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On days when it’s cold and the snow is piling up, Ron Springer worries about the people living on the streets around his shop at the edge of Denver’s Curtis Park neighborhood.

“They used to kick in the door and sleep in there,” he said, pointing to boarded up house across Park Avenue West that now is behind a construction fence.

The neighborhood around his store, Akente Express, has grown increasingly inhospitable to the homeless as it gentrifies, he said, which can have dire consequences on a day like Thursday, when temperatures didn’t break out of the single digits.

“You can’t sleep outside a condo, coffee shop or a yoga studio,” he said.

Denver was hit with 5 inches of snow by the time night fell on Thursday, but snow piled up nearly . The National Weather Service predicts that the snow is finished for now, but the bitter cold will remain. Thursday night could drop down to minus 10 degrees in Denver with a potential windchill of minus 20 degrees. Friday could be slightly warmer with temperatures hovering around 20 degrees.

Denver has begun to dig itself out. Neighbors, city employees and strangers banded together to clear the streets of snow, which can be a minor inconvenience to some and life threatening to others.

On Thursday morning, residents of Five Points were bundled up in parkas and snowsuits, scraping snow and ice off their cars and sidewalks. Some, like Debbie Lanman, were in high spirits despite the cold and the persistent snowfall.

Outside the house where she has lived for several decades, she was pushing  snow to the curb. Her neighbor usually plows the whole street, but hadn’t done it yet. She said the block had been communicating online and helping each other since the storm began.

“It’s just a friendly little neighborhood,” Lanman said.

Around the corner, Don Gortner Jr. was clearing the walks outside a rental property near his home that he owns. “It’s just being thoughtful,” he said. “I help them out, they help me out.”

“We would always shovel the sidewalk for elderly people,” he said, adding the neighborhood has seen a recent influx of younger renters and there are fewer elders to help out.

Elsewhere in Five Points, residents described waking up to sidewalks that had been cleared by a kindly anonymous person.

Close to Curtis Park, two tents were set up on the steps of a nearby church, but there was little sign of life otherwise. The homeless population there likely found room in city shelters.

Springer’s neighbors recently installed metal gates in front of their steps to keep homeless people from bedding down. He would often find people on his steps, but would let them stay, he said.

“I try to do what I can,” he said. “People don’t know, we all could be three months from being homeless.”

The snow may have slowed, but Denver’s social services organizations have some challenging days ahead of them.

At the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless office on Champa Street, people dropped into the toasty office to seek help or donate things like blankets and socks.

Freezing and snowy days inspire people to donate more, said Cathy Alderman, the vice president of communications and public policy for the organization. After recent conflicts with the city, the homeless population has scattered, she said. Their outreach workers have had a difficult time finding people they knew earlier.

“Shelters are at capacity, systems are taxed. There are people we can’t find.” she said. “People are out there suffering.”