Funding for microcommunities in Denver and Texas bussing more immigrants to Denver

KGNU
Alexis Kenyon
December 5, 2023

Denver City Council Microcommunity Spending

The Denver City Council has approved two contracts worth millions of dollars, for the operation of a pair of micro-communities for unhoused people.

One of the contracts is for Colorado Village Collaborative, which will run a micro-community near Evans and Santa Fe in southwest Denver. There will be sixty units at that location.

The other is for The Gathering Place. They’ll operate a 44-unit micro-community downtown, providing transitional housing for women, transgender, and non-binary people.

Ground has already been broken on these two micro-communities, and a third, which has already secured funding. In addition to small shelter units, each location features community buildings, and kitchen, bathroom, and laundry facilities. The micro-communities will be monitored around the clock, every day.

They’ll be populated by people from encampments the city intends to close.

In all, the newly approved contracts provide nearly $6 million to the non-profits operating the micro-communities, according to published reports.

It’s all part of Mayor Mike Johnston’s push to shelter a thousand unhoused people by the end of this year. The strategy also includes moving unhoused people to hotels converted into shelters.

Denver Migrant Dropoff

Denver officials, meanwhile, are criticizing the State of Texas, after another busload of migrants was dropped off in the city – this time, at the Colorado state Capitol. 

These types of bus drop-offs from Texas are not unusual but the location, Colorado’s State capital, is.

Jon Ewing, spokesperson for Denver Human Services calls the unannounced drop off vehicles “Ghost Buses” because no one knows anything about the people inside or what they may need.

It has been nearly a year since 100 immigrants were dropped off at Denver’s Union Station putting the city into a humanitarian crisis.

Denver has now received nearly 30,000 immigrants. Many are from South and Central America, particularly Venezuela.

Denver is just one of many interior cities across the US where Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has increasingly started to send busloads of detained immigrants..