Welcome back to this weekly meeting of the Community Planning and Housing Committee with Denver City Council.

Your community planning and housing committee starts now.

You think something, okay.

That's how we just started the meeting.

We got on air, so killed on our sawyer in Denver.

Shared with the group that she.

Because we met some shelter dogs from the Denver Animal Shelter, which are very dogs.

Adorable for Christmas.

Unless you're allergic dogs, like our colleague from Mr.

Five.

Welcome to the community planning and housing committee meeting of whatever day this is, December 16th, 2025.

I'm Sarah Fardy, you're one of your council members at large.

And we will start on our right.

I was just saying.

To do my right, which I didn't know.

Hi, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4.

Good to think about it.

Yeah, good afternoon, the very sneezy allergic to dogs of Andes Sawyer District 5.

Morad Vitres with Lucky District 7.

Good afternoon, Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6.

Good afternoon, Darren Watson.

Fine, Disney.

Alright.

And Becca's been here set up, just waiting to present this rezoning to us.

So I'm not gonna make her wait any longer.

Well, and it's actually a landmark designation.

Well, you know, you're in for a treat.

History lessons.

Those are actually a lot more fun.

Don't tell the don't tell the other folks.

My lips are sealed.

Good afternoon, Council.

Um this designation application is for the Gables, an apartment building located at 1407 East 11th Avenue, which is on the corner of Lafayette and 11th Avenue.

This is in Council District 10 in the Cheesman Park neighborhood.

And this is an owner supported designation.

You can see the proposed boundary on the screen.

It encompasses the whole lot.

As a reminder, per the landmark ordinance, which is chapter 30 of the revising municipal code.

Uh there are four elements that we look at when we're deciding whether a building can be eligible to be a Denver landmark.

It first must maintain its historic integrity.

It must be more than 30 years old or have exceptional importance.

It needs to meet at least three of ten significance criteria.

The property we'll be talking about today qualifies under the following three uh categories that are folded here on the screen.

Uh designation criteria C, D, and G.

And I'll go through each of these in turn.

So first, the property is a good example of the Tudor revival style.

Built in 1914 to 1915, the three-story brick building embraces a style that was popular in Colorado during the 1910s and 1920s.

Distinguishing features of the style are exhibited in the property, including masonry construction, half timbering with stucco infill on the upper levels, as you can see in the upper picture.

Multiple prominent cross gables, a tower, and a prominent porch with masonry arch, which you can see in the lower picture.

Additionally, the building has notable craftsman elements, a style that emerged from the arts and crafts movement of the earliest 20th century.

These include overhanging eaves, exposed rafters, triangular knee braces, porches with brick columns, and several original windows that have multiple panes over a sash with one large glass pane.

The building also qualifies under criterion D.

It is the significant work of a recognized architect and master builder.

The building was designed by prominent architect Montana S.

Fallis.

Fallis first began practicing in Denver in the late 1880s when he was hired by Frank Edbrook's architectural firm.

None of Fallus's other works are known to be designed in the Tudor Revival style, making this a really unique example of his work.

Fallus is instead associated with the design of a number of properties that are more civic or institutional and commercial in nature, such as the 1910 Renaissance Revival Vale Hotel in Pueblo, the 1913 Gothic Revival Revival Style Sacred Heart Church in Pueblo, and then it here in Denver, the 1929 Art Deco Burger Brothers Building, which is the downtown historic district.

And one of my favorites, the Mayan Theater on South Broadway.

The building was also associated with master builder Adam and Stein.

Stein was selected by Fallis, who happened to be his son-in-law, to execute execute the design of the gables.

But Stein stands in his own right as a master builder.

He started out as a carpenter and amassed the skills and knowledge to end up really running a large construction company thereafter.

He was a charter member of the Master Builders Association and Denver building permits from 1889 to 1914.

Liz Stein is a builder associated with at least 27 projects and probably more.

We just don't have complete details on that.

And then finally, the Gables is a rare early example of adaptive reuse in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Rather than being a purpose-built apartment building, Pallas combined two single-family houses into one building.

You can see on the maps above.

So the top map is the Sandborn map from 1904, and it shows two single family houses side by side.

And you can still see the outlines of the historic single-family homes, but they've sort of been subsumed into this larger apartment complex.

This was a very uncommon design in Denver, making it quite a unique resource.

We often see Victorian mansions that have been torn down and replaced with apartment buildings, which is what Capitol Hill is known for.

So it's quite unusual to see these two single-family buildings remain.

So, therefore, the gables is an example of early and intentional adaptive reuse rather than demolishing the houses.

And they were both incorporated into this 14-unit design.

So another question we ask ourselves when we're deciding whether a property can be a downward landmark is if it has historic integrity.

And while we could argue that the people who once lived in the single family homes might not be able to recognize the historic structure, we are giving this a period of significance from 1914 to 1915, so that property owner or property owners and residents from that time period could really see the structure as it is today.

So it has minimal alterations during the period of significance.

It maintains its aspects of location, setting, design, materials, workmanship feeling, and association.

LPC did consider its historic context as a good example of the changing character of the Capitol Hill neighborhood at the turn of the 20th century as single-family homes made way for multifamily homes.

The periods of significance is 1914 to 1915, recognizing the change of use.

And as of Wednesday, December 10th, we have received one letter in support for this designation from the neighbors for Greater Capitol Hill, and we received two public comments in support of the designation at the commission meeting, one from neighbors for Greater Cap Hill and from Historic Denver.

So as this property meets the designation criteria laid out in chapter 30, landmark staff is recommending that the committee forward this designation to City Council for the review at a public hearing.

Okay, thank you so much.

Anyone want to be in queue?

Because if not, I sure am.

But Madam Pro Jim.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Who is bringing the designation forward?

Is the applicant?

The property owner, Mary Lee Amberg, she should be online.

But yeah, she's bringing it forward, and with the help of a consultant who wrote the designation.

Okay, and then does it matter?

I don't know for historic designation, but what is it currently?

Is it is it divided up into apartments or is it a single family home?

It is divided into 14 apartments, but it's owned by one person.

It's not condos.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Okay.

Um, go ahead, Councilmersler.

I just wanted to say thank you for bringing in.

I think that's really fantastic.

Looking forward to having it on the floor, and I'm I'll move it forward.

Yeah.

I was gonna check if the owner is online, just um, and Cashman's up too.

Oh, and then Cashman, okay.

Let me just I don't have a specific question for her.

I just wanted to find out if she's there and see if she can be promoted.

Um sorry, I we didn't catch her name, Becca.

Can you say that again?

Marilee Amber, Marilee Ambrook or um Amy Klein.

Okay.

We're just giving Tim a second to to see if she's there.

Yeah, Amy Klein, I think.

Um Tim, if you want to promote Amy, great, perfect.

Um, and Ms.

Klein, if you can hear us and accept the promotion.

I don't know if anyone has specific questions for you, but then you'll be able to answer them if they do.

Um all right, Cashman in the meantime.

Thank you, ma'am.

Um, thank you for the presentation.

Beautiful piece of property.

I'm just interested.

I don't know that I've ever seen a one-year period of significance for a historic uh structure.

And I think I'm just kind of running up against technical definitions, because it is just a spectacular example of decades of Cap Hill.

I just wondered if you could talk to that a little bit.

Yeah, that is um an interesting question because I had the same question when it came to my desk.

Uh, usually we often see um buildings that have a period of significance that encapture when it was created, but then the evolution of it and moving forward.

In this case, um the applicants did propose this one period of significant this one-year period of significance, because the criteria that it's related to are really about that transition from single family to multifamily use.

Um, had it been designated under criterion A, for example, which is historic development patterns of the city, I think we could have argued for that a longer period of significance, probably up through 30 years of age, because Cap Hill is still, you know, that vibrant multifamily.

Um but because the criteria that they chose were really about the architectural style and type and that transition from single-family to multifamily, they opted for the one-year period of significance.

Yeah, in this particular case, I don't care a lot about how it's being what of the criteria.

I just think it's God bless the owner for for doing this.

It is a beautiful piece of property.

So thank you for the presentation.

Thanks, madam chair.

Yeah, and councilmember Alvides.

Uh agreed, thank you, Council Committee Chair.

Um, and of course, I am going to say that the Mayan Theater on South Broadway is amazing.

And um to see that this was made by the same architect and such different styles is fascinating and really speaks to this artist as an individual.

So I'm really grateful that we are designating this, and the Mayan has been landmarked for a while.

And one of the special things if you do go to the Mayan, is that there's proclamations from councils, different councils, different mayors, which speaks to this particular artist's craft.

So thank you.

That's all thank you, committee chair.

Yeah, um, it was cool to see the link to the Mayan, Councilmember Watson.

I was gonna be very quick and just say uh what a beautiful building, what a wonderful uh opportunity for the uh the owner um for you to put this forward and you know to preserve.

Um, and um, I was rolling back to the Mayan because uh Councilmember Albiza shared.

We just went to the Mayan this weekend to see Hamnet and uh you haven't been to the Mayan recently.

I mean, I know this is about the the the period and the time and the builder, but it is really living in a space that's uniquely Denver, and sitting and watching uh amazing movie in this historic space.

That's why we do these things, is we keep these spaces alive for generations, and so uh I'm just excited about this, and I love the Maya, so thank you, madam chair.

Alright, so just like a slightly indulgent moment, um, this again the the history of um this architect and builder in Denver and the Mayan.

I know Councilmember Cashman knows a gal named Chris Citron.

I have a story about that on when you're done.

Yeah, well, just we all know she she's um as an attorney.

She went to the same law school as I did.

So I met her when I moved out here and um she I joined some Mayan tour that she did where she talked about the effort to save it and kind of the you know some of the beginnings of um landmarking in Denver, I guess.

Um she describes it as a convoluted and null-dramatic effort, which it would not be today.

We just had this nice committee meeting, you know, um, and it involved Mary Pania, Congresswoman Pat Schroeder.

Um, and now I want to hear Councilman Catchman's story.

Yeah, so it the the Maya is uh when it was built, stunning.

Today it is stunning, but there was a period when it had gone into terrible disrepair, it was vacant for quite a while.

And uh I was a journalist at the time and went on a tour with Miss Sitron and uh then Congresswoman Schroeder and a bunch of people, and the the lights weren't even on in the building, and we went upstairs and it and as we're walking along the balcony, uh the doors to the bathrooms which had hadn't been used in years and years were open.

And as we passed, don't remember what it was the men's room or the women's room.

There was just some vile thing had been, you know, spray painted on the wall, and I just remember Congresswoman Schroeder kind of looking in and turning back and going, Well, then there's that.

It's not it didn't contribute to the landmark designation.

What did contribute along with the people you named is uh the previous Broncos owner Pat Bolan uh made a connection with a bank in Kansas City that uh purchased the Mayan, and then uh that kept it from being demolished, and that started the uh uh rehabilitation process.

So thanks for indulging me.

Yeah, no, I it was I was also doing that anyway.

I will also say about this building.

I used to live three blocks north of it.

I I think a good like, you know, speaking of rule of funds for landmark is like if you're walking around a lot, do you think like what's the deal with that building?

You know, and I did used to think that, so now I know.

Um with that, I think I have a motion from Sawyer, a second from Aurora Campbell.

Uh everybody good to move it to the floor.

Thumbs up, yay.

That was fun.

Um, I think Ms.

Klein is the consultant who's online, we'll just say thank you.

Um, and thanks for being here.

All right, thank you so much, Becca.

All right, well, we've never seen that before.

All right.

Is that the vote?

And the next group up.

I don't see a lot of you guys like jumping up to run on over here.

Quarter for that up.

I know you guys don't get such like fun, you know, the cutly reading.

It's not just three different means.

Yeah, if you're invited to, sir.

You could put some uh cat pictures up for us to look at while you present, like cat memes.

Or let us hold puppies.

I yeah, I highly recognize puppies.

It worked really well for any of them this morning.

That's great.

Remind me, we love y'all without putting out.

Yeah, so we do luckily have plenty of time um for our quarter for all in mile high briefing.

Um, and I will let you guys all introduce yourselves individually before you start your slides, and we can give Jeff a minute to sit too.

We don't have to watch.

Sounds good.

All right.

Or you're ready.

Good afternoon.

I'm Cole Chandler, senior advisor on homelessness in the mayor's office.

Would you like to introduce yourself, sir?

Sure.

Jeff Kositsky, deputy director and host.

Emily Berger, priority populations manager with Dito.

Tristan Sanders, director of community behavioral health at DPHG.

And we're also joined by some of our most esteemed colleagues in the audience.

Cammy and Aaron.

We see them.

They look very estimable.

Great.

Um, so as you know, this is our quarterly briefing.

We've had the privilege of doing these in committee for the last two years.

So this is our eighth rendition of these.

Um we generally use the same format for each meeting, and so um, and uh we've also had the chance to uh brief all of you or your staff members on this prior to now.

So thank you for your comments and questions that helped to inform this presentation and get it ready for showtime.

So we have just three sections to this presentation, third quarter updates and highlights, upcoming procurements and contracts, and then our site services updates.

And so we'll walk you through those and then look forward to your questions on those topics.

So this is a report on the third quarter, which was our progress as of September 30th.

You all are familiar with this slide from the mayor presenting it in Mayor Council, but as of September 30th, we had uh sheltered 2,006 people towards our goal to shelter 2,000 people.

We had housed 1,180 people towards the 2000 person goal.

Um as we've covered uh previously, we dealt with some setbacks due to the loss of uh state and federal housing vouchers that made what was already an ambitious goal to get to 2,000 people housed even harder.

Um that being said, we have recovered some of the pace that we saw drop off in quarter two, and so I was just looking to see where we are coming into today.

We have actually housed 1,630 people at this point in the year.

We're projecting around 1650 by the end of the year.

Um, and so you'll see that um reflected in our end-of-year update when that comes forward.

Um this is data from the Metro Denver homelessness initiative related to our annual point in time count.

As you're aware, we have had a reduction in unsheltered homelessness of 45% since the high water mark of 2023.

We compared that data to other large cities that participated in the 2025 pit count.

Among large cities, we actually had the smallest number of unsheltered people living on our streets.

Um, this reduction uh over the course of two years is the largest that we can find on record, and compared it to other cities, including Houston and Dallas.

Um I know that one other thing that's important to the administration, to the agencies represented here, to our residents in the city, and to all of you is uh the deaths among people experiencing homelessness, and so uh we've continued to provide that data.

This is according to the Office of the Medical Examiner, that we had a high water mark on that number of deaths in 2023 that reduced in 2024 and is on path to reduce in 2025 as well.

We have seen that among people experiencing homelessness, the overwhelming majority of those deaths, I believe around 75% are related to overdoses, and so that's a very real challenge that we continue to face not only in our on the streets but in our shelters, as we deal with this challenge amongst our community members.

Um, can you pause for just a second because that's tiny on the side and just say I know you just said the reduction.

Can you say it again?

The reduction.

Yeah, well, just describing that graph on the graph on the bottom left.

Yes.

Yep.

So that graph on the bottom left is from the Office of Medical Examiner.

It charts all deaths that are recorded among people experiencing homelessness.

That includes people that were living on the streets or living in shelters.

Um, and so anyone that died in a shelter would be captured there, anyone that died on the streets.

The highest number, at least in the last five years, was in 2023, quite likely the highest number on record in the city.

Um, we saw a reduction in that number in 2024, um, and the number is below that high water mark for 2025 as well.

It reports on a lag, and so we'll have that data, you know, first quarter of 2025 2026, but it's not um comprehensive uh as of this time.

Um, so happy to answer more questions about it.

No, I didn't mean to interrupt, I just I just because we couldn't see the numbers wanted to stop and grab that.

Thank you.

All right, um, one other thing that I've mentioned here, and actually, last time we were with you all um for our quarterly presentation, I believe was August 26th when this article was published.

Um, but the Urban Institute is engaged in a long-term evaluation of our efforts to address unsheltered homelessness.

The Urban Institute is an organization that's nationally renowned.

They did the evaluation for the social impact bond in Denver, and so their data and reporting is something we're very uh familiar with.

In August, they put out an article that analyzed our data and found that we had reduced large encampments citywide by 98%.

They'll continue to track that over time to see if that continues to be the case.

They will put out an interim report, which will be available and happy to share about that when it is.

And then in 2027, they'll have a long-term evaluation of this effort as well.

And so want you all to know that that work is well underway.

They'll be coming back for site visits again for the second or third time in January of next year, and we're working closely with them on the evaluation that they're producing, which will help us to learn and evolve and continue to improve this program moving forward.

This table is one that we've used each quarter this year, just reporting transparently about some of the big rocks that we've been working on this year as we work to tackle this goal to bring 2,000 people into shelter and 2,000 people into housing.

And so you can see the status of our shelter and housing efforts as of September 30th.

We also completed the closure of the Radison non-congregate shelter in March.

The Roads to Recovery program, which we gave a more in-depth briefing about last quarter, is maintaining 71% of service connections among the population that were serving there.

We have completed longer-term services, RFPs for that program, and so those are complete and executed.

One of the things that we were working on this year that we talked about extensively at council a few weeks ago, was we were working to launch an integrated software solution to manage our street engagement deployments.

I had hoped that would launch in 2025.

It was one of our goals to do so.

It's going to launch instead in early 2026.

We have a January launch date for that, but we've really spent this year looking at all the different agencies involved in street engagement, what their roles and responsibilities are, and working closely with technology solutions to design a technology platform that will deploy those teams based upon the appropriate response logic to make sure that the right team is responding to the right situations.

And so that is currently scheduled to launch in January of next year, but did not launch this year.

Additionally, we did complete RFPs for the for hosts all in mile high shelter, housing, and street outreach services.

You've started to see many of those contracts come through.

They've all come through committee.

Some of them have now been approved on the full floor, some of them will be continue to be come before you next week, and so on and so forth, but those continue to make progress.

Jeff and his team have been working to solidify the housing central command process, memorialize that in contracts, complete trainings for housing central command staff and appropriately resourced housing exits.

And so Jeff just last week was hosting trainings with all the new service providers, and he and the team have made great progress in that regard.

We've been working to enhance behavioral health and substance use services at the sites and in street engagement.

Tristan will have some great updates for you on the data sharing agreement that we've completed with the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and all the data and touch points we've had related to behavioral health throughout the course of this year.

We have enhanced workforce service offerings, and Emily will talk about the work that Dito has led in that regard and the great success that we've seen there at this point in the year.

In partnership with and under leadership of Council Member Lewis's office, we convene convened a Quebec Corridor Task Force throughout the summertime.

I can't remember if Bree was able to give a briefing on that.

It's coming up in January.

Great.

Thank you.

But that process completed in August.

There were a number of recommendations that community members living along the Quebec Corridor made, and many of those have been considered as we have contracted with new service riders, looked at bringing community ambassador services to that area, and so on and so forth.

And then finally, we were focused this year on deploying a vehicular homelessness resolution program.

That's something that I think we've all seen across the city, the growing need for that.

I get outreach from many of you about people living in cars and RVs in your uh in your districts for a long time.

All we really had to offer was an enforcement approach to that.

This year, and starting in October, we have had a dedicated outreach team that's going out and doing street outreach to people living in RVs and vehicles.

As of December 2nd, we had uh resolved uh we had resolved vehicular homelessness for 75 uh total people.

Um the options that they moved into included moving into non-congregate shelter hotels, included family reunification, and in some cases, also included direct to housing from the streets.

Um, nine of those families or individuals have also, as part of that, voluntarily surrendered their vehicle, basically saying, hey, this vehicle is not working for me, it's a liability, not an asset, and I'm willing to give it up to the city's RB or vehicular disposal program.

Um, and so that's been tremendously successful in only really eight weeks of data reporting on that.

We're seeing basically a couple of placements per business day, and then about one vehicle being surrendered per week, and so we're really excited to continue that forward in 2026.

All right, so that's section one.

Our updates on third quarter.

Um, this section is brief, our upcoming procurements and contracts, so many of these you all have seen at council, or we've been in discussion about them, but all in mile high non-congress shelters and microcommunities continue to make their way through council.

Housing central command contracts continue to make their way through council.

Um, thank you for your approval of the street outreach and community ambassador service contracts earlier this month.

I wanted to flag for you that leases related to some of these sites will be coming forward at later dates.

Um, and so there's kind of a parallel process here where host puts forward their service agreement, and then the lease with the service provider comes forward.

That lease is really important because it outlines what the city's relationship is with the service provider, especially as it relates to the care and utilization of city-owned buildings, and so you'll still see those forthcoming for sites like 4040 Quebec for some of the microcommunities, etc.

Um, and so we will be sure to flag those for you when they're being filed, but wanted to flag that.

And then DDPHE is continuing to work on the all-mile high physical dental and behavioral health services contract and looking for a committee date for that at present.

All right, happy to answer more questions about that, and if there's follow-up detail we need, happy to provide that as well.

But moving into our final section, um, I'll turn it over to Jeff in just a moment to cover a couple of slides.

But um, as you know, this is a citywide goal that involves multiple city agencies, six or seven represented on the slide right there.

Um, and really, you know, throughout the course of this year, we've really looked at how do we allow agencies to stick to their core competency and how do we bring those things together and coordinate them in a way that's advancing the citywide goal to address unsheltered homelessness.

And so we will provide updates in this section as we typically have on the housing outcomes, the health outcomes, and the employment outcomes.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Jeff for this slide.

Thanks, Cole.

Um, so as you'll see in this slide, we're looking at um the rate of housing placements from people living at non-congregate shelter housing against uh unsheltered homeless uh people who are exiting uh to unsheltered homelessness from those sites.

Uh you'll see that that line crosses, which is what we want with the blue line to be much bigger than the yellow line around the third quarter of 2024, which is when we launched housing Central command, and have been outpacing those numbers, you know, pretty much month after month.

Um moving forwards, we're very happy with that.

Um, this next slide uh just shows service utilization.

I'm gonna look at the actual dashboard to provide you some more information than what you're seeing up there.

Right now we're seeing about 71% of households on a regular basis accessing social services, which is not bad, but it's a little bit anemic, and this is why we're moving to performance-based contracting.

If that number doesn't push close to 90 contractors, you know, will not be able to receive the full value of their contract.

Uh, we did have an all day training on Thursday with all of the current and new um all in mile high providers, in which this was really the focus of the of the meeting, and the providers were very excited about it, and you know, no resistance, and also making a lot of plans to push these numbers up, even now they're they're working to do that.

So feel really good about where we're heading there, but definitely some room for improvement.

Um, average length of stay, uh, was 205 days, and which is higher than we'd want to see it.

We want that to really be below 180.

We definitely have had months where the average length of stay was you know closer to 150, 160 days.

It fluctuates quite a bit, somewhere between like 140 and uh 210.

Um, but I guess this is the current the current average, but hopefully, if we can keep our housing exits up, we'll be able to see those numbers continue to drop.

Um, see what else is.

Yeah, I think that I think that covers it.

And also, oh, the other thing that's not on here, but Emily may be talking about this, so sorry if I jump into your lane.

Um, we're starting to track increases in income.

Um, the data that we were collecting previously, frankly, was kind of non-existent.

We weren't providers weren't consistently collecting that data, but we now are when when people exit trying to track increases in income and are seeing in you know some cases like this past month an average 2,466 dollars in increased income, which could be somebody getting employment or somebody getting benefits.

So we are also, you know, as part of getting folks to exit homelessness.

Um housing that we provide is probably the most likely outcome, but also trying to work with folks to increase their income to either help them move out on their own or once they do move to be able to maintain stable housing.

Great.

Thank you.

Turn it over to Tristan.

Yeah, thanks, Cole.

Uh, good afternoon, members of council.

Uh so I'll be talking a little bit about the behavior of all the physical health services and behavioral health services across the Alamo high sites.

So on the left side of the screen, we're talking a little bit about what's gonna come before you in the next week or so, which is a revised amended uh 2026 contract with CCH to provide these services.

In 2025, we put together a system for referrals that we think is actually working really well.

Anybody across the LMIO high sites can fill out an electronic referral that'll show up directly in CCH's box, and then they can go find that person to provide them services, so it's less of the cold calling, so to speak, but people actually sort of volunteering to say, yes, I want services, and then getting it in closer to real time.

Um, part of what we're gonna do in 2026 is align the contract more to the response times for those referrals.

So are they being timely with responding to those?

We believe they are, but we're actually gonna have a metric to track it.

Um, the second part uh for 2026 is that we're gonna add additional investment in mobile medical services.

So they currently have a mobile medical vehicle that goes around to a variety of the sites.

We're gonna have another vehicle that'll be able to facilitate more of the transports, the delivery of medications, getting people to where the certain services are provided.

Not all services can be provided at all sites.

You can imagine dental and other such things have to be in certain types of facilities, so this will help get people to the services that they need.

And then lastly, looking at the staffing model that CCH has in place.

We're gonna increase the number of nurse care coordinators and some of the medical assistance.

A lot of the other providers that they have working on this are reimbursable services, and so those providers are paid for effectively, so we can put more of our dollars into the uh staff that aren't paid for through those reimbursable services, but are actually facilitating people getting those services.

On the other side of the screen, uh you'll see some of the quantitative data that we have started to get from CCH in the last about three to four months.

This actually goes historical back to the beginning of when they provided services at the Illinois high sites.

We can break it out by month, we can break it out by year.

We decided to just sort of throw it up here for the sake of one slide, and we can go into any details that we need to.

Something I would point to that's actually a little bit surprising but actually really encouraging is the nine to one encounters per patient.

So what that tells us is that any given patient is having a fairly significant engagement in health services with an average of nine services per patient.

Now, when we say services, we don't just mean it was a conversation, they're actually receiving something, whether it was counseling or dental services or health services or medications, etc.

And so that's telling us that not only are they receiving a significant amount of services, but it's also potentially over a longer period of time.

As Jeff mentioned, you know, the average length of stay, we want to be right around six months.

What can we reasonably expect to happen in six months?

Is what I asked myself.

Somebody engaging in services and somebody staying connected to those services is really what we're interested in in the way of outcomes.

So are they engaging?

Yes.

Nine-to-one, that's great.

Are they staying connected?

Do they have a PCP and do they have a way to access services once they're housed?

Is really the question that we're leading into with CCH.

We believe that everybody that receives services is connected to us to a primary care provider.

We're wondering how many people that didn't receive a service are actually connected to PCPs or can.

So that'll be something that we look at in 2026 and measure over time to make sure that we're really able to sustainably provide services to people even after they leave these shelters.

If you want to dig into any more of this data, we're happy to answer any of the questions.

I would just point out that you know, primary health care, mental health, general patient counseling being the top three services that are provided.

It's encouraging to us that you know, primary health care is being taken care of.

We believe strongly that you have to take care of your physical primary health care to be able to address any other sort of substance use or mental health challenges somebody might be facing.

So it's encouraging that that's actually one of the top services provided.

But there's there's a list of about 20 different services, but we won't go into that detail here unless you have questions about it.

Great.

All right, and then uh Emily, if you'll provide an update on our rapid rehousing workforce pilot.

Yeah, so this is focused on our pilot that we started at the beginning of this year, 2025.

Um, this is specifically for clients who are in all in mile high shelters and then were referred into rapid rehousing.

From there, those folks can get a referral from a housing stabilizer to workforce.

Then we triage anyone who's referred to us based on if they're interested in training and employment or just training.

If they're interested in training and employment, we utilize our nonprofit partners that do some of that training, or we use uh we owe a dollars, workforce innovation and opportunity act dollars to pay for some of that training.

If someone's interested in employment, then we do, you know, the resumes, the cover letters, job leads, help applying to those jobs, and help with any barriers that they might have to employment.

And so on the next slide, you'll see what those numbers have looked like so far this year.

This is as of the end of November.

So we're working out of a universe of just over 300 people who have been referred to rapid rehousing this year.

Of that, just shy of 200 people have been referred to workforce.

Um, going down further, we have 86 people who have voluntarily elected to engage with us.

Um 52 of those have gained employment, so that's about 60% of people who are actively engaged have found a job.

Um, and then we found 36 people who have either started training or completed training.

And so, what are those jobs have looked like?

Um, we've got some people employed with the city, we've seen uh Parks and Rec employ some folks, uh, the Clark and Recorders Office employed some folks.

Uh the airport's also really popular, so we've seen people at United Airlines, Southwest, and Gate Gourmet.

We just had someone who got a job at Gate Gourmet and is making 26 dollars an hour.

Um, so pretty excited about that.

And then training and education, uh big emphasis on GED or high school diploma, that's been a big interest.

Um, and then we're seeing construction apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships, and forklift has also been quite popular so far this year.

Great.

And then just one other thing to add about that.

Um, this year we specifically focused the pilot uh for workforce on people that were exiting to rapid rehousing.

That was because this is a lower QA population and the place that we wanted to start that.

We're continuing to have conversations around how we expand that specifically to people living in shelters.

And when we do so, we'll focus on people who are new to homelessness and living across the shelter system.

So not necessarily just in the non-congregate shelter hotels.

It could be congregate shelters, whatever program they may be in, but we'll focus on newly homeless folks that are living in shelters.

And with that, happy to answer whatever questions you may have for us.

Okay, awesome.

I have a relatively short cue so far, so all right.

Councilman Ralvidos is first.

Thank you.

Thank you for all the information.

Looks like some great numbers.

I'm curious around brought 2,006 people into shelter, and what does that mean?

And how are we tracking who is a return who has returned to the street, cycled or exited unsuccessfully?

Yeah, so um I'll go back to that slide just to reference it.

And all right.

So people moving into shelter.

Um, one of the things that we are seeing is that some of the folks that were moving indoors have moved into an all-in-mile high shelter site before.

So it's not necessarily their very first time moving in.

Um, it's actually been interesting to look at some of the pathways now that we've been running this program for a couple of years, that someone may have moved into a shelter and exited multiple times, and then we might see that they're exiting to housing.

Um, so the people that were counting there are distinct individuals, so the same person would not count more than one time.

This is inclusive of people moving into non-congregate shelter hotels, and uh people moving into the uh family non-congregate sheltering system, which includes the Tamarack shelter, and so those are the programs that qualify for uh counting towards this goal this year.

It is a count of unique, distinct uh individuals, not households, and so if a family moves in and there's four people in that family that counts as as four total people, but we have also continued to track just the numbers of people moving into the uh traditional all-in-mile high non-congregate shelter sites for single adults.

That number has actually increased this year, so we've had the most numbers of people move into our shelter into our shelters, our non-congregate shelters this year.

We've also seen the most numbers of people exiting those sites from housing this year in spite of the challenges that we've had with state and federal housing vouchers.

Thank you.

That that was helpful.

Did you want to add?

Oh, just to add up.

So all of that is tracked into HMIS, and we can run any kind of combination of report that you might want to look at uh pretty easily.

I also want to add just a reminder that so host actually um had 13,000 um people come in off the streets and into shelter into the entire shelter system.

So this is only the all-in-mile high sites, the numbers of people that we serve in the uh entire shelter system is much much higher.

What time frame was that?

One year.

So the year what is that one year that we're talking about?

This is for 2025, January 1st, 2025, too.

Through this is through September 30th, this report.

Okay.

Um, when you talk about connecting people to permanent housing, is that a one-year lease, six monthly, uh voucher, just giving them the phone number to uh housing.

Yeah, if you can speak to that.

Go for it.

Yes, all of those things.

Not the phone, not just giving the phone number.

Well, so you know, for us, like, we don't.

I mean, we want people to exit homelessness by you know any means that they possibly can.

Um, we some people are capable of finding their own housing, and we know we will help facilitate that with them, um help them fill out applications, and they'll find housing in the private market.

Some people reunify with family members.

Um, we also have a rapid rehousing program, which is a one-year program.

We don't have any six-month programs actually.

Um, so rapid rehousing would be a one-year subsidy, uh, but we also help people get into permanent supportive housing, you know, which is permanently subsidized housing where people paying normally paying 30% of their income to rent, help people get into public housing or into you know live tech affordable housing where they're paying a fixed rent, but what's within their means.

I think seeing that is that available searchable on the database that you mentioned to see what does that mean getting connected to housing and which ones are getting housing authority or light tech funded housing.

Um not with ex like the exact all the detail that I gave, but we we can give you categories like rapid rehousing.

It's essentially we can tell you, you know, rapid resolution or the kind of one-time assistance, rapid rehousing, uh permanent supportive housing, and then other uh which would capture all the other places people go.

Okay, that would be helpful just to really and look at the costs of the program.

If obviously rapid rehousing has a different cost than reuniting with family, and um being able to see what do those numbers look like, what are the needs?

Um the one thing that I am concerned about or have more question about is the I want to look at the claim regarding the amount of deaths because this is a very serious assertion in the presentation, and it deserves a high standard of clarity.

I'm struggling to reconcile the statements in slide five of 26% reduction in deaths with the appendix slide shown in slide 22, which shows that 2023 was a very highly unusual year and a very high amount of deaths.

Uh and how are we taking claim for that reduction?

And the thing that I struggle with in slide 22 is that it combines 23 and 24 with the re causes of death instead of showing me 2023, these were the causes of deaths.

2024 causes of death because I'm curious if 2023 was just a bad strain of drugs, or if there was a higher overdose in that particular year when 2024 is still higher than 2022.

Yep.

So I do want to just note that the chart on the right there is the exact same chart that council member parody had me talk about on the left before it's just put here.

Wait, this slide is not the same as like on on slide five.

This chart on the on the right is not the same.

The numbers are a little different.

Yeah, it's 220 deaths in 2024 on slide five.

Okay.

I'm not sure.

Doesn't go to 20.

Yeah, it's 163 on your appendix slide and just 200.

Yeah, okay.

I'm sorry about that.

I don't know the explanation for that.

This is directly from the Office of the Medical Examiner.

And what I would recommend is if this is something you want to learn about, you should 100% talk to the Office of Medical Examiner about.

We were sharing their data here.

I'm not the expert on their data, it is 100% their data, and um they're the expert on it.

So I want to say that.

And I do, yeah, it'd be great to have them talk about what happened in 2023, what happened in 2024.

Um, so I apologize that those numbers aren't the same.

I'm not sure what happened.

It was intended to show the same numbers and the same data sets.

I'm not sure.

I appreciate that, and I think when it yes, it's the medical examiner's data, but you're taking credit for this reduction in deaths with this program, and so being able to speak to how does that correlate would be helpful.

Great.

Okay.

Thank you, committee chair.

Thank you so much.

Um, I have Councilman Watson next.

Uh thank you, uh, committee chair.

Uh I was gonna say first, thanks for the information shared.

Uh, and I want to maybe I mean exhale a little bit from from district nine.

I mean, I I you all provide me a lot more details because we have this a concentration of service providers, and um if you add to Radison that was um um uh we rapid rehoused the super majority of those folks.

If you add that 210 folks back, we would have had um uh over a thousand folks um in district nine um receiving uh congregant shelter support with some level of shelter support for our microcommunities, etc.

And coal weather sheltering, we have about I think about 500.

Um, and this is every year, and that 500 doesn't include National Western once January opens, which could be another what two, three hundred folks.

So we have a high concentration in D9 and so we have a lot of talks, all us and this group.

So I wanted to to just pause and say thank you, because some of these numbers are clear, very clear for me in district nine as I look at really what the impacts are.

Um I was very skeptical, uh Tristan and you and DDPHE you know on with a CCH contract.

Uh thought there was for the level of importance of their outcomes.

Um can we pull down the slides?

I appreciate because I don't want people to be distracted to think I'm talking about that slide.

Um the level of importance of of providing actual um support, medical support health uh to this community, I thought was so it was it was at a higher level of importance than what the contract was asking for.

The contract simply was tracking um referrals simply without really a tie to um outcomes, and your team did a really great job after I you know, some back and forward stuff.

Your team did a really great job because when you look at let me find a dang slide, 9.1 encounters per patient.

Now, this is over a six-month period, and I had to wrap my brain around that as well because I was like, Okay, that's a that's a good amount of encounters.

I'm still not seeing if their actual overall health is better, but the community impacted is over a six month timeline, and so there really wouldn't be like, for example, you are increasing or lowering their classroom, you're increasing their their competency in or their acuity, um lowering their acuity um levels or any of that stuff.

It's really how many touches do they have and do those touches have stickiness when you move from um the the type of um sheltering to some type of of housing, and this number I think is fantastic.

So I just I just wanted to pause for a second, tell you all, you know, thank you for the numbers because the numbers each of these are individual people, and I know with over if you add all my stuff, 1600 folks on a regular in District 9 that are being um touched and who are unhoused, um, those reductions, any of those reductions and any of the behavioral health support matters.

My one question after all of that is um we're very excited to be with Denver Health um this past week.

Um, and they have a behavioral health uh integrated service.

Um so council member Cashman was there, Council Member Alvidras, Councilmember Hines um was there, and Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez.

They have a be now a new wing with behavioral health um that deals with uh the body and the mind.

And I'm curious how does that impact the work that CCH is doing and that you are all ongoing collaborating with Denver Health on as far as referrals for behavioral health.

What are your expectations in 2026 as far as what that impact is?

Because it's now a one-stop shop in one place for all of our community members to receive both support for their any thing that's ailing their bodies and then any of the stuff that's um in the line.

Yeah, uh, very excited for Denver Health to open that wing.

Uh, I know it's been closed for some time, and it's a huge asset to the community to have that open.

Um, we are working with CCH and have had conversations with Denver Health about what the relationship is between them.

They do have a very strong relationship, they do have refer people back and forth.

Um, we'll be working with CCH to understand exactly how many referrals are happening out of all in my high shelters to Denver Health and two other providers.

It's a little hard to capture because they don't always get the follow-through in the data back, so like they might make the referral, but do they actually know that the person received the service?

Um, we're we're gonna see if we can't make some inferences about that, but we'll at least know uh the referrals are happening.

That would be really helpful.

Even once again.

I'm not asking all to take on a ton of extra work, but because they have that one-stop shop.

If there's a way for us to track how many of the CCH folks are using that shop, instead of using desperate systems where you're they're still having to have two or three different referrals from two or three different places, whereas we have a one to stop shop in Denver Health.

If if you all are able to do that, I think that's gonna be helpful.

And then one thing, um, Cole on the Urban Institute review.

Are you all working with DPS as well for the definition of homeless?

Really looking at um folks who are couch surfing and doing other things who aren't really within all in mile high.

Is it specific all in mile high?

Yeah, that particular evaluation is focused on our efforts and our effectiveness towards the goal to end unsheltered homelessness.

So that is utilizing the HUD definition, un sheltered homelessness.

As you all know, through Jeff's leadership, POST is making you know tremendous investments in terms of people that are uh in terms of homelessness prevention.

And there is a pilot project with Denver Public Schools that takes a more expansive look.

And so families that are at risk of falling into homelessness in DPS are able to get um case management through Jewish family services and get connected to rental and utility assistance.

And I believe Melissa and her team provided a briefing on that recently, which we can provide more information on.

But particular to this urban institute report, um, that is looking at the effectiveness of our efforts to reduce unsheltered homelessness.

That's very helpful.

Uh thank you, committee chair.

Yeah, thank you for questions.

Um I have counsel for what time I've next.

Uh thank you.

Uh, and thank you for the presentation.

Uh, I appreciate the briefing going through, and I know we talked pretty extensively about family homelessness and different strategies.

I um, and you started to touch on it.

The slide 12.

Um, in looking at it again, I'm almost wondering the uh for the interagency coordination.

Um, I feel like there almost needs to be another column for HRCP in talking about uh in the conversation that we had for um you know migrant and newcomer families who are here and making sure that that coordination is helpful and intentional about um the work and the resources that are available.

Uh I don't really have um much more.

You've answered a lot of the questions.

It's more in Southeast Denver what I hear and what people see are more people who've come um along the I 25 corridor, along uh Evans, Yale, and I know I'm just gonna name all Yevins, Ale, and um and uh Hampton.

Uh and really having um additional outreach um services for folks.

I think oftentimes you know, people will call us, they call 311, they'll call you know a variety of um of other resources, but just making sure that we could have that outreach.

So neat.

Are you trying to you're gonna have a comment for that too?

She's not looking.

Yeah, got you.

Um, but really thinking about um how we have that additional outreach um in Southeast Denver.

And then I also think um for the family um sheltering, you know, we hear from families all the time that are experiencing um homelessness or on the verge of experiencing homelessness.

So I would love to be able to coordinate more with um the pilot that you have set up with Denver Public Schools, um, and how those families are um are being served.

Sounds great.

Um I think happy to give you a follow up briefing on that DPS pilot.

Um Jeff, do you have any thoughts in general on outreach into some of those further outlying areas and or our newcomer services and collaboration, sir?

Um as far as HRCP goes, um, on the family side, because the all in mile high is generally looking you know, primarily at single adults.

We work with HRCP, um, you know, pretty closely, although they're a lot of their funding and resources are winding down.

So what we're doing now is a lot of training and um kind of knowledge transfer to host staff and to our providers as far as the DPS pilot goes, um, shall also add that there is an evaluation being done of that as well.

I believe the evaluator is omni, and we're just still waiting to get some initial data from them on the impact of that pilot in partnership with public schools.

Um outreach, I mean, I I think you all know how to contact our outreach team, so I'd say that's you know, we've got um, you know, we've we've got what we got.

We generally can respond to most referrals within two business days, you know, and just encourage you and your constituents just to use those referral channels or to call 311 and we'll respond as quickly as we can.

Um, I think that did that cover all your it does all your questions.

I mean, I know that the resources are winding down for HRCP, um, but the people are still here.

We still have people in and there's still a need, so somewhere in there, I think we still need to be able to um coordinate strategies or um make sure folks are getting the resources that they need.

Yeah, absolutely.

We meet with them on a monthly basis, and fortunately, we were able to continue funding for our team that focuses primarily on newcomers, and they're very well versed on all of the resources that are available as well as the options that uh newcomers have based on you know the status of their work permits uh or their immigration status here.

And um, you know, it's been a good partnership with HRCP and um you know, but that team's gonna pick up the mantle essentially and continue working with that population.

Thank you.

We have uh, you know, as as Bayad is coming, Bayad works is transitioning into the I know we're talking about all in my Bahad, but one last thing about family shelter.

Um, as they're coming in.

Uh our office has really been doing a lot to make sure that they have those partnerships and connections and introductions.

I appreciate your help and assistance from your office to also be there and be a partner to build their capacity.

Um, this is their first time working with children, um, or you know, they've worked with adults and now adults with children, and so I think that that's just that ongoing keep it on the radar, um, and anything that our office can do to help and support that.

Thank you.

And we have a pretty for all of the new providers have very extensive transition plans that will carry us through the first quarter of 2026.

Um, and in the case of um Tamarak that that does include getting Bayot trained and uh partnered up with HRCP given the population that's currently uh being served at the Tamarek.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Yeah, um, I have Councilmember Sawyer next.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks, you guys.

Um, really appreciate the updated information, and it is so nice to see the trending lines going the way that they should be going.

Um, so really appreciate all of the hard work to get us there.

Um I just want to follow up a little bit, and we talked in our briefing about Evans and I-25 because I drive past it every single day when I take my kids to school, and it's it is a new group of people every day, right?

And I would say the same thing about 14th in Washington because I drive home from work that way.

Same thing, it is a new group of people, right?

And so um, I guess broad question are we seeing um that we have a new to Denver homeless population that is um different from what we saw before we started this program?

It's a great question.

Jeff, what's your response to that?

No, um, we're not.

I mean, you know, it could change right month by month.

Well, sure.

So, um, but the last time we we did a look, we actually are seeing a reduction in the number of newly homeless individuals, which is actually yes, which is very promising.

We'll see if it holds.

Uh, we're only looking at it uh on a quarterly basis, but and uh as far as you know, cold weather shelters always a good barometer for us to see what's you know, are uh people from other counties um coming into to Denver, and we're not seeing any any difference from um whether it's like from other states or from neighboring counties.

We're not seeing any difference from last year.

That's correct.

In fact, perhaps a slight reduction.

That's wonderful.

Yeah, and we'll also say in much much better partnership at the regional level on helping um you know families be able to stay in their own in their own communities if that's what they choose to do.

That's great.

Um, so then follow-up question to that is then why are we seeing the same location being utilized by different groups of people?

Because there's got to be something about that location, yeah, that makes it so attractive, right?

If we don't have a growing new homeless population here, then it's the same, then I would think it would be the same people utilizing it over and over and over again, but it's not.

So like it is uh I think uh just sort of a unique example of something that we must be seeing, and so like what are we gonna do about that?

Yeah, yeah, great question.

And um, I think you've highlighted a couple of the areas that we see that councilman Watson might highlight some areas in his district that even though we've gotten hundreds of people from that area indoors, we still continue to see challenges at certain intersections.

So it does come down to a question of kind of the built environment and the hospitable nature of that um for folks to congregate, oftentimes in areas where um you know, councilman Watson's district in particular, like large parking lots or kind of vacant areas nearby are where people sometimes will gather.

Um I think in the cases of Evans, Yale, I-25, just the on and off ramp, it's obviously a great place to panhandle, um, but there's just area that people can you know leave their things under a bridge or near a tree, and um they can congregate, and so you know, we're constantly in conversation with outreach teams with um you know district three police in that case around um different options for addressing that.

I'll say one other thing in response to one of your questions.

Um, while we're not seeing an influx of new people to the area, one of the trends that we are seeing is that more of the people we're encountering, we have already brought indoors to one type of service or another, and so um I think part of what we're seeing over time is um a need to adapt to be able to lead more with behavioral health services and things like that that get people connected um in a in a stickier way, um, and so I think that's one of the challenges we're having at this point in the in the initiative that we're working on.

Um, and so I think well, you know, following up from our conversation the other day, we had you know a good discussion about you know septed reports and things like that that we could engage in.

So I think there's some some good ideas uh there.

Um, certainly not hopeless about it.

We actually, you know, recently had a group of folks that was kind of gathering near sixth and spear, and at that particular location, we um have been really working with the people there.

We got a number of folks indoors, but there were still uh people that were gathering there, and there was a lot of um drug use, and not necessarily everyone in the location was even unhoused, and so we had to think about well, what are some other things that we can deploy with park rangers about addressing the area and things like that, and so um it's an ongoing conversation.

Those particular locations, as you know, are familiar to us, and we have more work to do to um address them in the way that we want to.

Yeah, Jeff, did you want to add?

I would just um I was looking at those locations.

Um, is it i I assume it's not camping, it's more loitering and just being present in those spaces.

I don't know, because I'm driving by right on my way to live my life, so I can't I can't say I will say it's regular in those locations, but and and in talking to Cole, we've kind of sussed out that it's not the same people, right?

So it's not um like a an established in uh what we used to see encampment kind of a thing, right?

It's more like a group of people coming together with their their belongings because they don't relieve them anywhere, and then um, you know, going somewhere else and then coming back to it's like the location people come back to, as far as Cole, did I yeah, that's it.

Any words in your mouth there?

100%.

Yeah, it would be like the new kind of encampment.

It would be they're not putting up tents, they're having their stuff and they have maybe if it drains, they have something to cover them, but it's a we have those spots in D9s.

They they come, then they disperse and they come and but it come back.

It's that spot, those spots on the social gatherings.

Sorry, I didn't mean to do John.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, that's right.

No, it's helpful.

Um talk to our team about those specific locations to see if we can add any more more intel or thoughts on what they think's going on.

And Corey is very aware of those.

Yeah, I'm sure, yes.

I mean, I I appreciate that, I'm certain.

I just um you guys have come so far in this all in mile high program.

Um, you have created such value for the residents of Denver, um, but in East Denver, where we are harder to reach, where we don't get as much outreach, where we do see a lot of um RV RVs or vehicles as as the housing, um, where we do see a lot of the kind of panhandling and the going and coming back to the same location um kind of a thing.

It I think in the minds of my residents undermines the success of the all-in-mile high program, because they haven't gone downtown in five years, and so since COVID, right?

And so they don't know, they don't see the extraordinary difference um that the situation downtown looks like today, right?

And those huge changes that have been made for the better um for our entire city.

What they see is Evans and I-25 is Yale and I-25.

And so they don't um feel the success that had that is actually there, right?

That we can show on the numbers, and I want them to.

Sure, so thank you.

Yeah, um, I actually have myself next in the queue, but wanted to pause and see if anyone who I guess it would just be cashman um wanted to get in.

Sorry, PK.

Do your thing.

Um, but let me know.

You good?

Good.

Okay, cool.

Um, sometimes it's hard to catch my eye because I'm watching the online queue, so just making sure.

Um, I'm glad that we ended up with um a good chunk of time today because this is a lot of different topics, and I do I can't express how much it's made a difference to use the same slides.

Like it just we just get the volume of like you each work in an agency, you know.

We're up here on top of all the agencies trying to keep all these numbers in our minds, and so I swear even just having the visual be the same, like helps my brain.

So I really appreciate it.

Um, and I do think we're I can feel the progress in um uh using and understanding data, like it just feels like we have a lot better handle than we did X amount of time ago on um what's really happening, you know, which is not a small thing.

Like that's uh that in and of itself is uh like a pretty huge deal.

So I just want to I want to kind of say that at the outset.

The other thing that I wanted to note, um, really quickly is uh can you can you all state just before I forget to ask this, and I should have sooner.

Is this the briefing for any specific contracts that we're now gonna see on consent?

I think maybe it is for the CCH one.

And if so, I just want to make sure we know exactly which ones those are so we can be particularly tuned to those.

I should have asked that before anyone even got in the queue.

Go ahead.

Yeah, we um we submitted the resolution for CCH contract amendment, I believe at the end of last week.

Yeah, but this is just a briefing.

I know we don't have action items associated with this today, so I just want to make sure that we know we've been having this a little bit where we do a larger briefing, which can make a lot of sense, and then the contracts associated with it come through on consent and dribbles and drabs.

So I just want to make sure we know.

Like, yeah, so far that one's been on consent.

It's it's CCH, okay, cool.

And there's a yeah, that was not the intention of this briefing.

No, it's fine.

I don't, it's yeah, I mean, we're in charge of the committee structure as much as you guys are.

I'm just making sure we know.

Yeah, and we specifically just keep that second section in so that we have a bite at the apple when we go around and do briefings to talk about anything that might be coming up and just flag those for you guys, but yeah, no particular action item associated.

This is just me as chair trying to make sure that my committee members are getting what they need for me, not you know, people are doing the right thing here.

So okay, thank you for that.

Um, so some question areas, I guess.

Um first thing I want to talk about a little bit is um the outreach component.

And I guess just as a point of clarity, is there is outreach activity it work chart wise under all in mile high or just really closely related?

Does that make sense?

Because I know Cole that you in particular, um, have been really in integrally involved with that.

Yeah, but I'm just not sure if it's like if we count it as like part of what we're calling all in mile high, and it matters because then we want to be able to compare all the um the different expenditures and so on.

And I know this is a conversation that I've had with council member Sawyer before, you know, at this very table of like what is all in mile high, right?

And you know, all in mile high was the citywide goal to and our effort to address unsheltered homelessness, right?

Um, thinking about the citywide goal framework, uh of you know, vibrant, safe, affordable, um, all the all those six citywide goals, right?

And so this is the homelessness related goal.

Um, in terms of um outreach, uh obviously street outreach efforts largely live under host, though some live uh with DDPHE as well, um, and that is all coordinated through our street engagement work.

So street engagement being the large umbrella that you know, as we talked about, includes housing focused outreach, behavioral health focused outreach, community ambassador work, enforcement and cleaning services as the typologies for the ways that we address those um issues to uh very directly answer your question.

People that move to shelter do so through street outreach.

People that move to housing from the streets do so through street outreach, and so those efforts and activities count as part of our all in mile high universe.

It's part of how we're meeting the goals that you established or the mayor's.

The short answer to your question would be yes, but I wanted to provide a little bit more context.

Yeah, I really appreciate that.

I just um it it's helpful for us to understand, like um, I guess, yeah, just the work chart.

Um, so I actually just this morning was um I dropped my kids off uh at Garden Place.

I went across the street to Prodigy, and that's right by the highway, and it's one of the highways that has the um concrete wall between the highway that sometimes has um like a gap, so there's a sound barrier and then a retaining wall, and there's a space in between.

Um, and a lot of people are there, and frankly, I think that in part they're hiding because we um have increased enforcement so much in more visible areas that people want to be able to throw a tent, they don't want to have to sleep rough, and so they're going into hidden places, and it's really complicated.

Um, I obviously have different feelings about that than the mayor's administration, and I don't need to rehash that here.

But what I saw was really interesting to me because it just um it had been a while since I had seen any cleanup activity because we're not doing these huge um encampment, you know, cleanups or I mean that's also terminology that I get uncomfortable with, but um that hasn't been happening a long time in the city, and so um I just happened to be there and saw a big flatbed truck from one of the environmental services agencies um that had a dumpster like a on the flatbed, and basically the way this thing works is the truck lifts the dumpster up and it goes off and it goes down, and then there was a um scraper that was scooping and putting stuff into the dumpster, and a guy while this was happening scraying around to get his belongings all packed up and get out of there like as quick as he could, his bike, his belongings.

I don't think any of his belongings were getting scooped up.

There were two hot officers there who were um seemed to be managing the situation pretty nicely.

Um, but it just caught my attention because um it made me wonder if we could get maybe kind of the Lyle update.

I know you guys just had a Lyle quarterly meeting, um, what is happening with people's belongings, with storage, with um posting notices, or are we just not doing any of that anymore?

Because people aren't um getting established into what we would call an encampment, and they are instead um just kind of in the elements with their belongings.

So I would love that Lyle update, and I don't know if there's that could come later if you have that if you have it in your brain right now.

Feel free to say anything you want to about it.

Yeah, so I'll just share for context for everyone who may or may not be as aware, Lyle settlement um was agreed to by the city in 2019.

One of the things that we are required to do through that is that we host uh quarterly meetings uh with people experiencing homelessness and city leadership.

So we just had the latest quarter of that last Friday at the central library related to your question regarding um storage.

Dotti continues to manage our storage system according to the Lyle settlement, and so any time that um we're uh interacting with folks and you know, enforcement actions are being taken.

There are uh storage is made available, and Dottie can follow up on that if people um desire to have storage, and so there's a whole team through DOTI that goes out and goes around the city and uh is responsive to requests from PD to support with storage.

And do you know anything about the volume of things taken into storage comparably over time and how many people come back and get their stuff?

Um I have I don't have a report that graphs the trend lines of that, but it's something that we could provide.

Okay, yeah, I will put that on a follow-up email so you don't have to remember.

But thank you.

Okay, sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, so uh that's kind of the general status of that.

Um and so uh we continue to comply with the requirements of Lyle, um, and it's a part of the work that we do at the street level every day.

Okay.

Um, what about posting?

Does that just not happen anymore?

Because yeah, because of, you know, the fact that there's not large encampments or not uh multi-agency efforts that require that kind of uh cleanup at the street level day in and day out.

Can you remind us what the standard was in that settlement for posting notice?

Um I would rather have the city attorney's office do that.

Oh, okay, that's fine.

I I my recollection is that it was um like a certain number of tents basically.

I don't think it's actually a number, I think it's more based upon the number of agencies involved, but um got it.

I I'm totally happy to have CAO, that's very fair.

Um okay, so all of that said, the this outreach piece has been changing a lot.

Um I think the other thing that I continually think about is um it's really challenging because it is under so many agencies, it's city employees, and then it's contracts with outside folks.

Um, but in my dream world, what I wish I could see to understand what's happening would be um the different the numbers of outreach workers on all the different teams that we consider to do outreach and enforcement, which again I realize is very multi-agency, and how those numbers have changed over time basically.

So, how are you know what where are we putting outreach work and who are those people reporting up to?

Um, because I know there's been a huge amount of thought into that like division of labor, and it's so important and so tricky.

So I'm curious about kind of all the information that we have about like essentially if we were to step way back, like how many people are doing outreach work who are either city employees or contract funded on what teams and how has that changed?

And we've seen we've seen charts like this at different times where the team acronyms change like crazy and everything, but it's good for us to know about honestly.

Uh partly because we are often trying to refer people to those to those teams, but that we know how to do that's great, and I just want to mention when um we did our briefing with Councilmember Albidrez uh last week, one of the things she requested was a follow-up briefing personally on street engagement, and so been working with Benjamin on getting that scheduled.

Um that's something that others of you may be interested in as well.

Also happy to bring that to committee at some time, um, whatever is appropriate there.

But we stole it right out of my email.

Yeah, so mine, I will send that in a follow-up email as well because the committee, this committee gets very full, but um and can I just jump in and say if you haven't had an opportunity to go on a ride along with the set team, do it.

I went on my set team right along, like ready to just defund them and do something totally different, and I left thinking that they need more funding.

Like it was really really valuable to see.

Um, and so I would if you guys haven't had an opportunity to do that yet, I would say do it.

Um, cool.

You absolutely may not know this, but do you have any sense of you don't have to call us out by name, but how many council members have done that, or is it only Sawyer?

Because I don't know.

Gashman has two.

Yeah, I haven't been able to yet in my ride alongside.

There are a few, so yeah, thank you.

Okay, okay, thank you for that.

And thanks, so you're that was I appreciate that note.

Um, I'm gonna ask one more question, then I'm gonna, since we have 10 minutes left, I'm gonna pause and make sure no one else on the committee wants to get back because I'm you know, we have lots of time.

So early.

Um going back to the uh graph on slide 15 or sorry, slide 15 is the healthcare slide.

So this is Tristan Land.

Um I wanted to make sure we were understanding the time frame.

Um this is over a year and so it's almost two years of data, right?

But we didn't have a lot of data early on, or can you talk a little more about um I know you guys said you you know you you fit it all on one side and that's great, but do you think we were missing encounters earlier on, or you know, talk to us about this a little bit?

Uh sure.

So this data goes from January 2024 through September of 2025.

And in the balance of 2024, all that was reported to us was the number of encounters, not the type.

Got it.

And so what this actually does is break down all of those encounters by the type of encounter, and then it's it's cumulative, it's aggregated over that time frame.

Again, we get it by month, so we can we can break it down any way that you would like to see it.

I don't I may be speaking a little bit out of turn and I'll follow up if this is wrong, but I don't believe that the overall number of encounters changed demonstrably from 24 to the beginning part of 2025.

I believe that the number of counters have increased in the last three or four months and are continuing to increase.

That's where my curiosity was going.

Um how worried are we about Medicaid changes and CCH not being able to build Medicaid for these um encounters?

Is there any are we just still in the state of like we know we're worried about it, or is there any concrete planning starting to happen for that potential cliff, or it's a great question.

It's a topic of conversation.

I would say it's an anxiety-inducing question, I would guess.

As it relates to this contract and the provision of services, something I said earlier, I think is important to understand where the bulk of the staff that CCH brings to these services are not actually billed to the city because they're being paid out of reimbursable services.

So we might see that go down or shift, but we have capacity in the contract that we have currently to add some of that staff to our contract if we need to.

Um so there's some runway there to figure it out and see what the true impact of changes to Medicaid looks like.

Um and if we need to reassess and reevaluate how we're paying CCH for those services, we can look at that down the road.

But we'll know a lot of that, you know, not until probably the back half of 26.

Sure.

So now we're just kind of stuck waiting and seeing.

The only thing I'll say about it is I would I think it's probably pretty predictable that people will fall off of Medicaid because they will be classified as able to work, even though we know in reality the barriers are immense, and so this is where Dito, I think comes in.

Um, and I have a funding source, you guys are gonna want this, just joking.

But in reality, all of our um hospitals in Denver have to show the state legislature that they spend certain money on community benefits, and they use that for all kinds of stuff.

That is not as important as this.

So if you all need any intros to any hospitals or want, you know, especially on the Dito side, they should be paying for everybody to get the um paperwork support or force training, like to avoid people falling off the Medicaid roles, and that would directly benefit them to the extent that people are also seeing them for services.

So I'll just throw that out there.

Council, you're speaking my language.

Okay, well, let's talk more about that.

Um, but I just I do think we need to be planning for this because I think even though there's a huge amount of uncertainty, but I think we can predict that people will get kicked off for not meeting a work requirement.

Like that I think we need.

One more notes of the especially in this population.

The nurses that you see in the staffing line here actually also can do enrollment for Medicaid, and they can help people with work requirements, etc.

So there's there's built-in staff to work with folks to make sure that they're meeting those requirements, that they're talking about those requirements, that they know what those requirements are, that they know that those changes are coming, and that there are potentially ways to keep them enrolled in Medicaid.

And if not, again, we have some capacity in the contract to deal with that.

But I appreciate the call out on community.

Um a thing I report I would love to see if it exists would be reporting on Medicaid enrollment um people, and then people who are identified as having either IDD or TBI since there are such specific services for that.

Great.

So thank you.

Um monthly reports too.

I think the whole committee would probably be pretty interested.

Um, sorry, can I ask a question?

Do you literally want to see the monthly report data from CCH?

Oh, we really do.

It's not just me, I promise, right, guys.

Yeah.

We really do.

Because I think that um I would love it to see if I would love to see that trend line going up.

And and I think the types of treatment um are also hugely of interest, but especially accessing behavioral health care services and and drug treatment because if any of those are more flat than other things, um that would concern me and us.

Um and in particular when it comes to um like addiction treatment, um, I do have a real concern about overdoses.

Um, and so I think we my guess is that once the you know graph is completed for 2025.

From what I know, I think 25 will be higher than 24, probably for deaths among people experiencing homelessness, but certainly deaths by overdose among people experiencing homelessness is incredibly hard for anyone to control.

I mean, you know, um, I just you guys are not supposed to be magicians about that, but um I know that we had a couple of weeks ago even a couple of folks who died of overdoses in our cold weather shelters.

Um, and so I'm just curious if there's anything new or different we can try to be doing in the overdose prevention neck of the woods, which you know is also those are Tristan's woods, so anything anything um that you guys are thinking about in response to to that.

Yeah, and we've been in touch with hosts and contracted staff and others about the resources that we have to bear there.

I mean, I think we have also I really for who whatever staff like we're there handling that.

I just um my heart goes out to them as well as to the people who lost their lives.

Yeah, so we've we've been in touch, we've we've been talking about some different strategies that we might be able to employ.

Um, you know, obviously in the RKM being available ubiquitously is probably first and foremost, uh, but also just ensuring that you know people have the best information uh that we can get them at that time, and you know, that can come from host staff, it can come from contracted staff, it could come from my staff, it doesn't matter where we just need to make sure that happens so we're we're in touch about how to increase that.

When you say people getting information, do you mean um people who are experiencing addiction and homelessness or do you mean staff?

I think it's all of the above.

Yeah, okay, just making sure.

Um right, anybody else want to get in cue for the last couple of questions?

We have like three minutes left.

Well, I just wanted to offer it might be a good time for an update from uh uh the harm reduction action center on the or generally from the city's harm reduction team, but that's someone else's committee, Mr.

Watson.

All right, um, can I just say one quick thing?

Um, and talked about this with Cole in our briefing as well, but just want to flag it for council members.

Um, in the last few weeks, I because you know I do monthly office hours in person and then weekly office hours online.

Um in the last two off in-person office hours, I have had residents come to my office hours to share their concerns about someone who's living in a vehicle um, you know, adjacent to their house, across the street from their house, etc.

And both people, both residents engaged the people living in the one was an RV, one was a car.

Um, which to me is really, really, really concerning, which is why I flagged it for Cole, because I think you just it is not a good idea for the residents of Denver to start engaging the people who um you know are might be living in a vehicle across the street from their house for lots of different reasons.

So I feel like this is like a trend I'm starting to see out of residents, um, and it's really concerning to me.

So I really appreciate the um work that you guys have done on uh on the vehicle program, and I would just I guess ask two things.

Number one, of council members as you if you end up kind of hearing this from your residents, please ask them not to do that.

Um, and then for you guys um in terms of the budget conversation and kind of the growth of that program.

I know that you guys have been piloting it.

Do you have a plan for 2026 that is already funded that's gonna grow that or um create additional resources for people who might be living in their vehicles?

Yeah, um, like I just want to make sure that we're kind of addressing this problem before it becomes a thing.

Yeah, the plan um is to have it addressed through street outreach.

We don't have an increase in resources available as you can imagine, but we will obviously continue to monitor progress, see if we maintain the same rate of success, and it I think it's something we should bring back and continue to discuss together.

Um, I'll say I get lots of emails, not just from you but from constituents and residents about RVs, and I just think in general, kind of the tone and tenor of people is uh people are getting more frustrated about this and our ability to address it, and so we're excited about the progress that we've made through this pilot, and we have a long way to go to continue addressing that at the scale we need to.

Can I ask a quick question for to clarify?

When you said engaged, did you did you take those to be like confrontations or efforts to help or with or they were not, they were not endeavoring to help.

Okay, thank you.

I just wanted to make sure I understood what you were getting at.

So don't take matters under your own hands in that way.

Um I had a neighbor who ended up living in her RV for a while, and I obviously engaged with her a lot, and I don't know I knew her, and so that's another thing, but um, okay.

Thank you.

I understand what you're saying.

We don't we don't need people um trying to um do their own enforcement.

That's certainly not what we want.

Okay, sorry.

Nicole, were you finished with that response?

Okay.

Um the vehicular uh program might be something worth its own presentation as well.

Um, but it is very much 3 p.m.

Um, this was super helpful.

Thank you all.

No items on consent, I don't think.

Oh, two, all right.

Two items on consent.

Uh we consent to those, and we will see everybody later.

Thank you.

Thank you.