Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration carried out its first homeless encampment cleanup on Friday.

The mayor’s office cited rat infestation as the reason for the cleanup.

Johnston’s long-term plan is to amass enough “supportive” housing that the city can simultaneously match people living in encampments with a unit as their camps are closed. No new units were ready by the time his administration approved the first sweep since he took office, the mayor said earlier.

“We have a lot of work to do to find housing resources for these folks,” Cole Chandler, the mayor’s senior advisor for homelessness resolution, said as he watched the sweep unfold.

Denver adopted changes to how the city approached this sweep. First, the process began at 7 a.m., instead of 5 a.m. Since the city cited a public health risk, it was only required to give a two-day notice of the sweep, but officials opted instead to provide seven days. In that time, outreach teams visited daily. The city also provided each encampment resident with a letter “that said basically, we are sorry that this is happening,” and the administration is working to find supportive housing units, Chandler said.

“We will have senior staff bearing witness each time that one of these has to take place,” he said.

Johnston’s first encampment cleanup, and the problems he and the encampment residents have identified, illustrate the complexity of metro Denver’s homelessness crisis. One central question for his administration is what to do when homeless individuals insist on staying in the streets. Some maintain that Denver has more than enough shelter beds to enforce the camping ban, while others insist that sweeps don’t work.

Leading up to the cleanup, homelessness advocates expressed disappointment that the Johnston administration had no new housing resources available before the first sweep took place and said something the mayor has also repeated while rolling out his first initiatives — that sweeps only move people from one city block to another.

For David Sjoberg, most available shelter space means being separated from his wife, something he is not willing to do, he said.

Sjoberg had lived at the now-shuttered encampment on 22nd and Stout for more than two weeks leading up to the cleanup. Friday was the first sweep to affect him.

“It’s a little bit stressful, just because of the fact that not only do you have to move but you have to go where it is acceptable to go,” and those locations can

be difficult to find, he said.

“Everything is owned by somebody,” he said.

The complications of living on Denver streets make it difficult to get out of the homelessness cycle, he said. Skoberg had temporary housing arranged for him and his wife, but then his phone was stolen, he said. Unable to follow up with the agency assisting him, Skoberg was unsure if the housing was still available to him.

Others in the Denver metro area argue that the chronically homeless — particularly those who live in encampments and who refuse city services — suffer from deep addiction to drugs, notably fentanyl and methamphetamine, and that, unless the Johnston administration specifically addresses substance abuse and mental health, his “housing first” approach is bound to fail.

Kimberly Miller, a volunteer with Mutual Aid Monday, handed out cold sodas to people as they rushed to pack up their belongings.

“It’s kind of surprising to me that they didn’t designate a place nearby, that they could set up instead of scattering,” Miller said.

She hopes the city finds a better approach to helping people with addiction get treatment. Providing medication assisted treatment alone is not enough, and fentanyl is “a whole new world of drug addiction treatment” that the community is still not sure how to respond to, Miller said.

“Their fear is of going into withdrawal,” she said, urging for more robust supportive services when people are connected to housing.

Denver has poured significant resources into tackling the crisis, spending $152 million in 2022 and authorizing $254 million to address the problem in 2023, but the crisis shows no signs of abating. The city this year saw an 8% increase in the number of homeless people who sleep in public places, based on the most recent pointin-time count. Using the latest count, Denver’s annual spending for homelessness this year translates to about $44,000 per person.

All told, the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative counted 9,065 homeless people throughout the seven-county metro area, a nearly 32% increase from 2022.

Sgt. Jaime Lucero, who supervises the Denver Police Department’s homeless outreach team, has attended “countless” sweeps, he said. More than an hour into the closure, the process was going well and “we’ve gotten a lot of cooperation from the occupants of this encampment,” he said.

As people dispersed out of the encampment, Lucero said he would like to see them move to an encampment a few blocks away, where the city is providing services, such as trash pickup.

“We should be able to keep that one contained and healthy,” he said.

Moments of tension occasionally flared during the sweep’s onset as crews erected fencing around the encampment. At one point, still hurrying to pack up his possessions, Skoberg realized he and the several remaining encampment residents were entirely fenced in. Nearby volunteers shouted, “You are locking them in!” They asked how people were supposed to remove their belongings until staff reopened an entrance.

“It’s intimidating,” Skoberg said, and particularly for a friend of his who sat quietly curled up in a chair watching the sweep take place around her. Another tense exchange unfolded as Lucero leaned in to speak with the woman in the chair, while onlookers shouted at him to get social services rather than law enforcement.

Skoberg stepped in to de-escalate. “Hey, she’s OK. She’s OK. Everyone’s alright ladies,” he said, before returning to pack up his and others’ camps.

Area business owners said they experience the brunt of homeless encampments. Risë Jones, manager of TeaLee’s Teahouse & Bookstore, said the problem is complex.

“It’s not something you can shut your eyes to and it’s not there,” Jones said. “I’ve been in business for five years and watched it grow. Oftentimes, it feels like we don’t know how to solve it. It’s housing, it’s mental health, it’s drugs.”

“I always tell my staff we’re dealing with human beings, that that person was once someone’s baby,” Jones said.

The frustration comes from the issues of public safety and cleanliness, she said.

“Part of it is around sanitation. Human waste and pests are part of the bigger picture — whether you choose to open your eyes, we’re all in the middle of it,” Jones said. “Sweeps to me are about maintenance. ... As restaurants over here, the pests are not a good thing.”

“The children or everyday citizen should be able to walk on the sidewalk without having to deal with health concerns,” she said.

Ian Carsten, who owns a bike shop one block away from the closed encampment, sees firsthand the fallout of Denver’s homelessness crisis.

Carsten said he witnesses open drug use and prostitution in the area daily, but that laws are not enforced. He thinks more enforcement might deter people from congregating.

His business is seeing higher turnover than it ever has. Customers report they felt uncomfortable coming to the shop, he said, adding he is maintaining his current clientele but not gaining new customers.

“Again, we understand that (homeless residents) are experiencing something that they are not choosing to be in,” he said.

Following the Friday morning sweep, Carsten said he is happy Denver is trying to get people living in the Stout encampment to a healthier living condition.

As for the city’s urban camping ban, “We certainly don’t want to see people get pushed around from place to place,” he said. But, he added, he wants a balance between avoiding that scenario and protecting right of ways and property.

Johnston’s plan to house 1,000 people by the year’s end sounds good and he likes the concept of providing smaller supportive housing units, Carsten said, but, like many other Denverites, he is waiting to see if the mayor follows through.

Former Mayor John Hickenlooper promised to end homelessness, too, Carsten said.

“A lot of people have taken a run at it,” he said. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

There are simpler steps the city can do to mitigate the crisis’ effects, he said. Carsten wishes Denver would install trash cans throughout the neighborhood, one thing that is completely lacking, he said. He struggles to justify griping about trash left by encampments when people living there have nowhere to dispose of it, he said. Carsten regularly sees the homeless residents clean up their areas to the best they can, he said.

Much of the surrounding area’s housing that is available offers poor or unlivable conditions, Carsten said, adding, “It’s understandable that some people may not want to enter that system.”

“We want help. Appropriate help for the people there,” he said of the neighborhood’s homeless residents.