Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration wants to move 1,000 homeless people into permanent housing by the end of next year.

The administration unveiled details of the plan shortly after voters narrowly rejected his proposal to raise sales taxes in order to generate $100 million for affordable housing, a parallel priority for Johnston.

This builds on Johnston’s goal to move 2,000 people – counting last year’s total – into temporary shelters by this year. That goal was met in October, when 2,064 individuals were housed, according to Derek Woodbury of the city’s Department of Housing Stability.

Woodbury explained that the 2025 goal encompasses two groups of people: individuals already in temporary housing provided by the city and any new homeless intakes that may enter the system during the year.

“The way we break that (goal) down is we need to be moving about 85 households per month into permanent housing, month over month over month,” said Cole Chandler, deputy director of Johnston’s homelessness initiative. “And so we have been scaling up over the last few months and getting to that pace, and plan to continue moving forward at that pace in 2025.”

Woodbury defined permanent housing as exits from any of the city’s homeless shelters “to rental or leased units, permanent supportive housing, safe havens, temporary reunification with friends or family, or transitional housing.”

Johnston has allocated approximately $57.5 million for the initiative, boasting of the program’s efforts as the city’s “largest reduction in unsheltered homelessness on record.”

That figure marks a decrease from $85 million, Johnston noted in a Sept. 12 letter to the city council, emphasizing the city’s use of one-time federal ARPA funding to develop infrastructure to address homelessness.

The mayor’s campaign to move 2,000 homeless people off of the city’s streets between his inauguration last year and the end of 2024 has been expensive.

Johnston has insisted that his office has utilized taxpayer money “responsibly.” His efforts have cost a lot more than anticipated.

A briefing from the city’s Department of Housing Stability last June revealed the city was on track to spend $155 million between July 2023 and December 2024 — $65 million more than Johnston previously said it would cost.

Against this spending backdrop, the latest count showed the total number of homeless people in Denver ballooned from 5,818 last year to 6,539 this year.

Over the past 60 days, Woodbury said the city has stepped in to strengthen its role as a housing alongside its existing service providers, drawing from best practices seen in other communities, including Houston.

“Together with our partners, we are meeting daily and directing a much more focused effort on connecting residents with the resources they need and are eligible for in order to move into permanent housing,” he said. “Over just two months, our housing placements have more than doubled and we expect them to triple—to 85 monthly housing exits—by year-end. We look forward to continuing this energy throughout 2025.”

Shortly after taking office, Johnston swiftly declared a state of emergency to address homelessness, hoping to expedite efforts such as creating “micro-sites” for temporary housing and relocating residents of homeless encampments into converted hotel shelters.

However, the hotels have since become hubs for criminal activity, generating hundreds of calls reporting shootings, drug use, theft, and other violent incidents.

Chandler pointed out that over the next couple of months, as more housing contracts for housing for homeless people come before city council, elected officials will see new improvements, including specific requirements for all such contracts to include a security assessment and plan.

“We will be very active in ensuring those security plans meet our standards and are implemented at our sites in a timely manner,” Chandler said. “And so all of this is aimed at getting to a place where we are providing people a pathway to housing, providing people connection to services, including housing services as well as behavioral health and employment services, and doing our best to keep people safe while they’re in our sites and members of our community as well.”