Mayor Mike Johnston’s latest pending pratfall on homelessness — having ex-cons staff Denver’s most troubled, city-run homeless hotel — is starting to look even worse. 

It turns out the San Francisco nonprofit that will employ offenders to run the city’s homeless shelter in the former DoubleTree Hotel at 4040 Quebec St., has an awkwardly close relationship with housing officials at Denver City Hall. As The Denver Gazette reported last week, contractor Urban Alchemy’s former “chief growth officer” is now, in fact, one of those officials — the city’s deputy director of shelter and stability. He’ll be working hand in glove with his former employer, presumably overseeing its work on Denver taxpayers’ tab.

That official, Jeff Kositsky, also was named alongside others in a complaint for failing to register Urban Alchemy as a lobbyist in Portland, Oregon, in 2022, just before that city awarded the group a $50 million contract to run a shelter. As The Gazette also reported, Portland’s city auditor withdrew the complaint only to avoid “a protracted dispute” with Urban Alchemy “about the interpretation of the lobbying code.”

Last month, the Denver City Council approved a $30 million, three-year contract with Urban Alchemy to run the DoubleTree shelter. It seems to follow a familiar pattern.

Indeed, the latest revelations about the cozy ties between Urban Alchemy and Denver City Hall certainly help explain the city’s dubious choice of the contractor and its alarming business model. 

The relationship also illustrates what critics mockingly have dubbed a “homelessness-industrial complex” that has set up shop in so many U.S. metro areas, including Denver’s. 

It’s a super-bureaucracy, creating a web among wide-ranging nonprofit contractors, subcontractors, and city and county governments. One hand washes the other, resulting in revolving-door hiring between cities and homeless-service providers; conflicted and compromised supervision of providers’ services; generous contracts awarding millions upon millions of dollars in taxpayer money, and a lack of meaningful accountability for any of it.

Underlying it all is a culture that too often doesn’t attempt to heal the homeless but rather winds up aiding and abetting their lifestyle. The complex’s defenders advocate foolhardy policies like “housing first,” sheltering chronic street dwellers with no questions asked. No attempt to screen for addiction, mental illness or criminal records — the very pathologies that have kept them stranded on the streets. Instead of help, they get an enabling handout.

And Urban Alchemy brings a new twist to the table. Its entire organizational model is based on hiring ex-cons. Or, as its own website puts it, “Urban Alchemy actively recruits persons with justice-involved backgrounds, specifically those returning home from life and long-term sentences, with a workforce that is approximately 96% returning citizens.”

Just look to other cities for the result. As The Gazette has reported, Urban Alchemy’s finances and oversight in San Francisco, Austin, Texas, and other cities have drawn serious scrutiny. 

Last year at a homeless camp run by the nonprofit near San Francisco, staffers allegedly assaulted a camp resident, dealt drugs and had sex with other residents, according to a lawsuit in federal court. In September, Austin, Texas’ city hall canceled its contract with Urban Alchemy after some staff members were accused of falsifying records. And just last month, an Urban Alchemy employee in Portland was charged with second-degree murder in the 2022 robbery and shooting death of a man in that city.

Denver’s next. We can’t wait.

No doubt, the expansion of Denver’s homelessness-industrial complex will benefit some people. It’s a pity the city’s homeless won’t be among them.