HOST Updates 2021 Action Plan with 2B Investment Framework

Gabrielle Carter sits in front of her camp site in RiNO. Carter said she would love to find services or help moving into housing.

Story By Robert Davis

Photo by Giles Clasen

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Denver’s Department of Housing Stability (HOST) updated its 2021 Strategic Plan, a five-year plan that guides the agency’s policy priorities, to include the investment framework for funds generated by Ballot Measure 2B.

The updates are part of a process HOST began in November to understand how best to administer the funds. HOST is seeking public comment through December 21, and a final plan will be released in January 2021.

HOST anticipates using 28 percent of the funds for housing and supportive services, including expanding rehousing opportunities for at least 500 households. COVID-19 and emergency response programs will receive 27 percent of the funding, while shelters and service providers receive 24 percent.

The City anticipates 2B will generate $37 million in 2021, and average $40 million thereafter, based on estimates from the summer. All funds collected by the 0.25 percent sales tax increase must be spent to support people experiencing homelessness. 

Funding priorities must be reviewed and approved by HOST’s Housing Stability Strategic Advisors, an 11-member group representing perspectives along the housing continuum. Mayor Michael Hancock will appoint six of the members while City Council appoints the remainder. Applications for the advisory positions opened in August. HOST expects the group to be seated at some point in December. Each member serves for a term of three years.

Some goals the framework will help HOST achieve include building 1,800 homes with support services in the next decade, creating up to 600 new units of shelter or housing, and expanding support services like behavioral health and employment.

If sales tax revenues do not fill the jar as anticipated, HOST anticipates shifting its funding priorities to match. The flow of federal emergency dollars could also change allocations, which HOST Executive Director Britta Fisher said could lead to greater funding for housing and shelter, rather than to a COVID-19 response.

“We’re very excited to invest these funds and get these dollars to work,” Fisher said.  

HOST’s current strategy is guided by the Housing an Inclusive Denver Plan and Three-Year Shelter Expansion Plan. The agency intends for the investment framework to bridge the gap between the two plans.

However, the investment framework only allocated 4 percent of 2B funds to develop “innovative approaches” to solving homelessness. That means if the City collects $40 million like it estimates, only $1.6 million will be available for innovative projects.

Some examples include “manufactured housing, tiny homes, expanded outreach or other services, with emphasis on. but not limited to, approaches for those who are currently unsheltered to connect to stable housing,” according to the addendum’s narrative.

For service providers like the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, which is developing a street outreach program dedicated solely to residents living in large encampments, the investment should be enough to get some pilot programs started, but will not be enough if any program proves successful.

“Large encampment outreach is a little different from the traditional street outreach that we have historically been engaged in because of the dynamics that come with more people being concentrated in one area,” Cathy Alderman, VP of communications for CCH, told the Denver VOICE in an emailed statement.

Advocates at Denver Homeless Out Loud see the proposed investment framework as a continuation of past policies that have not solved homelessness yet and show little chance of doing so in the future.

“As we predicted, these funds are being allocated for the same shelter and ‘services’ that have been the approach to homelessness for years on end that has not and does not work to end homelessness,” Terese Howard told the VOICE. “Twenty percent – at most -– of these funds is planned to go for permanent housing. That will not end homelessness."