With temperatures plunging below freezing and reports of the death of a man in a downtown alley, Denver’s homeless shelters set up extra beds and extended hours.
The Denver Rescue Mission, at Park Avenue West and Lawrence Street, added 100 cots in a nearby chapel, said Greta Walker, the nonprofit’s director of public relations. Normally, the mission has 200 shelter beds.
“We will not turn anyone away,” Walker said. “It’s just too cold out there.”
Walker said the shelter also went to a 24-hour operation instead of sticking to its normal nighttime schedule.
About 6 p.m. Thursday, with night taking hold, nearly 70 people clustered outside the mission.
Koolzan Johnson, 47, who said he’d been on the streets for about two weeks, said some people would opt to stay out on the streets no matter the weather.
Johnson said that he looked forward to a warm bed but that those staying outside would be looking for drugs or alcohol.
“They think the sky is going to drop something down for them,” Johnson said. “I don’t think so. They’re going to freeze to death.”
Officials at Denver’s Samaritan House said they were coordinating with other shelters and were prepared to hand out hotel vouchers if needed.
The Denver coroner’s office reported the death of Todd Furlow, who was found in a downtown alley. Furlow, whose age was not released, died at Denver Health Medical Center shortly before 7 p.m. Wednesday. The coroner’s office had not determined the cause of death by midday Thursday.
Roxane White, Denver’s manager of human services, said the city worked this year to close a two-hour gap that had existed in shelter hours.
Day shelters used to close before nighttime shelters set up operations, leaving a delay in services, White said.
“We know that if they left one of the day programs and had two or three hours, they were hunkering down on grates and hunkering down outside,” White said.
The city also has a new program to track the number of homeless at shelters. Police and shelter workers look for transients when cold weather sets in as well. Even so, some choose to stay out on the streets, she said.
This past year, the city added 100 emergency shelter beds, White said. Over the past two years, the city established another 750 aimed at providing long-term, transitional stability for homeless. The city plans to provide an additional 2,450 beds in the next eight years as it moves away from a system that emphasizes emergency care toward one that stresses providing long-term housing.
“We’re trying to get those built as quickly as possible,” White said, stressing that 400 more beds are expected to be added this coming year.
The city also studied its detox facilities for homeless who have problems with drinking and drug use. About 80 beds are available for emergency detoxification, with an additional 20 available for homeless veterans, White said.
Over the past year, Denver concentrated on the top 25 users of those detoxification beds to map out where they end up over the course of a year, White said. One of those studied died, and another is incarcerated, she said.
The other 23 are now in long-term housing programs and some of them are starting to work, White said.
She said the city had been spending more than $100,000 a year on each of those individuals, much of it on medical care.
Now Denver spends an average of $16,000 a year as those individuals have stabilized with long-term housing services, she said.
“When a person has housing, they are able to go to work and move forward in their lives,” White said. “That is our goal.”
