PRAGMATIC ISSUES

Mayor Mike Johnston’s press tour, the Urban Institute’s glossy numbers, and the on-the-ground reality.

The Urban Institute wants you to believe Denver has cracked the code on homelessness. Mayor Mike Johnston is more than happy to stand beside them, waving a banner that screams “98% success.” The headlines are triumphant. The press releases drip with self-congratulation.

The problem?

The Urban Institute acknowledges that their evaluation is ongoing through 2027 and that sustained outcomes (not just initial clearances) remain to be seen.

So, while those headline numbers are grounded in real evaluation and data, As you might suspect, the real picture is more complex than a single statistic can capture.

The Headline does not tell the truth that Denverites actually see in their neighborhoods.

A Statistic That Doesn’t Sleep Outdoors

The 45% reduction figure is based on the PIT (Point-in-Time) count, a one-night snapshot, yes a single night. As many have pointed out, PIT counts are sensitive to weather, volunteering capacity, outreach coverage, and may miss people who are only temporarily sheltered or living in hidden places.

And that PIT count is generally taken in the dead of winter.

Metro vs. City Spillover

Some anecdotal reports suggest that people experiencing homelessness have moved to adjacent municipalities, possibly due to stricter encampment enforcement or outreach in Denver. That could make Denver’s numbers look better, even while the broader regional homelessness hasn’t improved.

Cost and Resource Tracking Concerns

Independent audits (for example by the City Auditor and other watchdog groups) have flagged gaps in how Denver tracks spending, especially in encampment cleanup costs and shelter management.

Some critics argue there’s not enough transparency or accountability in how funds are being used. 
For example, the Common Sense Institute report notes that Denver spent about $16 million on individuals who remained unsheltered after exiting the program, and that the overall spending per person has been high.

Growth of Homelessness Elsewhere

Even with reductions in unsheltered homelessness in Denver, there are signs that the total homeless population in Metro Denver has grown (e.g. more people using shelters or transitional housing). So while the “street homelessness” number has decreased, other parts of the system (e.g. shelter stays, transitions, chronic homelessness) may still be worsening.

The vaunted 98% reduction in large encampments isn’t a miracle of housing policy.

It’s a mirage of measurement.

Clear a camp of twenty people, and the number ticks down. But where do those people go? Many are still unhoused — shuffled into neighboring cities, scattered into smaller encampments, or right back on Denver’s streets.

If solving homelessness were as easy as erasing visible camps, we’d have “ended” it a dozen times over.

The Urban Institute’s One-Eyed Lens

The Urban Institute, a respected think tank, should know better than to confuse absence of tents with presence of homes.

Their own report admits the evaluation is ongoing through 2027.

Yet they’ve allowed their early findings to be weaponized as political cover, plastered across headlines as if the experiment were complete. It’s research twisted into PR, and Denver’s most vulnerable are the collateral.

The Mayor Mike Johnston’s PR Machine vs. Reality

Mayor Johnston isn’t running a housing program, simply put he’s running a campaign of optics.

Denverites see it every day, stricter enforcement, hotel shelters run on a shoestring until operators like the Salvation Army pull out, residents begging for basics like guest access or bus passes.

A “success” that leaves people in limbo and cycling through 90-day hotel stays with no clear path to permanency is no success at all.

It’s a revolving door painted gold.

The Missing Truth

Here’s what the City won’t brag about, only a fraction of AIMH participants have exited into permanent housing — roughly 18% by some counts.

The rest are warehoused, displaced, or pushed into surrounding municipalities. Meanwhile, the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative’s own data shows regional homelessness rising.

So yes, Denver looks cleaner on paper, but the region as a whole is drowning.

You Don’t Have to Take my Word For It

• Housekeys Action Network Denver (HAND)critical/mixed
• Surveyed 175 residents in AIMH hotel shelters (Mar–Jul 2024). Top fixes residents asked for: allow guests/visitors, better transportation, faster maintenance, and longer stays beyond 90 days. 
  • HAND also pulled DPD records and says “anti-houseless” enforcement rose ~45–47% in early 2024 vs. 2023 (trespass/camping citations etc.). Rocky Mountain PBS highlighted the same trend.
• Colorado Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) – generally supportive of the model, but flagging operational pain.. 
  • Warned this spring that City contracting and payment delays forced them to scale back medical staffing at AIMH shelters while awaiting Council approval.
• Metro Denver Homeless Initiative (MDHI) – regional lens, mixed
  • 2025 PIT data shows fewer people sleeping outdoors in Denver and more using shelter, but overall homelessness across the metro increased — i.e., progress on street homelessness inside the city, while the regional system remains strained.
• Salvation Army (major operator) pulling back from AIMH hotels.
  • Says it will stop running three AIMH hotel shelters after 2025, citing financial losses; city plans new operators. (This underscores operating-cost pressure and turnover among providers.) 
  • On specific rules: the org told The Colorado Sun that Good Neighbor Agreements effectively ban RV parking at certain AIMH sites, reflecting tensions between access and neighborhood conditions.
• St. Francis Center (SFC) – supportive, programmatic focus
  • Runs a 136-unit AIMH hotel shelter (Comfort Inn) framing it as short-term stabilization with services that connect people to housing/employment. (A provider view that AIMH is a useful bridge — but still a bridge.)
• Independent evaluation & local media context – why the stories diverge
  • Urban Institute: documents a 98% drop in large encampments and calls AIMH a “promising path,” while cautioning that the evaluation runs through 2027 (i.e., long-term outcomes still to prove). 
  • Permanent housing is the choke point: recent coverage shows slow exits to permanent housing compared with people brought indoors (e.g., ~671 of ~3,800 placed moved to permanent housing ≈ 18% in one Sun analysis). 
  • Transparency/cost tracking remains a sore spot: the city auditor again flagged incomplete tracking for encampment cleanup spending earlier this year.

Co-Authors

Denver doesn’t need another round of “Mission Accomplished” banners. It needs permanent housing at scale, transparent cost tracking, and leaders willing to measure success by lives stabilized, not camps cleared.

Until then, the Urban Institute and Mayor Johnston are co-authors of the same story a glossy, misleading fairytale where the numbers add up, but the people don’t.