. If the system tells people, “Come inside, it’s safer here,” then what awaits them behind those doors should reflect dignity, not degradation.

Housing That Hurts

When you offer someone a unit where bedbugs eat them alive, rodents are rampant, where they’re more likely to be robbed than on the streets, and where the nearest bus line is a mile away through sketchy neighborhoods—you’re not offering stability. You’re offering a cage. And then the city has the audacity to count it as a “win” when someone moves in.

It’s no wonder so many people cycle right back onto the streets. In fact, for some, the streets feel safer, cleaner, and more humane than the “solutions” Denver parades in front of TV cameras.

The Illusion of Success

Politicians tout numbers, but if the housing provided is unsanitary, unsafe, or cut off from essential services, is that truly a success? Moving people into a roach-infested building in an unsafe neighborhood does not end homelessness; it simply hides it from view.

What Denver risks creating is not a housing solution, but a revolving door: people shuffled in, traumatized, and then back out again, still traumatized if not more so. The streets, for all their dangers, can appear more humane than a system that dehumanizes the very people it claims to serve.

The Revolving Door of Failure

Mayor Mike Johnston promised bold action. But what has Denver delivered? A ton of homeless have been pushed out to neighboring cities, drive around you’ll see it. The other half are in warehouses of poverty that look better in spreadsheets than in real life. We have created a revolving door, increased city-wide drug abuse, people shuffled into dilapidated housing, give them very little in terms of SNAP benefits, these people can’t even buy a months’ worth of food, traumatized by neglect and violence, and then they get spit back out onto Colfax or under the viaducts.

And every time that happens, trust in the system dies a little more.

Who Benefits?

Certainly not the people who need help. The winners here are developers collecting fat contracts and politicians who get to say, “Look, fewer tents downtown!” Never mind that those same tents pop back up weeks later because the housing offered was unlivable.

Stop the Self-Congratulations

Denver does not need more ribbon-cuttings for bug-infested housing projects. It does not need more “task forces” or “pilot programs.” It needs honesty. Housing is not a solution unless it’s safe, sanitary, and near the resources people rely on to survive. Anything less is abandonment dressed up as compassion.

So let’s stop lying to ourselves. If we’re going to spend millions, then demand accountability,  buildings without infestations, with working locks, with real access to food, transit, and health care. Otherwise, City Hall is not housing the homeless—it is warehousing them in misery.

And that’s not progress.

It’s cruelty with better optics.

A Higher Standard of Care

Denver must confront an uncomfortable truth; housing is not a solution unless it is livable. That means units must meet basic health and safety standards. They must be placed near food banks, transit systems, and treatment services. They must be free of unchecked crime. Otherwise, they are nothing more than warehouses for the poor.

If we are going to claim moral high ground, if we are going to justify spending millions of taxpayer dollars, then the bare minimum we owe is dignity.

Anything less is not housing, it is simply abandonment with walls.