The Greater Houston area managed to do something no other major American metro did in the last decade when it reduced its homeless population by 63%.
The Texas metro’s success since 2012 has made it a national model, so much so that delegations from other cities, including Denver, have traveled there. They’ve learned how Houston marshaled wide community buy-in and expansive resources to pull off such a feat.
Now Denver city officials hope to follow important parts of Houston’s playbook as they pursue new Mayor Mike Johnston’s big campaign aspiration — a pledge to end street homelessness in the city in the next four years.
Work to create Houston’s local homeless response system, “The Way Home Continuum of Care,” wasn’t easy, quick or even complete, its civic leaders told The Denver Post. The system required significant coordination, community engagement and funding to implement a single vision for a “housing-first approach”: getting people off the street and into permanent housing, with support services offered.
But it’s not impossible for others to pull off, said Mike Nichols, the CEO and president of the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County, because homelessness is a solvable problem.
In Denver, the city’s new leaders see the looming challenge.
“We’ve still got a little work to do to get to where Houston is at … and so the way our system rolls out will look a little bit different,” said Cole Chandler, Johnston’s senior advisor for homeless resolution.
He said the two cities can’t fully be compared to one another, in part due to vastly different zoning laws, land availability and the level of federal funding granted to Houston over more than a decade. “But there’s also a ton to learn from,” he added.
In 2011, the Houston area had the sixth-largest homeless population in the country after its point-in-time count increased by 25% in just one year, to more than 8,400 people.
By 2022, the number of homeless people counted had decreased to less than 3,200, the data show.
The systematic changes to the way Houston and Harris County addressed homelessness were developed after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development designated the area as one of 10 priority communities to address the growing problem. With that came technical assistance and training to expand response efforts more effectively and maximize federal funding.
In Denver, Johnston has made homelessness his most public priority. He took office in July and issued an emergency declaration on homelessness on his second day; it was extended in August. His plans include, at least in the short term, limited sweeps of encampments while providing more people with temporary housing options such as hotels, “micro-communities” and outdoor pallet shelters.
In the long term, his office hopes to give people who are homeless access to more permanent housing options, including by building more affordable units for those with limited incomes.
Houston leaders who spoke to The Denver Post suggested ways Denver can accomplish that.
Lesson 1: Get wide buy-in
Houston’s plan required local, state and federal government agencies; nonprofit organizations; business owners; and landlords in the city and surrounding areas to come together and decide to work toward a single vision — and then dedicate the time, money and resources to addressing homelessness, Nichols said.
That meant service providers, government agencies and other groups working to address homelessness had to stop operating within their own organizational bubbles and focusing efforts on their separate programs.
It also meant that some organizations had to either change the services they provided or drop specific programs to avoid redundancies so that all could contribute to a single system response.
And it meant getting funders together to figure out what sources of private and public money were available. The groups also made sure they heard input directly from people who were homeless.
Nichols says it’s essential to have political backing and to engage community groups and business owners to understand that not only is the housing-first vision the morally responsible thing to do, but it’s also the most fiscally responsible.
“The smart thing to do is house people — because the cost of leaving somebody unhoused is many, many more times the cost for housing those people,” he said. “And when people talk about the high cost of living in Denver, yes, it’s there. But look at the high cost of health care in Denver, too.
“Those people are living on the street and they’re going to emergency rooms multiple times a year, driving up your health costs,” Nichols added.
That last point underscores research that spurred Denver to launch a limited supportive-housing pilot program for people who were chronically homeless several years ago.
The Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County has come out against “camping bans,” which Texas state lawmakers enacted in 2021. Spokesperson Catherine Villarreal previously said that bans only displace people living in tents and move them to other parts of the city, rather than helping solve homelessness.
Johnston has said Denver will continue to enforce its camping ban — but will carry out sweeps only when health and safety are a factor or if the city can connect people in the encampments with other housing options.
Denver’s system coordination has been strong, Chandler said, with the city’s partners discussing problems and working together on a recurring basis. City officials are also working with business leaders and landlords, he said.
“What we’re trying to bring to what is already a strong collaborative system is some strong vision and direction and leadership,” Chandler said.
Houston’s leaders say that in pursuing permanent housing, they’ve put much less of a focus on transitional housing and shelter space, since it’s expensive and doesn’t provide people with stability.
But that’s not been Denver’s tack, at least not yet. Johnston’s goals, particularly to house 1,000 people in his first several months as mayor, include lining up multiple temporary housing options until his administration can assemble or build more permanent housing units.
Lesson 2: Track the data and line up partners
Houston’s nonprofit leaders say an important part of their work revolves around data analysis and ensuring that work on homelessness, whether by service providers or government entities, is driven by what the numbers show to be effective.
Part of what’s helped Houston centralize that effort is the designation of a lead nonprofit organization — the area’s Coalition for the Homeless — to implement elected officials’ vision.
The organization doesn’t provide direct services to people who are homeless, but it serves as the lead agency for coordination, funding and data tracking.
In Denver, Chandler said the city is working closely with the Metro Denver Homelessness Initiative as well as other groups to figure out exactly how to implement its future plans for addressing homelessness.
Johnston’s administration has also announced plans to hire an “encampment resolution” contractor. The city would task that organization with collecting data on people who are in homeless encampments and tracking people who get placed into housing and low-barrier shelters.
Denver has applied for state funding to create a navigation center, similar to Houston’s, that would offer a single place for people to obtain all manner of assistance.
Houston’s approach comes down to providing permanent housing with support services, including for people with mental health and substance use issues, and putting all available resources into that strategy.
“You can’t fix anything if people are living on the street,” Nichols said of people’s mental and behavioral health issues.
Chandler agrees that permanent housing offers the best solution for resolving homelessness and getting people the help they need.
Denver’s focus, for now, is getting people into “the highest degree of permanent housing that we can as quickly as possible,” he said — while continuing to offer long-term support services.
Lesson 3: Set ambitious goals
Still, as Denver looks to scale up its programs in coming years, Nichols says it’s good to have ambitious early goals such as Johnston’s aspiration of housing 1,000 people by the end of the year.
When Houston first started trying to make a dent in the problem, officials sought to end homelessness among military veterans by 2015. The city effectively did just that, according to the federal government.
For Houston’s homeless coalition, the goal now is getting a person housed within 30 days of them entering the city’s navigation center for assistance — or even better, right away, Nichols said.
Providers sometimes meet that goal, but not always, often due to housing unit or funding availability. If it takes more than 90 days, Nichols considers that a failure. The coalition succeeded in meeting the 30-day goal for housing veterans, and he wants that to become the norm for all people who are homeless.
To get 1,000 people off the street, Johnston’s administration has identified nearly a dozen possible sites for micro-communities across Denver, has put money toward two hotel properties and has negotiated the purchase of 200 small temporary Pallet shelters, so-named because they’re shipped on wooden pallets.
And Denver has solicited proposals for a contractor to handle site management and wraparound services for those locations.
But more ambitious goal-making is on the horizon — and it will come with public pressure to deliver.
Homeless providers like the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless recognize that the strategies may shift, even if the overarching objective remains to end street homelessness. That aspiration is one past Denver mayors also have set out, with varying timelines, only to fall short.
“What we really need to be focused on, and we can’t lose sight of, is the goal of building more affordable housing — housing that is income restricted or rent restricted to households at certain income levels,” said Cathy Alderman, the Colorado coalition’s public policy officer. “Because that’s going to make the system work better when people do fall into a cycle of homelessness after this initiative.”
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