by Nancy Peters

It’s a cold, or rainy, or snowy night. Or it’s any night, and you are unhoused. Where do you sleep? Sometimes people end up with a health crisis like frostbite or hypothermia or pneumonia or worse-- because they don’t know where they can go during severe weather. Sometimes they don’t go to a shelter because they’ve heard they’ll be turned away for this or that reason, but the information they got might have been wrong.

With the goal of providing accurate, useful information, I researched the most well-known and largest of Denver’s overnight shelters to find out what’s available and how to get in, both every night and during cold weather emergencies. This is the information I got from talking to the folks who run these facilities. Please consider it to be a rough draft only! I have a home and so haven’t needed to use these places. So I have no way of comparing what I’ve been told to the actual experiences of people who have stayed at the shelters or tried to access them. That’s where you come in! After reading this, I hope you’ll share your experiences with Get Loud and other readers! (See p xx for ways to get in touch with us.)

In this issue we cover emergency shelters for women/transgendered individuals and for men. In our next issue we’ll provide information for families and for unaccompanied young people.

I want to emphasize that it took me many long hours of internet searching, phone calling and visiting to gather the information for this guide. Nowhere did I find everything a shelter seeker would need to know in one place. And, much of it was confusing to me and, frankly, seemed confusing to many of those running the programs, with different levels of leadership providing conflicting information. I know the grapevine on the street flourishes--and is usually the best source of information on surviving homelessness. But the accuracy of this information varies--and what does a new arrival do before they've had time to hook into this grapevine?

My experiences in researching this guide has convinced me that a comprehensive, easy to follow, and accurate emergency shelter resource guide--one that every homeless person can readily obtain--is sorely needed and must be viewed as an indispensable survival tool. Also, an integrated shelter referral system, which would tell the user where a shelter bed is available for those in need around the clock, is essential. We understand that such a system is being developed, under the leadership of the Volunteers of America (the VOA), and will keep you informed as we learn more about it.


General assistance in finding a place

Again, the information below came from official sources. I invite you to let us know if you’ve interacted with these services and how it worked for you. 

• From 8am to 5pm Monday through Friday anyone can call Mile High United Way’s 211 number from any phone to get information about shelters (as well as food, clothing, and other needed resources) that they qualify for.

• From 4:00 pm to 12:30 am any night, anyone needing shelter can call 720-305-4640 to reach Search and Rescue Dispatch run by the Salvation Army’s Crossroads program. Within staff limits (only one worker does this per night) you will be picked up and transported to a shelter.

• If you run into or can find an outreach worker (from the Denver Street Outreach Collaborative) it’s their job to help you get to a place to sleep. (They work all around town between 7 am and 10 pm seven days a week.) It’s also the job of any police officer to take you to a place indoors that will accept you during severe weather.

Unaccompanied women and transgendered individuals over 18

(Unaccompanied means you’re not with a partner or child.)

• Emergency shelter for 20 people at a rotating list of churches is provided every night year-round on a daily lottery selection basis through the Women’s Homeless Initiative of Capitol Hill United Ministries, or CHUM). Guests generally sleep on cots, with showers, supper and breakfast provided. They are transported to and from the shelter, leaving St Francis around 6pm and staying at the shelter until 7am the next morning.

To sign up for the lottery go to St Francis Center (2323 Curtis St), or call 303-297-1577, between 6 and 8:15am. No ID is needed. The twenty lottery winners are announced by 9 am. The others are placed on a numbered waiting list. (If you were selected but wish to withdraw, you must call 303-297-1577 or go to St Francis by 3 pm to do so. Otherwise, after one warning, you will be banned from the lottery for a week.) Then you must go back to St Francis and sign in between 5:15 and 5:30 pm. Those on the waiting list may also go back. At 5:30 pm lottery winners who have not signed in will be replaced by people on the wait list. 

• If you don’t get a space with the church program, you can go to the Women’s Emergency Shelter at 1370 Elati. This shelter is open every night and is operated jointly by Volunteers of America (the VOA) and the City and County of Denver. (Individuals between 18 and 21 should first call Urban Peak at 303-974-2908 to see if they have a shelter bed.) You don’t need to show any ID to get in, nor will you be breathalized. Your pet can stay with you as long as you can control it.  About 54 guests (more during severe weather) are accommodated on mats in four rooms, with just one bathroom available at night (a second opens in the morning). For the mobility impaired, cots are provided. Food and coffee are provided, but not hot meals, as there is no kitchen. This shelter closes at 7 am. In the morning, you can choose to sign up for the next night, and unlimited stays are allowed. Staff can help you find more long-term housing if you choose this. 

• If the Women’s Emergency Shelter on Elati is full when you arrive, you will be offered a motel voucher and a bus ticket to get there (either to the VOA’s Family Motel on West Colfax or, if that’s full, to a contract motel). The motel voucher program is operated by the VOA, through a contract with the Denver Department of Human Services and Denver’s Road Home. No ID is needed to go to the Family Motel, but the contract motels require you to show a Colorado ID or other proof of Denver County residency. (This requirement is relaxed when the temperatures are under 30 degrees.) Until 9 pm, your voucher will be issued at the shelter. After 9 pm you must go to the Denver Sheriff’s office at 490 W Colfax to request a voucher.

(When it’s below 40 degrees?) Women can also request a motel voucher by going to the Samaritan House (at Park Avenue W and Lawrence St) from 5-8:30 pm Monday through Friday, or from 4-7:30 pm on Saturday and Sunday. (Will they be directed to the Women’s Shelter unless it’s full?) Each eligible person is allowed 12 motel vouchers per year.

• Another possible shelter option is the emergency overflow program of The Delores Project. (The west Denver address is kept confidential.) You can call them at 303-534-5411 any time to ask if a bed is available, but the best time to call is on Monday at 11:30 am, when the emergency bed guests who have been staying there that week must pack out their things. (But if they call on Monday they may be given a bed for another week.) If you get a bed, you can keep it until the following Monday, when you must call again. The house is closed to guests between 8 am and 5 pm Monday through Friday, but guests may stay there during the day on weekends.

Besides this emergency overflow program, the Delores Project also runs three longer-term transitional shelter programs which require participants to have a case manager and to be actively working toward housing stability. Two of these--the Community Partner Bed Program and the Community Reentry Program--require you to be referred by another community agency, and to keep working with that agency while at Delores. The third program--the Steps to Stability Program--is available (generally after a wait) to people who have stayed at least once as an overflow guest. In this program you would work with a Delores Project Transitional Advocate.

Unaccompanied men over 18:

(Again, unaccompanied means not with a partner or child.)

• The Denver Rescue Mission’s Lawrence Street Shelter (1130 Park Avenue West, home of the neon “Jesus Saves” sign) can take as many as 315 men, with 200 in beds in the dorm, and the remainder on mats in the chapels. Another 150 men can be accommodated on mats in its Emergency Overflow Shelter (their Administration Building) at 3501 E 46th Ave. Guests are not breathalized. A picture ID is needed, but there is a grace period to get it. And you must show a negative TB test result, but you have a week to obtain this. Since the facilities are not wheelchair accessible, mobility impaired men are referred to other shelters which can accommodate them.

Assignment to these spots is by daily lottery selection. To be included in the lottery you must sign up before 5 pm, either by calling 303-294-0157 or by going to the Lawrence Street location. Between 5 and 5:30 pm lottery winners are selected by computer and a list is printed. Those selected must check in to their assigned location by 8:30 pm. Beds that haven’t been claimed at the Lawrence Street Shelter are then assigned to others on a first come first served basis, until 10 pm, when lights go out and no more entries are permitted (unless brought by an outreach worker or the police). 

Dinner is served between 6 and 8 pm, and Lawrence Street guests can begin checking in at 6:30. Those placed at the Overflow Shelter are transported there in three buses, after they eat, between 6:45 and 8:15 pm. Buses return them to the Lawrence Street location in the morning. Morning wake-ups are staggered, beginning at 5 am. Showers are available at the Lawrence Street Shelter. Breakfast is served at Lawrence Street between 5:30 and 6:45 am. (Add a paragraph about their other programs?)

• The Samaritan House (2301 Lawrence Street) can take up to 94 men on mats in its overflow shelter program. To get a mat, go there at 8 pm any night. No ID is needed, but you will be breathalized. There are no showers or meals (it’s just a place to sleep), and you must be out by 5:30 am.

The Samaritan House also has transitional shelter programs for 126 single men, 34 single women, and 24 families. In these programs, individuals stay up to four months, while they work on their employment, financial, housing and other goals. To be considered for one of these programs, call the Samaritan House (303-294-0241) at 8 am any morning to find out if any beds are available. If there are, go there and sign up for the lottery (single women at 9:30, families at 10 am, and single men at 8:30 pm).

• The Salvation Army’s Crossroads Shelter (1901 29th Street) conducts a lottery on site at 4:30 pm on Sundays and Wednesdays. If you select the right color ticket, you have a mat until the next lottery.  According to Program Director Brett Van Sickle, Crossroads had been sheltering 152 men on mats, but with the cold weather that number has increased to 300, and “we fill up every night.” Van Sickle said the Salvation Army has another location that can be used if needed, but “we haven’t had to use it yet this season.” Designated a “damp shelter” by city contract, guests are not breathalized. You do not need to show an ID. Eighteen shower heads are available. Dinner is served at 7 pm, and breakfast at 6 am. Guests must leave at 8, but “during the severe weather (in early December) we stayed open 24 hours a day,” said Van Sickle.

Crossroads also has a bed rental program for men, with 148 beds available, for $42 a week. And this month Crossroads is launching a new three-phase program called “Stepping Up,” with 32 apartments available to phase three (employed) participants.

by Chiseltooth

Some of the Denver Catholic Workers were happy to hear that affordable housing units were going to be built right next door to them, when their city councilman, Albus Brooks, told them of the plans at a “Points Housing Institute Five Points Housing Conference” this past summer. The lot used to house a gas station that had been torn down decades earlier and it has sat vacant for many years, Deep Rock Water holding on to it for water rights. Sure, their garden, which they had maintained on this lot for years, would be gone, along with the fresh picked raspberries, squash, strawberries, kale, chard and roses that it provided each year- but living with poor people, the volunteers knew the housing crisis in Denver.

The statistics are:

·         The Colorado Division of Housing has shown that Denver doesn’t even have half of the number of low-income housing units that it needs to house residents who make under $20,000 a year.

·         According to the Denver Housing Market Analysis (DHMA), more than 80% of low income renters in Denver have an unaffordable rent burden (meaning they pay more than 30% of their income for rent).

·         According to DHMA, Denver needs an additional 25,647 low-income units to adequately house its low-income residents.

·         Nationally, since 2010, 50% of renters have an unaffordable rent burden, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

And Denver’s Local 9-News reported on April 29th of this year that Denver’s vacancy rates “declined, falling from 4.9 percent at the end of 2012 to 4.6 percent at the beginning of 2013.” And, “Rent in the Denver metro area rose to an average of $992 during the beginning of 2013 - that's the highest rate in the city's history.” So, people were pretty excited when Brooks claimed to be bringing in new, much needed “affordable housing."

That is, everyone was excited until they learned about the details of the project.

“Affordable Housing” is based on a percentage of an area’s AMI (Area Median Income). The housing project planned for next door to the Catholic Worker house would include 60% AMI apartments, meaning that people making up to 60% of Denver’s AMI were eligible to move into these buildings and the prices were adjusted accordingly.

So what does that mean? Denver’s AMI, according to HUD (Housing and Urban Development), is $79,000, meaning that people who make 60% of that make roughly $47,580 a year. And anyone who makes up to $47,580 is eligible to live there, just so long as they are able to pay the rent, which the developers say will be around $1000 for a studio or one bedroom apartment, roughly the same as market rate housing. Given that people whose sole income is SSI (federal disability benefits for those with limited income) only make (on average) $710 a month, and given that a full time minimum-wage earning employee only makes $1244.80 a month before taxes – leaving a person paying 1000 for rent with only $244.80 to live on each month, it obvious that this ‘affordable housing’ is not affordable for everyone.

And CW volunteers were only more disheartened to go to a ‘5 Points Business District’ meeting, where the project developers told the neighborhood that they planned to build an 8 story building, and add nearly 200 units to a historic neighborhood (the only designated cultural district in Colorado) that already had problems with parking and density, not to mention the fact that the average building surrounding the site of the new construction is only 2 stories tall.

Worse yet, when neighbors heard the words ‘affordable housing,' they raised their voices in opposition, and completely disregarding that Denver has long been known as an expensive housing market, the homeowners seemed to speak in unison, “5 Points has too much low-income housing! Our property values will decrease even more! We need market-rate!”


Sadly, the developers folded. The entire structure, when it is completed, will be full-price market rate housing. And because the majority of the development is rental, they don’t have to contribute a penny to the city’s low-income housing fund.




As anyone who has ever been homeless knows, and as anyone who takes seriously the task of helping to end homelessness will tell you, the answer to homelessness is always going to be a home. But for now, developers and city planners are choosing to plant gigantic non-affordable homes where many lives had been nourished by a beautiful garden. And so the struggle continues.