Denver is creating an “asylum-seeker program” that includes six months of rent and food assistance as well as job training and English classes to help migrants who continue to arrive daily by the busload.
Mayor Mike Johnston announced the city’s latest plan to help newcomers from South and Central America during a news conference Wednesday, describing a shift from putting people up in city-funded hotels and supplying three meals a day toward helping them get apartments and legal jobs.
The new program is part of nearly $90 million in migrant services expected in the 2024 city budget, about half as much money as the city had said in January that it was likely to spend this year. The new spending plan will allow Denver to restore cuts previously made to public services, including reduced hours at community recreation centers, the mayor said.
“This really represents a new moment for Denver, which is the ability to take what has felt like a crisis and turn it into an opportunity, to provide newcomers that arrived for the first time a real path to work and independence,” Johnston said.
The new plan focuses on setting up migrants to work in Colorado and avoids cuts to core city services or layoffs of city staff, he said.
The city’s recreation centers will be fully open for the summer, Parks and Recreation programs will take place this summer and fall as planned, and seasonal staff who had their hours cut will have the chance to return to work, he said.
“That all starts today,” the mayor said.
The city estimated in January that it would spend $180 million on migrants this year. In December alone, the city spent $15 million. That number led to the $180 million estimate for 2024, Johnston said.
But since then, the city closed six of the seven hotels it had provided for migrants and began enforcing time limits on hotel stays — 14 days for adults and 42 days for families with children.
“The current system we had is not a way you would support your own family,” Johnston said. “You wouldn’t eat out three meals a day and stay in a hotel every night. That would become very expensive.”
The city will still operate an emergency shelter for new arrivals, and as space is available, they will be allowed to enroll in the new “asylum-seeker program.”
Under the program, the city will coordinate with nonprofits to provide rent assistance for six months — the same amount of time needed for migrants to gain work authorization under federal law.
The program will provide help with applications for asylum, which can take up to 20 hours per application. Migrants are eligible for work authorization six months after they complete that application.
The first people in line for the program are the about 1,000 now staying in a northwestern Denver hotel and an emergency shelter. They will be offered six months of help with rent and food, and can sign up for unpaid on-the-job training and certification for jobs in construction or other fields that are in need of workers.
“This is our path to help these folks get to legal work,” the mayor said.
Nonprofits, including ViVe Wellness and Papagayo, have helped the city house more than 8,000 migrants in apartments, with about 2,000 leases.
More than 40,700 migrants have arrived in the city since December 2022, and about half of those have stayed. The other half received bus tickets, and in some cases plane tickets, to other cities across the country. At the height of the influx, Denver was paying to shelter and feed 5,000 people per night.
The pace of arrivals has slowed in recent weeks, with 24 people arriving Tuesday.
Migrants, mostly from Venezuela, began arriving by buses from Texas around Christmas 2022, many without winter clothing or shoes. Those first arrivals were granted temporary protected status by the federal government, which meant they could quickly get work authorization. But anyone who arrived after July is not eligible.
Those who arrived in the fall had access to an application at the border that allowed them to apply for work authorization once they settled in Denver. But the people arriving now have neither of those options, Johnston said.
The mayor said he would ask the City Council within the next few weeks for approval of the new plan, which requires $45 million in migrant spending this year to meet the $89.9 million estimated annual cost of services.