‘It’s almost illegal to be homeless’: How the rise of homelessness is impacting metro Denver

Tia Sciarrotta

Metro Denver has been experiencing a rise in homelessness within the past few years, and it has become more noticeable by those local to the Denver area. Homelessness has been a prominent issue in the United States for some time, and U.S. citizens have been urging higher powers to do something to put an end to it, or at least slow it down.

In a poll conducted by the Gallup Organization in April 2022, they asked a sample of 1,018 American adults about what the most important problem facing the United States is. Only 3% of those polled said homelessness. The top three problems according to the poll-takers included: the government/poor leadership (20%), high cost of living/inflation (17%), and the economy in general (12%). All of these issues can correlate with the nationwide problem of homelessness.

Though some of the overall numbers of homeless people in the country have decreased, it is becoming more of a problem state by state, especially in larger metro-areas such as Denver.

“I can definitely tell in recent years it has gotten a lot more severe,” said Maddie Allen, who has lived in Denver for 19 years. “Especially in downtown there are a lot of sections that are just tents of homeless people because they don’t have anywhere else to go.”

There are many factors to the increase of homelessness in the Denver area. The most over-arching one being the Covid-19 pandemic, but there are other contributors that have been ongoing since the pre-pandemic years.

There have been numerous discussions on how affordable housing has become a larger issue with the rise of homelessness in Metro Denver. Housing prices in the Denver area have been booming high, yet there is not much being done in regard to the increase in demand.

“There are so many people and so little housing,” said Riley Jones, who is from Golden, Colorado. “It’s so expensive in the economy.”

Though housing prices have been increasing a large amount, Denver recently adopted a new affordable housing policy. This policy is a step towards helping those on the verge of homelessness, but also has its disadvantages, as it could result in hurting small businesses by raising rent on commercial spaces, a dilemma that can backfire in the fight against homelessness. 

It has also been noted that Denver has been having issues with infrastructure, which is having a large toll on the homeless population.

“It’s all crumbling,” said Ben Ratico, who currently resides in Denver but is originally from Centennial, Colorado. “If we were to get a lot of infrastructure repair and stopped implementing anti-homeless infrastructure, that would greatly help the problem.”

Aside from the issue of homelessness in itself, there are also many flaws with how homeless individuals are treated, which does not help when facing the problem head-on.

“It’s almost illegal to be homeless,” said Ratico. “They can be prosecuted, especially for using things like public spaces.”

University of Denver professor Dr. Erika Trigoso, who is the academic director of the university’s geography department, has done research on homelessness and urban issues, and weighed in on how homelessness is becoming a grand problem in Metro Denver.

One of the largest topics within the issue of homelessness is the impacts Covid-19 has had on it, and how it resulted in the increase of homelessness in the Denver area.

“People who had been on wages, been in occupations with little training, found themselves with few options for employment,” said Trigoso. “That triggered not being able to afford rent and because of that it is a contributing factor to the problems that we see of homelessness exploding in the pandemic.”

In addition to the pandemic, the role of gentrification has been a giant part of homelessness increasing, and has been affecting not only those who are actually homeless, but other citizens of Metro Denver.

Trigoso has lived near the Five Points neighborhood in Denver for ten years, and has noticed the displacements within her area. She says that she wouldn’t be able to afford to buy her house today, and that it is obvious how demand in multiple neighborhoods keeps rising, and creating no room for many citizens.

“About 50 people move to Colorado every day, so that creates a huge demand for housing,” said Trigoso. “It has become extremely unaffordable for younger people, blue-collared people, and middle class people.”

With gentrification, it also affects communities mainly consisting of people of color. This raises concerns amongst them, and makes many worried about various economic issues, including homelessness and housing problems that have specifically risen in Metro Denver.  

One of the largest issues identified within homelessness is mental health and how that can intertwine with drug abuse, which can contribute to people becoming homeless. Denver has taken steps towards mental health in homlessness by having the Support Team Assisted Response program, which has responded to numerous situations with homeless people. But is it enough when drugs continue to be a problem noticed amongst Denver-area locals?

“A lot of addiction runs pretty rampant, I think that’s keeping a lot of people out on the streets and also keeping people stuck in the same socioeconomic status,” said Jones. 

“Just from observation, so many people on hard drugs end up in a place that is really unfortunate,” said Allen. “There should definitely be more drug prevention programs.”

Trigoso added on how people perceive those who are homeless in typically one way and that it is not something that should always be thought of when thinking about homelessness.

“We need to remember that when we think about ‘homeless,’ we tend to think of these people who live in the streets for a long period of time. Most of the homeless people we see are temporary, these are hard-working people who fall on hard times.”

Homelessness as a whole is complex, and there are many components to it that make it challenging to decode. The future of it is a toss-up, and depends on numerous economic factors.

“It’s difficult to figure out what would happen with the challenge of inflation, which is being felt by more lower-income people. There’s still a lot of noise on what is happening in post-Covid times,” said Trigoso. “I don’t really know what would really be the best solution now. We would have to wait and see what the numbers are, how much the job market has recovered, etc.”