Denver is scaling back services for migrants, including closing four shelters during the next four weeks to save $60 million in the long term, Mayor Mike Johnston announced Wednesday.
The closures follow the city’s decision in recent weeks to reinstate time limits on its shelters, which were put on pause for several weeks of freezing temperatures. The policy change led to 2,500 people leaving seven hotels and three other buildings during the past six weeks, the mayor said during a news conference.
As the four hotel shelters close, the city will “double down” on case management by coordinating with nonprofits that are connecting migrants to jobs and housing. The city also has helped 600 people submit work authorization permits and plans to help 700 more in the next couple of weeks. The city has held four work permit clinics so far and has five more planned.
The combined efforts have prevented “significant increases” in people who ended up homeless and living outside, Johnston said.
The migrant crisis was expected to cost Denver $180 million next year. The $60 million in savings announced Wednesday decreases that spending down to $120 million, the mayor said.
Johnston called the shelter closures a “major turning point” and noted that more cuts, both to migrant assistance and city services, will come.
“This is a major step forward,” he said. “I think there’s more work to be done.”
Nearly 40,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, have arrived in Denver over the past year, and more than 2,376 people, as of this week, are living in city-funded hotel rooms at seven hotels and three other buildings. That’s down from a high of about 4,500 earlier this winter. Thousands took bus rides to other American cities after arriving in Denver, and an unknown number of migrants are trying to stay in the city, find jobs and send their kids to school.
The mayor estimated that 40%-60% of migrants who arrive in the city are now choosing to take city-funded bus rides elsewhere, a percentage that has increased as people have realized that resources are running short.
“Many people, as you know, arrive in Denver never having intended to come to Denver,” he said. “They just got put on the bus and this was their first stop. And we’re noticing that more folks are now aware of the volume of migrants that Denver has welcomed and that the availability of jobs and housing that had been present six months ago is not as present today.”
☀️ READ MORE
Denver has received more migrants per capita than any other city in the nation, the mayor has said.
Denver set up emergency operations to welcome the new arrivals, opened city buildings as shelters and is organizing clinics to help those who are eligible to apply for work authorization. Volunteers, meanwhile, mobilized to bring food, and in some cases, tents and propane heaters for those who are living outside.
Denver so far has spent $58 million on helping migrants, who began arriving in December 2022. The pace has slowed in the past two weeks, with only about 15 people arriving Tuesday. At several points throughout the past year, the city was receiving busloads of about 200 per day.
Johnston made it clear that Denver is not closing its doors to migrants, but looking for more efficient ways to support those who choose to make the city their new home.
“There’s a long history of cities in this country over centuries who bet on being anti-immigrant in their economic strategies, and look and see how those cities have done,” he said. “Those cities have been on the losing side of history at every single moment.
“Denver has been and will be the most vibrant city in the state for decades to come, and it will be because we will be a place that’s welcoming folks who want to come help build it into something better. We will bet our future on that. Other folks want to bet their future closing their doors. We’ll see who wins.”
Denver, known as a sanctuary city, is the only city in Colorado that has stood up emergency services to help migrants. Colorado Springs officials have proclaimed that migrants are not welcome there. Aurora City Council passed a resolution this week saying it will not spend public money to support migrants. Lakewood residents packed a city council meeting this month to protest false claims that the Denver suburb would house migrants in vacant school buildings. And southern Colorado sheriffs have come out in force to back a piece of proposed state legislation that would reverse laws that prevent them from handing over immigrants here illegally to federal immigration enforcement.
In the past month, Denver has provided case management to more than 700 people, about half of whom were children, City Council President Pro Tem Amanda Sandoval said. Of the 700 people, 500 are now in temporary housing, she said.
“We had the encampment in northwest Denver,” she said. “We saw children living in tents for the first time in Denver’s history.”
Sandoval said each city council district contributed funds to come up with $345,000, which the city gave to the nonprofit ViVe Wellness. The organization used it to house 440 people, doling out $850 per person for rent.
Denver received $3.5 million from the state and $1.6 million from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to help handle the influx. It is expecting an additional $12.2 million in potential reimbursements from the federal government, though it has yet to receive the funds.
The mayor announced the first cuts to the city budget because of the migrant crisis Feb. 9, including cutting hours at recreation centers and Division of Motor Vehicle locations. Those cuts saved an estimated $5 million, a small fraction of the spending.