Denver's homeless initiative touted as a model of success

Other cities also see declines in numbers of people on streets

Alan Gathright, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 12, 2006 at midnight

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At a national homelessness summit in Denver on Thursday, Mayor John Hickenlooper's campaign to end this "national disgrace" was hailed as a model success story among many communities cutting chronic homeless numbers nationwide.

The Metro Denver Homeless Initiative announced this week that a Jan. 23 survey showed an 11 percent decrease in general homelessness and a 40 percent drop in street-dwelling homeless six months after Hickenlooper and community advocates launched a strategy to end homelessness.

"Denver's numbers are hardly aberrational. They're simply part of a national trend," Philip Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, told officials from 40 states attending the three-day summit at the Colorado Convention Center.

Mangano, also known as President Bush's "Homeless Czar," recited a list of communities showing a drop in chronic homelessness as 216 cities, towns and counties adopt results-tracking programs to combat homelessness. It ranged from a 13 percent drop in New York City's street homeless population and Dallas' 26 percent cut in chronic homelessness to Miami's 30 percent reduction in street homelessness.

Hickenlooper, who was awarded the council's "A Home for Every American Award" Thursday for his ambitious plan to end homelessness in a decade, was praised by Mangano as "a mayor who's been on this issue literally from the first week that he took office." The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless also received an award, along with other individuals and organizations from across the nation.

"We are at a point in history," Hickenlooper told the gathering, "that in 10 years or 20 years all of us in this room are going to point back to this summit as the place where suddenly it became real: the fact that we could actually step forward as communities, as a country, and end a blight that most people had come to accept."

By creating a measurable "system of accountability," the mayor said, Denver is tracking its success at getting people off the street and into treatment, job training and stable lives. Supporting homeless individuals by providing "Housing First," Hickenlooper said, is saving money, cutting by 60 percent the number of program participants using hospitals, jail and detoxification centers. While traditional "Band-Aid" homeless services cost metro Denver $70 million, that's been slashed to $13 million, he added.

gathrighta@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5486

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