This story by Lindsey Toomer appeared on Colorado Newsline on February 16, 2024.
Colorado saw an estimated 39% increase in people experiencing homelessness from 2022 to 2023, with generally high costs of housing and limited stock of low-income housing contributing to the problem.
A “point in time” count for 2023 found that more than 14,000 Coloradans were experiencing homelessness, according to a count taken on a single night by the state’s four continuums of care, the planning bodies that address homelessness within specific regions.
But the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless estimates the actual number of people is between the point-in-time count and just over 134,000, which is about how many people are covered by Medicaid who also said they don’t have stable housing.
The coalition’s report says the point-in-time count is regarded as an undercount, particularly when comparing it to the Medicaid count and the Department of Education’s count of students experiencing homelessness. The latest data found 17,957 students met the definition of homelessness, highlighting how the point-in-time count regularly comes up short.
Coalition spokesperson Cathy Alderman said it’s hard to get a full picture of homelessness in Colorado, because while the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development provides one report with data highlights, each continuum of care operates differently and their data might not be directly comparable.
“If we don’t understand the breadth of the problem, we’ll never be able to respond effectively to it,” Alderman said.
HUD requires continuums of care to conduct point-in-time counts estimating how many people are living outdoors or in temporary shelters on one given night.
The Metro Denver Homeless Initiative is the continuum of care for seven counties in the Denver area, and its most recent point-in-time count found 9,065 people experiencing sheltered or unsheltered homelessness across Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson counties.
MDHI asked point-in-time respondents about what led to them losing housing, and 94% said they did not choose to be homeless. The survey found that 9,085 of the 10,276 respondents in the metro area last had a permanent address in Colorado, which the report said refutes “the idea that people come to Colorado from other states, either to seek services or to access marijuana.”
“These data points demonstrate that common myths and misperceptions that describe homelessness as a choice or a personal failure are flawed,” the coalition’s report said. “Instead, systemic failures have created an environment where housing is unaffordable, and people do not have enough support to fall back on when they face difficult times and lose their housing. Traumatic life events or sudden financial shocks often create instability, and without adequate support, far too many Coloradans fall into the cycle of homelessness.”
A Colorado Coalition for the Homeless graph shows how homelessness in Colorado has increased over recent years based on the annual point-in-time count. (Chart from Colorado Coalition for the Homeless State of Homelessness Report 2023)
The need has gotten so great that the coalition stopped taking walk-in patients at its health center in Denver, Alderman said. The center now has a waitlist for new patients.
“Our established patients are not able to get in to see their established providers because we’ve been providing so many services to walk-in new patients that are, in fact, uninsured,” Alderman said.
Growing chronic homelessness
Rebecca Mayer, interim executive director of MDHI, said the top factor people in the metro area said contributed to their homelessness is relationship problems or family breakups. The second most common factor is inability to afford rent or mortgage payments.
The coalition is focused on meeting the greatest need, Alderman said. For those with the lowest income in Colorado, Alderman said there are only 26 units of housing available for every 100 needed. Housing costs also continue to rise at a rate much higher than wages increase every year, further exacerbating the problem.
“People that have the lowest incomes are having the most difficult time finding housing and staying in housing, so that’s where we should invest more of our resources instead of the idea that, if we help middle income households because they might need less money, we might be able to help more people and somehow that’ll trickle down,” Alderman said. “That will never work.”
Someone is considered chronically homelessness if they experience homelessness for more than a year, or if their time spent being homeless over a three-year period is equivalent to a year. Alderman said one of the most alarming trends last year’s data shows is the growing rates of chronic homelessness.
“I think that’s significant because that means that we’re not getting to the people who have been in the cycle the longest,” Alderman said. “Which frankly, can sometimes be a more difficult population to find resources for and house, but they’re obviously the ones that are in very desperate need of these resources.”
Alderman also said more families entered the cycle of homelessness last year, which she said is concerning given the negative impact homelessness has on children’s mental and physical health. It’s also harder to provide housing resources for families because they typically need multiple bedrooms to feel comfortable.
“Children that live with housing instability and live in homelessness, even if it’s for short periods of time, are much more likely to experience that as an adult,” Alderman said. “I think people should be very concerned about the fact that more families and more children are in the cycle of homelessness right now.”
In the Denver area, Mayer said veteran homelessness actually decreased by 16% from 2022 to 2023. She said this is in large part due to MDHI’s use of the Built For Zero model, which led the organization to learn every homeless veteran’s name and match them with the most appropriate housing and support services.
“That work has really led to some good outcomes so far, and we do intend to expand that to other populations,” Mayer said.
Alderman said it’s also important not to conflate the increasing number of migrants coming into Colorado with the increase in homelessness. She said if a migrant happened to be sleeping outside or in a shelter or hotel on the night the point-in-time count was taken, they were included in the count, but the only need both populations have in common is the need for housing.
“I do think that if we’re not responding appropriately to the immigrants coming to Denver and Colorado, it’s going to put enormous pressure on the homelessness response system, which is already overwhelmed,” Alderman said.
At the Colorado Legislature, the coalition is prioritizing the elimination of the “eviction response filing fee,” which Alderman said creates a financial barrier to people’s ability to challenge their evictions. The coalition is also looking to make it easier for people to access their necessary documents, such as their identification.
Alderman said the coalition is paying close attention to conversations around land use, too.
“If we allow for more dense housing or, if we start targeting specific areas like transit areas for more development, if we don’t require that that housing be affordable to the communities that live there, we’re just going to keep making the problem much worse for those impacted communities,” Alderman said.
Mayer said the increase not only in homelessness in metro Denver but also in visibility of homelessness has only led MDHI to bring greater urgency to its efforts to get people housed as well as additional support from the communities affected. The organization also wants to continue dispelling myths about homelessness, such as the idea that most people choose to be homeless.
“Homelessness is not a choice and it’s not an individual failing,” Mayer said. “We talk a lot about this in the data, but there are systemic issues at play here… We really need to ensure as a community that we are working together to solve this issue.”