With homelessness on the rise in Colorado, experts and advocates disagree on how to address the issue.

A recent report from the Common Sense Institute of Colorado, a nonpartisan research organization dedicated to promoting the economy, analyzed the success of a housing first approach to homelessness, versus an intervention or work-first approach.

It concluded, “housing first policies may not be the best approach to addressing this challenge.” Instead, it found that alternative approaches, like work first, “directly address the root causes of homelessness rather than providing unconditional housing.”

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The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless took issue with the report, releasing a statement in response blasting it as “misleading and loosely informed.”

The coalition argued housing-first initiatives, which the coalition and many jurisdictions like Denver have adopted, is not about “housing only,” but is done in conjunction with other supportive services.

“Through the model of housing first with supportive services, individuals are provided with rapid access to housing, crisis intervention, case management, and support services to help them gain housing and sustain housing over the long term,” CCH argued. “It is ridiculous to assert that a housing model that gets people and keeps people housed is contributing to an increase in homelessness.”

In turn, the institute called CCH’s allegations against the report, stating they “misrepresent” its content and purpose.

“CSI’s report does not reject the housing first model, nor does it conflate it with a ‘housing only’ approach,” the institute said in a statement. “CSI’s goal is empirical, not ideological. It measured results and asked whether different models deserve more opportunity to compete for public dollars.”

By the numbers

The report from the institute reported on a number of concerning statistics about homelessness in Colorado.

It found that, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Colorado ranks ninth highest in the nation in the number of homeless per capita.

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It also had one of the fastest growing rates of homelessness between the period of 2020-2024, with Colorado's homeless population growing by 90 percent. That makes it the fourth highest rate in the U.S. and close to triple the average growth of 34 percent over this time.

Some of that is driven by the state’s growing migrant population, which The Center Square previously reportedis “overwhelming its shelter system.”

All this comes as Colorado, and Denver in particular, spent millions of dollars to curtail homelessness.

In July 2023, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston launched All In Mile High, Denver’s homelessness initiative. With decreasing homelessness a major goal, in 2024, Denver supported more than 3,000 units of affordable housing.

According to the CSI report, as of December 2024, the All in Mile High Program had served 2,233 individuals at a cost to the city of $69,413 per person.

In fiscal year 2023, Colorado ranked third among all U.S. states in federal grant dollars awarded per homelessness project. That same year, Denver, Boulder and Aurora spent a total of $405 million on homelessness initiatives.

While CCH disputed some of the numbers included in the report, the institute said that just shows that greater transparency and “honest dialogue” is needed.

“CSI believes the public deserves to know whether investment is truly reducing homelessness, not just reshuffling where people sleep,” it stated.

Housing crisis

The coalition argued housing is the issue, stating “housing market conditions directly correlate to rates of homelessness.”

According to previous reporting from The Center Square, housing costs make Colorado one of the nation's most expensive states to live in, leading experts to label it a “crisis.”

The coalition said this was a key piece of information missing from the CSI’s report.

“When people cannot access affordable housing in their community or they lose the home they’re in because they can’t afford it, especially in a high-cost, low-supply housing market like Colorado, homelessness becomes inevitable,” it stated. “The solution to homelessness is and always has been housing, and when that housing is coupled with supportive services for those that need them, households are able to stay stably housed at much higher rates.”

The institute responded, arguing that it had extensively addressed the housing crisis in a previous report, which called for “broader reform” and deregulation to fix the shortage.

While CCH argued that “mental illness, drug use, poverty, climate and generosity of public assistance have no statistically significant impact on homelessness,” CSI disagreed.

“Housing unaffordability alone cannot explain what CCH itself acknowledges is a remarkably complex issue with many causes,” the institute said. “Addiction, mental illness and joblessness are cited by the homeless themselves as major barriers to housing stability.”

Moving forward

While Denver’s All in Mile High program surpassed its goal to get 2,000 homeless off the streets in 2024, funding for the program will decrease from $84 million in 2024 to $57.5 million in 2025. Increasing homelessness also shows no signs of slowing in the state.

In the end, both the institute and the coalition are pushing for very different solutions to solve the ever-increasing issue of homelessness.

"Work-first and treatment-first programs are data-proven to be less effective than true housing first, which prioritizes being safely housed and sheltered, but only as the first step," CCH said. Housing first is “data-proven as the most effective approach for homelessness resolution and housing stability.”

The institute responded to those claims, stating it does not dispute that housing first can work, but questioned that approach is the best option to get real results.

“At a systems level, it [housing first] has failed to reduce the total number of people experiencing homelessness,” CSI stated. “That is a basic and urgent outcome metric. If we are spending record amounts but seeing high homelessness numbers, we should ask why.”