Editor’s note: The Denver Gazette in recent months talked to several homeless people who tried the city’s programs. Some are in shelters, others expect to be back in the streets. Here’s a glimpse of their lives.   

Craig Beck of Denver was swept from a homeless encampment sweep in 2024, and, entered the city’s temporary housing program. 

City workers had dismantled a large encampment from the corner of 4th Avenue & Kalamath Street in April, where he had been staying. Beck said police officers had advised him to move to the then-growing encampment.

Within a day of setting up a camp there, Beck said he and his partner received a seven-day notice to vacate the area. On April 25, they were among 60 other homeless people who were swept off the location.

“We stayed there, and the people showed up and took our names. When they took our name, they said we had to wait one week,” he said. “People either got housing, got arrested, or booted off-site.”

The 4th and Kalamath encampment lasted a little more than two weeks, he said. 

“You can’t win,” Beck said. “We were doing what they said and ended up getting swept. It was almost like a setup to get as many of us over there as they could so that they could catch us on a warrant. I don’t have any warrants.”

Beck is among roughly 2,000 homeless people that Denver moved from encampments to temporary housing sites. On that Thursday morning, Beck and his partner moved to the former Radisson hotel, located at 4849 Bannock St. The city was on track to spend nearly $155 million on the mayor’s homelessness campaign — $65 million more than anticipated — even as the total number of homeless people in the city ballooned from 5,818 in 2023 to 6,539 this year.

To Beck, the hotel-turned-shelter is “nothing more than a prison.”

“They’re feeding us three meals a day. They’re making it where we have no company come in or out. We have to check in … A lot of the rooms had already been ransacked by earlier residents like ours. They didn’t have a microwave, didn’t have a TV. At first, they got us the TV there.”

Five non-congregate hotel-turned- shelters are operational throughout Denver. The Salvation Army operates three of them, while the St. Francis Center and Bayaud Enterprises run the other two sites. Additionally, the city has set up three “micro-communities” throughout Denver.

“It almost felt like they were containing this hotel in a certain area where there was nothing around it for people to steal,” Beck said of the area surrounding the former Radisson hotel. “There was only a Walmart nearby.”

Beck after his mother died in 2020, lost his home, cars, and motorcycle. 

“The biggest thing with me,” Beck added, “was we weren’t allowed to have company. I was actually in contact with one of my sisters at the time, and she wanted to come see what it was like because she was happy I had taken that step to get off the streets. And she could have come in. But they made it so she could (only) visit me in the lobby. She couldn’t go up to the room with me.”

Beck said he was kicked out of the temporary shelter situation because of a threat he made to a shelter employee.

“It is imperative that our sites are safe for all staff and guests, and we work hard with our providers to ensure that safety,” Derek Woodbury, spokesperson for the Denver Department of Housing Stability, told The Denver Gazette.

“When an individual fails to contribute to the safety of the community they may be asked to leave but would be allowed to return to a HOST-funded site in the future as long as they are able to abide by the community agreements,” he said.

By late January, Beck has found shelter provided by the city. He expects to be back on the street soon, a homeless advocate who is a friend of Beck’s said.

Need for a ‘normal’ living situation

With a job but no home, Mark Ferrara haunts for a place to sleep in the streets.

The Denver Gazette spoke to Ferrara during a “Mutual Aide Monday,” a weekly food and resources drive outside the Denver City & County Building.

Ferrara called the city’s temporary housing strategy “perplexing.”

“We’ve been hearing about vouchers. I’ve never got a voucher. I’ve been out here a long time, and no one’s ever come to me with a voucher. But I don’t have a tent.”

“I’m not like a guy right there with a tent saying, ‘I’m homeless.’”

“If people are really in need,” he added, “the city needs to come here and say, ‘Here’s the list.’”

Ferrara said he gets up at three in the morning to walk 45 minutes to work.

His job doesn’t provide enough to support “a normal living situation,” he said. 

“It’s not easy. Everyone needs space. Everyone needs to be somewhere. And I’m not trying to like butt in. I’m trying to get myself back to normal again,” Ferrara said.

Ferrara said he remembers living in suburban Chicago, growing up and “living in a normal house, going to school, bathing, eating dinner, watching TV, going to bed.”

“Crisis arose. Things happened. And now here I am,” he said.

On the streets, Ferrara said, “You can’t totally rely on just leaving the stuff out in the open and expect to be there when you get back an hour later.”

Ferrara said his life has been in and out of 24-hour shelters.

“I would just be happy in a normal living situation again,” he said. “You know, like warmth, kitchen, bathroom. That’s just not the case.”

Ferrara described Denver’s homeless situation as “peaks and valleys.”

“If you don’t have to be out here, don’t be out here,” he said. “I mean, if you have family, if you have friends and care, you have any kind of help whatsoever to help your situation, do it.”

A ‘marinating insanity’

At the corner of Park Avenue and Broadway, instead of panhandling or asking for help, Van Laffoon II told a woman walking by, “Hey sis, put a smile on.”

The woman looked over, smiled, and replied, “Thank you.”

It is one of those things that Laffoon said he strives for on the streets — some semblance of happiness, a show of love, a human connection.

Laffoon said he was “blessed” when he was offered housing from the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. He now lives in an apartment provided by the organization.

Laffoon said he enjoys sitting outside and talking to people.

So far, Laffoon said, the city and third-party providers have helped him with housing vouchers. A double-leg amputee from infection since 2019, he said he has lived on the same block in Denver for a decade.

“This place is really all about everything — all at the same time, good, evil, angels, demons, killers, victims,” he said. “Every day, I am marinating insanity.”

‘Everything is stressful’

Christina Crosby and Nikki Kershner attended a recent “Mutual Aide Monday” outside city hall.

“Everybody deserves housing,” Crosby, an aspiring student of sign language, said.“When you don’t have your basic needs met, everything is stressful.”

“When your basic needs are not met,” Crosby added, “then everything else, your priorities are different. They’re in a different order, they start to shift. Because if you don’thave your basic needs met, then you’re not thinking the same way.”

Crosby said she is currently living with her boyfriend, who received a housing voucher from the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. 

Crosby said she’s worked with caseworkers in Denver, Adams, and Jefferson Counties, including Denver’s WellPower Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) program.

“There’s a huge turnover rate with case managers in general,” Crosby said.“I don’t think that they’re picking people who care enough, who want to work.”

Woodbury, the spokesperson for Denver’s housing department, said the current ratio of case workers in Denver is 20 homeless people to one case worker.

“This includes case managers, intake specialists, resource navigators, and other staff who play a key role in assisting individuals with attaining resources, gaining more stability, and ultimately in getting housed,” Woodbury said. “Continuous improvement of case management and resource delivery is a key focus, and as a result, we’re seeing the rate of housing exits increasing across our communities.”

New to homelessness

Just one week into being homeless, Willie Joseph stood outside a Denver Rescue Mission shelter, waiting to see if he would have a place to stay for the night.

“I’m a chef by trade, but I have problems with my back and my legs,” he said. “I don’t seem to be able to do that anymore. So, it’s like being stuck in between to figure out what you want to do, and I ran out of money.”

Joseph said he needed somewhere to work on his music.

“I feel like a couple of weeks, maybe a month, in a hotel — I can figure out my stuff and be working somewhere,” he said.

During Denver’s first snowstorm this year, Joseph needed to go to one of the city’s emergency shelter sites. Joseph said he is searching for bus tickets to go to South Carolina, where he has family. 

“If you go online and you look up people to help you pay rent and stuff like that, they’re out here, but it’s almost impossible to get in contact with them. It’s almost impossible to find us, and it’s like they make it almost impossible to find help,” he said of the city’s homelessness approach.

“I don’t agree with the fact that they push housing before jobs, like so you put me in house and I don’t have a job,” he said.