Denver’s Johnston to close two homeless encampments, move 200 people to hotels

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston plans to close down homeless encampments close to twentieth and Curtis streets and forty eighth Avenue and Colorado Boulevard and transfer greater than 200 folks residing in them off the streets, his administration introduced Friday.

These relocations will occur “within the subsequent couple of weeks,” metropolis spokesman Derek Woodbury stated Friday. A selected timeline is being saved below wraps to guard the protection and privateness of individuals residing within the encampments, metropolis officers say.

If these actions — which Johnston and his crew name encampment closures — are profitable, it might greater than double the variety of folks the administration has gotten off the streets in three prior cleanup efforts. It might additionally transfer Johnston considerably nearer to the 1,000-person sheltering aim he set on his second day in workplace and has made the overwhelming focus of his work as mayor to this point.

The net dashboard monitoring the progress of Johnston’s House 1,000 homelessness initiative on Friday morning counted 311 folks as sheltered or housed by means of that work. That leaves 30 days to maneuver near 700 folks off the streets, a aim the mayor continues to say is deliverable.

“We’re delighted to convey greater than 200 Denverites into housing, assist shut encampments and reactivate public areas throughout the town,” Johnston stated in an announcement Friday. “Each particular person we get into housing is a life modified and each encampment that we shut is a neighborhood reworked.”

Media members are being requested to avoid the encampments in order that the town can perform its relocation and cleanup work “with minimal disruption.” The places of the transformed resorts the place folks might be moved are additionally being saved confidential.

The town has already carried out one encampment closure within the space of twentieth and Curtis streets. That effort, which concluded on Nov. 1, moved 61 folks to shelter and resulted within the space bordered by Broadway, Curtis, twentieth and Arapahoe streets being “completely closed to any tenting,” in accordance with an announcement on the time.

In that motion, dozens of individuals camped across the submit workplace at 951 twentieth St. — on the east aspect of Curtis Road —  weren’t moved. Woodbury confirmed that the motion introduced Friday will deal with the encampment in entrance of the submit workplace.