Matsuda, a program supervisor for the city of Denver’s residential health and housing investigation team, was visiting the Mosiac Apartments, 6900 E. Evans Ave.,  on that recent afternoon for a follow-up inspection. The complex had made headlines in 2023 after repeated complaints about rats and other problems generated an all-hands-on-deck “proactive” inspection from city investigators.

Repeated visits eventually resulted in thousands of dollars in city fines against the property’s management.

“We really had to shake the tree and get them on board,” Matsuda said. “We even met with their pest management team to say, ‘What do you need?’ ”

City officials are eager to expand the practice of proactive inspections like those as part of an effort to step up oversight of landlords in Denver. In early 2025, the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment, or DDPHE, plans to add two new staffers to the residential health and housing team. The modest expansion is aimed at boosting the city’s ability to intervene at problem properties.

The team is tasked with enforcing Denver’s housing code, which sets standards for health and safety at residential properties. The code includes a mandate that owners and operators provide basics for tenants, like hot water, heat and pest control.

That team’s workload has increased in recent years, program leaders say. Since launching proactive property inspections in August 2021 — as a complement to the team’s usual complaint-driven work — the city has carried out 36 such inspections, as of mid-December. They are labor intensive, with inspectors endeavoring to knock on every door at a property if they can.

That gives tenants who might otherwise be intimidated, or who might not know where to bring their concerns, an opening to talk to city officials about the habitability of their apartments.

“Sometimes there is no issue, but other times people have had ongoing issues,” Matsuda said of the proactive door-knocking like that done by his team at the Mosiac early on. “A lot of people are hesitant (to log complaints) because they don’t want to be labeled problem tenants.”

In 2021, the City Council passed an ordinance requiring all residential landlords to obtain licenses to operate their properties. That program, overseen by the city’s Department of Excise and Licenses, requires landlords to pass an inspection performed by a private, third-party inspector. It’s independent of DDPHE’s program.

Renter advocates hope a strengthened home health inspection team will hold landlords to higher standards.

“There are bad actors out there”

The city’s ability to support renters struggling with unresponsive landlords has been the focus of amplified public scrutiny in the wake of high-profile cases like Mosiac and CBZ Management.

CBZ has faced court actions stemming from the derelict conditions of buildings it owns in both Denver and Aurora — the latter garnering international attention for activity involving a transnational Venezuelan gang. In Aurora, CBZ has attempted to place blame for the unsafe and unsanitary conditions of its buildings on alleged takeovers by gang members, but those conditions long predate the gang activity, city officials have said.

“The reality is that there are bad actors out there who are not putting in the work that’s necessary to maintain their properties on a regular basis,” said Nicol Caldwell, who oversees 11 public health inspection programs for Denver’s public health department, including the residential team. “We have made a concerted effort to dedicate a large portion of our time to taking care of it.”

In the months ahead, Caldwell is looking forward to bringing in some much-needed help.

Mayor Mike Johnston dedicated $400,000 in his 2025 budget to pay for the salaries, benefits and other costs of two new full-time positions on the residential health team for the next two years. One of those positions will be another investigator, bringing the total number on the team to 10. The other will be a data analyst, another need identified both by city officials and renter advocates who interact frequently with the department and raise awareness about problem properties.

The budget allocation was a compromise.

A supermajority of the Denver City Council’s members originally requested that the mayor provide $590,000 in 2025 to pay for four to six additional staff members for the team. The council majority’s stated goal was to increase the department’s inspector ratio, now one for every 9,000 rental units in the city, according to an Oct. 11 letter to the mayor’s office.

Even with a gain of fewer total positions, advocates and council members said they appreciated that Johnston worked with them on the issue, as well as his commitment to monitoring the team’s needs and outcomes in the future.

“This will support DDPHE’s goals of taking earlier enforcement action when violations of the housing code are documented, increasing engagement with tenants’ unions, and meeting ongoing needs for data analysis, public data sharing, and open records requests,” Johnston wrote in a response letter to council on Oct. 18.

Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez was involved in conversations with DDPHE and the administration about those new positions. During a budget hearing on Nov. 12, she thanked them for understanding what was at stake.

“Housing is a human right, but housing is not only a roof over someone’s head — it is ensuring that housing is humane and that it is not creating further implications on someone’s health and well-being,” she said at that hearing.

Caldwell expects to post the job openings and get them filled early in the year, but the finer points of the job duties are still a work in progress.

Right now, she said, she is comfortable with the ability of the nine investigators on the team to respond to the volume of complaints the department receives. She envisions the new inspector serving in a senior role of sorts, maintaining relationships with advocacy groups and focusing on ongoing enforcement actions.

Decisions about when it is appropriate to step up enforcement actions — from giving notices to issuing fines —  are made by Matsuda, fellow program supervisor Tara Olson and Caldwell herself, she said.

Crunching data to target enforcement

The data analyst position will likely focus on breaking down complaints to look for geographic hotspots, Caldwell said — and also to determine where in the city tenants are logging few or no complaints, and why that might be. That person can also respond to data requests from advocates and share information with the public.

“Where we need support is on the higher-level enforcement action side,” Caldwell said. “We need folks who can support us in issuing fines in a timelier fashion, in looking at our data. We are looking for a data analyst who can help us figure out where to target our enforcement.”

She added: “We can conduct a million inspections, but if we don’t have the tools to solve the broader issues and look at the problems more holistically, what are we doing?”

Eida Altman is the director of the Metro Denver Tenants Union, a membership organization dedicated to supporting renters and holding landlords accountable across the metro area.

Altman is grateful for the compromise the mayor’s office agreed to on the new position on the inspection team. She has been critical of DDPHE’s response times to concerns at known problem properties in the past, but Altman puts that largely on a lack of sufficient staffing.

“We want to see proactive investigations be better supported. They’re really important,” Altman said. “We hope that the analyst position will be able to ensure that the agency has metrics. If we want to be able to justify growing it … we need to have goals and metrics and justify it and remediate that cost.”

Altman already has her sights set on another gap she has identified in Denver’s approach to ensuring rental housing is habitable. The city’s fledgling landlord licensing program hinges on independent third-party inspections.

CBZ Management’s three Denver properties were all inspected by the same independent inspector on the same day in January 2023, and they received passing grades despite city records showing a long history of complaints from tenants at those properties.

Altman wants to see DDPHE’s inspection program reach a point where it can follow up on those third-party checks — performed by inspectors paid by the property owners themselves — and provide supplemental investigations to ensure landlords are living up to the city’s code.

“It needs to be a licensing program,” she said, “not just a registry.”

Roughly 25,000 rental properties have been licensed in the city to date, according to Excise and Licenses spokesman Eric Escudero. Instances of landlords receiving passing inspections for that program and then being reported to DDPHE are exceedingly rare, he said.

“We’re seeing landlords get licenses, and a majority of them are doing upkeep, doing maintenance,” Escudero said. “We know that we’re probably never going to have a city without a single slumlord, but the number is going down.”

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Denver’s Community Planning and Development announced that until further notice, its staff would not recommend approval for any rezoning applications in six neighborhoods if they sought to allow developers to build higher-density projects, like row homes, on single-family home properties.

City officials saw that Oct. 10 memo as the first step in pumping the brakes on denser new development in the west-central portion of Denver. Their goal: to stem the tide of gentrification trends in the historically Latino area.

The rezoning pause will be reevaluated, the memo says, when “more affordability tools to preserve and/or create affordable housing are available to be paired with rezonings to higher intensity districts.”

The planning department’s new policy has support from City Councilwoman Jamie Torres, who grew up in west Denver and now represents the area. It also has been applauded by some longtime residents of the affected neighborhoods — West Colfax, Villa Park, Sun Valley, Barnum, Barnum West and Valverde.

“We do need a chance to look at some different options and tools and incentives,” Villa Park resident Kathy Sandoval said, citing potential ways to spur the creation of new affordable housing in her part of town. “(We) also need to look at ways that we can keep residents in the neighborhoods they have been in for years and years and years.”

But the planning department’s move has also drawn criticism.

Making it harder for property owners to turn single-family homes into lots that could host multiple attached homes is rankling some housing advocates, who point out that Denver’s affordable housing crisis is being driven by limited supply.

“Development is a symptom caused by supply seeking to meet demand,” said Ryan Keeney, the president of the housing advocacy group YIMBY Denver; the acronym stands for “Yes In My Backyard,” a rejoinder to NIMBY-type opposition.

“Stopping rezonings in west Denver will do little to forestall demographic turnover so long as land and home prices continue to increase,” he said.

Community Planning and Development’s pause on recommending approval for single-family property zoning changes applies to the six neighborhoods covered by the West Area Plan. That plan sets long-term, resident-informed guidance for the future development and character of those neighborhoods. The City Council approved it in March 2023.

What’s behind new stance — and what it means

City planning officials say they want to make clear that they are not preventing any property owners from filing applications to upzone.

Zoning changes are handled through a quasi-judicial process, with the City Council having the final say. But city staff prepare reports and presentations that council members review when voting on those requests.

It is rare to see an application even make it to the council level without community planning staff finding that it meets the criteria for adoption. The October memo has already resulted in some applicants pulling back their requests.

Officials say that with the memo, they are doing their best to adhere to the guiding principles in the West Area Plan, which recommends addressing affordable housing and reducing involuntary displacement.

“Any property owner may still submit a rezoning application, and it will be reviewed against rezoning criteria and existing plan guidance,” department spokeswoman Alexandra Foster wrote in an email. “Given current conditions for development, CPD has alerted applicants that they will likely receive a recommendation of denial for rezoning from a single-unit district to a more intense district.”

Four rezoning applications in the affected neighborhoods had been withdrawn as of Dec. 18, and four remained in process, Foster said.

As for when CPD might change its stance, that will depend on how quickly officials can develop tools to protect existing income-qualified housing in coordination with the city’s Department of Housing Stability, Foster said.

For Torres, the supporting data that CPD shared in the memo were striking.

Home values in the West Area Plan neighborhoods increased 155%, on average, from 2010 to 2022, a period when home values skyrocketed citywide. But that spike has corresponded with a rapid decline in ethnic diversity in the area.

Those West Area neighborhoods were made up of 70% Hispanic and nonwhite residents in 2010. By 2022, that share had fallen to about 41%, according to data the city rounded up. Median household incomes climbed by 250% between 2017 and 2022.

“I think what’s at risk is we are actually sacrificing the people who already live here in order to make room for the density for the future,” Torres said.

When it comes to development activity, rezoning applications are only the tip of the iceberg, she noted. The CPD memo highlighted that the West Colfax neighborhood saw 97 residential demolition permits pulled between 2021 and 2023. The total number of permits pulled citywide over that period was 1,982 — or roughly 27 per neighborhood.

“This is happening right now all over the place, and it’s not just in rezonings,” Torres said of the transformation in west Denver neighborhoods.

West Colfax has become the latest epicenter of Denver’s evolution into a denser, bigger city. This spring, real estate agent Caitlin Clough told The Denver Post for a larger story on urban change along West Colfax Avenue that the prospect of being able to build new, denser projects along the once-hardscrabble corridor had investors “licking their chops.”

In the view of the YIMBY group, the best way to limit the gentrifying effects of new development in vulnerable, historically lower-income neighborhoods like Barnum and West Colfax is to make it easier to build more housing everywhere.

In other words: to do away with single-family zoning in Denver altogether. It’s a step that other cities like Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon, have already taken. In metro Denver, Littleton is considering that move.

“The most equitable approach to solving our housing supply shortage is a citywide upzone,” Keeney said. “This would maximize the creation of new homes for Denverites to live in while avoiding the wholesale transformation of any particular neighborhood, such as those in west Denver referred to by this memo.”

“There is a sense of urgency”

As city officials seek out ways to soften the impact of that development, Torres is thinking about potential policies that could make a difference.

“There is a huge gap in the code about which building forms are allowed in different zone districts. We don’t see a lot of triplexes and quads in single-family lots. We see accumulations of properties for row homes that end up being very expensive,” she said.

In 2025, CPD is undertaking a “missing middle housing” project aimed at fostering a more gentle increase in density in appropriate places. In the broader housing conversation, missing middle housing falls in between large apartment buildings and the single-family homes that may be unattainable for working-class residents.

Such middle-density housing can take varying shapes, including duplexes and more moderately priced townhomes.

The project also includes seeking ways to incentivizing adaptive reuse of more buildings for housing and creating new on-site affordable housing requirements for smaller-scale development, department officials told councilmembers during a committee hearing Dec. 17.

Denver’s affordable housing mandate — to include income-qualified, reduced-rent units in a building or pay steep fees in lieu of that construction — currently applies only to new projects of 10 units or more.

Torres said she wanted discussions to focus not just on regulations and restrictions, but also on incentives and supports that might be available — including financial assistance for residents trying to maintain or improve their homes.

For her, what’s happening in west Denver is not a simple numbers game. Seven attached houses in a new rowhome project are not always better for the community than one older house that was more affordable and helped a family build generational wealth.

Her district is already contributing to the densification of the city because it is home to Ball Arena, which is now cleared to be the epicenter of a new urban neighborhood.

“I came into this space wanting to keep residents in west Denver. Those families have names, they have stories here and those are things that are important to me,” she said. “There is a sense of urgency around this (conversation) not taking years.”

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A handful of those people, however, have not accepted the offer to come inside.

Speaking at the historic Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1 on Sante Fe Drive, Mayor Mike Johnston said the city had “ended the cycle of street homelessness for veterans in Denver.”

It’s a milestone that city partners say was reached by harnessing extensive data collection and an expansion of the city’s shelter resources. Those now include a network of converted hotels and tiny home villages that make up Johnston’s All In Mile High Initiative.

Johnston and VA officials announced in June that they expected to reach “functional zero” for veteran homelessness by the end of 2024. That meant reaching a point at which all known instances of homelessness for a certain population group are resolved and resources are in place to ensure future occurrences are resolved within 30 days, the mayor’s office said at the time.

As of Thursday’s news conference, 18 U.S. military veterans remained unsheltered in the city, Johnston said. Of those, a dozen were working with service providers and were expected to move into private shelter units available through All In Mile High, Johnston said.

But six were still refusing to come indoors.

It’s a sad reality that cast a shadow on what was otherwise a celebratory event. Johnston noted many veterans are dealing with severe trauma related to their experiences.

“We do occasionally contact individuals who will say, ‘I don’t feel comfortable being indoors in any setting right now,’ ” Johnston said. “We’ll keep working with them, supporting them, giving them all the services they need where they are — with the hope that they’ll eventually choose to” come indoors.

The VA and its dedicated eastern Colorado homelessness team played a key role in the city’s progress this year. In a news release, city officials said more than 100 homeless veterans within city limits were identified and moved indoors since this summer.

According to Amir Farooqi, the interim director of the VA Eastern Colorado health care system, the team is now in touch with 100-plus additional veterans who need support. The team has housed 732 people during the VA’s 2024 fiscal year, he said.

He urged any veteran who is homeless or facing homelessness, along with anyone who knows a veteran who falls into those categories, to contact the VA’s national call center at (877) 424-3838.

VFW Post 1 doubles as an art gallery. On Thursday, Johnston bought a painting from a formerly homeless Navy veteran, Brian Asbeck, to hang in his office at city hall.

Speaking at the press event, Asbeck described years of being homeless, including living in his vehicle after moving to Denver in search of a new beginning in 2021. He credited the VA and city programs, along with VFW Post 1, for helping him get his life back on track.

“I now find myself self-sufficient and moving forward with hope and stability,” he said.

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The Denver Planning Board voted 5-0 on Wednesday to recommend a proposed package of new restrictions on gas stations to the council. The goal, according to the policy’s backers, is to leave more room in the city for needed housing and other community-serving development that’s too scarce.

The new rules would prohibit any new public-serving gas stations from being approved within a quarter-mile of an existing gas station, within a quarter-mile of a rail transit station or within 300 feet of low-density residential neighborhoods. Projects that would build a gas station in connection with a large-scale retail business — like a grocery store — would be exempt under the rules.

The council’s process will begin with a hearing before the Land Use, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Jan. 7. That panel could advance it for a public hearing and final vote by the full body on Feb. 18, according to city documents.

The measure is being co-sponsored by council members Amanda Sawyer, Paul Kashmann and Diana Romero Campbell. Council members first discussed ideas for the zoning amendment earlier this year.

A company representative from QuikTrip Corp., the Tulsa-based gas station and convenience store chain, urged the board and the council on Wednesday to delay their consideration and fine-tune the proposed regulations. The company, which has two locations in Denver and others in planning phases, warned of unintended consequences, including price inflation due to decreased competition.

But that argument did not resonate with Planning Board members. The five yes votes represented just a portion of the 11-member board. Four members were absent for the hearing, and board chair Caitlin Quander and vice chair Fred Glick both recused themselves from the matter.

Kashmann, speaking at the hearing, emphasized that the central motivation for the restriction was to preserve more land, particularly on major corridors, so it can be used to address Denver’s housing shortage. He did not want to minimize the impact of fuel price increases on low-income residents, but he said working to bring down housing costs by increasing supply was a much more impactful goal.

“(If) gas prices go up, there are people that it’s taking their last couple of bucks. Absolutely, any fee goes up, it’s taking their last couple of bucks,” he said. “But the opportunity to make a change — a real broad change — in the cost of living in Denver is what we’re aiming to do.”

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The council majority brushed aside arguments from convenience store and smoke shop owners facing potentially steep revenue losses and warnings about the potential of a black market forming for flavored products. Instead, they heeded calls from public health and children’s advocates who have decried products like strawberry mango e-cigarettes as lures that can draw young people into lifetimes of addiction.

“By supporting this ban, we are not pretending to solve every problem (but) we are creating more distance between something that hurts our children,” Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez said. “I have seen firsthand how tobacco products, especially when introduced at a young age, can shape a lifetime of struggle.”

Monday’s decisive 11-1 vote came three years and 10 days after a previous iteration of the council voted to approve a flavored tobacco ban of its own. Then-Mayor Michael Hancock vetoed the council’s 2021 ban, citing the negative impact on small businesses as part of the rationale behind his opposition.

This time, Mayor Mike Johnston has signaled his full support. His administration has described it as a critical public health policy — though his signature is not yet on the passed bill.

The lone no vote came from Councilman Kevin Flynn who doubled down on his belief that his colleagues’ decision will not prevent young people in Denver from obtaining products that remain legal in many surrounding communities.

Denver police officials testified in a committee hearing earlier this month that the department is not concerned about a black market forming around flavored tobacco and in fact, convenience stores may be less desirable targets for theft if they stop carrying those products. But Flynn was steadfast Monday.

“Bans create black markets. We know this is always true,” Flynn said. “Someone will buy this in Lakewood, bring it into Denver and sell it at a premium.”

But Councilman Darrell Watson, one of the ban’s three co-sponsors pushed back. Data from every state and municipality with similar bans has shown a decrease in youth access, Watson said.

During a public hearing, the council heard from medical professionals including epidemiologist Tessa Crume.

“The tobacco industry must secure its financial future by being forward thinking and understanding who its customers of tomorrow will be,” Crume said of the industry’s focus on protecting flavored offerings. “Nicotine as a drug, regardless of its delivery mechanism, drives repeated use and dependence much like cocaine and heroin.”

Crume’s grim description came opposite speakers who identified as former law enforcement agents who issued dire warnings about the risk of rising crime should the ban pass. Those included Carlos Sandoval who suggested that criminal organizations in other countries will see tobacco as a low-risk profit opportunity.

“Cartels bring e-cigarettes across the border,” Sandoval said. “Cartels and organized crime will grow stronger under prohibition in Denver.”

Dharminder Singh, a retailer with multiple locations that sell flavored tobacco products in Denver, suggested that the city is being hypocritical by going after nicotine when retail marijuana is legal citywide.

“We are promoting things that are more dangerous to society, and we are taking away things that are legalized,” he said.

Other retailers slammed councilmembers for what they described as a rushed process that did not leave room for negotiation or collaboration with law-abiding shop owners.

But Watson noted that he and his colleague spent eight months working on the ban, including more than 50 meetings with stakeholders and even paused the council approval process through the month of November. That pause resulted in hookah tobacco being exempted from the ban because of its significance to people from Middle Eastern and North African cultures.

The ban drew a significant lobbying effort from tobacco companies and groups that represent retailers large and small. In ads placed in The Denver Post, one lobbying group backed by tobacco industry giant Philip Morris International decried the potential sales tax losses to the city.

But during testimony at the committee level on Dec. 4, Donna Lynne, the CEO of Denver Health hospital, noted taxpayers often bear a majority of the long-term cost of the health impacts of tobacco and nicotine use.

Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez cited Lynne in her closing arguments in favor of the ban.

“When we talk about economic impact, that is what we’re talking about,” she said.

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The future of one of the hotel shelters that form the backbone of Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s All In Mile High homelessness initiative is at risk on Monday as city officials pivot to win approval for a lease extension.

City Council members will consider a shorter-term lease extension than originally proposed for the former Comfort Inn property at 4685 Quebec St. in northeast Denver. If approved, the latest version of the deal would keep the shelter open at least through the end of February.

The $6.5 million proposed lease extension comes in the face of council opposition to an earlier $11.6 million agreement that would have run through the end of 2025. The cost works out to $120 per day per room, according to council documents.

The shorter lease, confirmed Friday by city officials, is designed to give the city’s Department of Housing Stability, or HOST, time to work with council members to allay some of their concerns about a lack of support services now being offered at All In Mile High shelters.

Those concerns almost resulted in the lease proposal being voted down last week.

“The (lease agreement gives) HOST time to work through short- and long-term planning for the occupancy of the hotel as it relates to the overall strategy of All in Mile High,” city officials wrote in a summary document attached to Monday’s council agenda.

One of the agreement’s main critics, Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, said Friday that she supported the short-term arrangement to provide time for more conversation between the council and the mayor’s office.

The city’s original lease with the property started on Feb. 1, 2023, but lapsed on Feb. 1 of this year. The original extension would have covered the cost of the previous 11 months of rent that still had not been paid to the property owner, Quebec Hospitality LLC, while securing the city’s rights to keep using the building as a shelter through the end of 2025.

After the contract was delayed in late November, it faced a significant backlash last week.

Lewis said she would vote against the lease extension because the Johnston administration had not shared what she considered a clear plan for the homelessness initiative to move people beyond shelters and into stable housing. The Comfort Inn property is located in Lewis’ District 8, as are two other hotels and a micro-community with tiny homes — four of the seven facilities in the program in total.

Lewis said Friday that what she had learned from talking to residents in the shelters was that promised services, including mental health treatment and job opportunity connections, have not materialized over the last year. That gave her pause when the council was being asked to extend a lease for another 12 months.

“I wanted to make sure that I kept that power to ensure that the mayor’s office is doing right by people — and not just warehousing people,” she said of her urging council members to reject the longer lease on Dec. 9.

The lease term running through February was Lewis’s suggestion, she said, in part to provide time to explain what she wants to see out of All In Mile High — and also “so that we can then understand the strategic direction of the mayor.”

Other members who voiced opposition last week included Flor Alvidrez — whose District 7 is home to an All In Mile High micro-community — and Councilman Chris Hinds. Hinds took exception to the timing of the agreement, noting that it put the council in a position to make a quick decision on money that in part was already committed to the property.

“Allow us to do our jobs, and don’t write checks unless you’ve given us an opportunity to vote on them,” he said.

Officials with HOST said last week that 133 people now reside in the former Comfort Inn’s rooms and indicated that if the lease were to end, their housing stability could be in jeopardy. That prospect also drew a sharp rebuke from Lewis, who blamed the urgency of the situation on the administration.

A final vote — potentially rejecting the proposal — was put off only when Councilman Kevin Flynn invoked a rule that allowed him to delay the vote another week.

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The record final tally of dollars recovered for workers whose employers did not pay wages they were owed was $2.07 million, according to a news release put out Wednesday by the independent wing of city government. That was based on the period from November 2023 through the end of October.

The amount slightly exceeded the $2.04 million total the auditor’s Denver Labor office recovered during its 2023 reporting year.

The office recovered wages on behalf of 4,505 workers — another record that eclipsed the 2023 total by more than 1,000 people, according to the office.

“These outcomes compel us to continue our efforts for the thousands of individuals who still need our help,” Denver Auditor Tim O’Brien said in a statement. “Whether an individual receives hundreds or thousands of dollars in restitution, that’s money that should have been in their pocket on payday to pay their bills and support their families.”

In 2022, the Denver Labor office also set a record for recovered dollars with $1.1 million. The near-doubling of that total in each of the last two years came on the heels of the Denver City Council’s passage of a civil wage theft ordinance in January 2023.

That ordinance gave the office the power to levy heavy fines and charge 12% interest on unpaid wages if violations of pay laws were found.

Among the 753 cases that Denver Labor closed last year that ended in restitution payments, a vast majority — 694 — dealt with mispayments of prevailing wages, according to the news release. Prevailing wages are minimum pay levels that the city sets for contractors and subcontractors performing work on public buildings or on behalf of the city; they are higher than the minimum wage in other situations.

The auditor’s office highlighted a large prevailing wage determination against Urban Peak, the city’s primary youth homeless shelter provider, in Wednesday’s release, without identifying a specific total.

The nonprofit completed work earlier this year on a new 60,000-square-foot shelter on South Acoma Street. But the auditor’s office found workers were underpaid for their work on the building because it was misclassified as a residential project instead of a more commercially focused “building” project.

Projects with the latter classification come with a higher prevailing wage once city funding is involved. Urban Peak officials said a miscommunication led to the underpayment and they always intended to pay workers fairly.

While Urban Peak officials suggested the reclassification of the project would add $2.1 million on top of the project’s $37 million price tag, the auditor’s office has so far collected just over $356,000 that was included in its 2024 restitution total.

That total could increase during the 2025 fiscal year as more contractors who worked on Urban Peak’s building submit necessary information, officials said Thursday. But the auditor’s office’s estimates for total unpaid wages on the project were still well below $2.1 million.

The council further beefed up the auditor’s wage theft powers earlier this year. In April, the body voted to grant Denver Labor the authority to issue subpoenas to obtain records from uncooperative employers in wage investigations.

In September, the office issued subpoenas to three strip clubs — PT’s Showclub, Diamond Cabaret and PT’s Centerfold — to determine if those establishments were misclassifying dancers as nonemployees to avoid paying them minimum wage and overtime and providing paid sick leave.

“This year, new research showed a great need for wage enforcement across the city,” Matthew Fritz-Mauer, the executive director of Denver Labor, said in the release. “We now have subpoena power to help us get the information we need in investigations, but there are still a lot more people who need our help.”

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The council was originally slated to consider a five-year agreement with the foundation that since 2019 has been tasked with distributing funding collected by the 0.25% Caring for Denver sales tax that voters adopted in 2018. Those dollars are earmarked to fund public and nonprofit programs that are focused on providing Denverites with mental health support including substance use treatment, suicide prevention and programs that present an alternative to jail.

But council members worked with Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration to draft the shorter-term agreement to manage the fund, according to Councilwoman Jamie Torres, who delayed the contract vote last week. Over the course of the one-year deal, city officials plan to examine all of the city’s existing dedicated sales tax contracts with an eye toward improving and standardizing those agreements, council leaders said.

“We’re working closely with the mayor’s office and the Department of Finance to review and assess dedicated sales tax entities such as Caring for Denver,” Council President Amanda Sandoval said Monday. “Our goal through this review process will be to implement consistent ordinance language across the board. By focusing on process and transparency, we aim to provide a solid framework for responsible governance and equitable outcomes for our city.”

The delayed vote and shorter-term agreement come after Colorado Public Radio published a series of stories that examined Caring for Denver’s track record in delivering on its promises to combat substance use and mental health challenges in the city.

CPR’s reporting also scrutinized the qualifications and highlighted the criminal records of some grant recipients. It also raised questions about Caring for Denver’s transparency after the organization declined to provide records that the news organization requested under the Colorado Open Records Act.

Despite the shorter contract, council members defended Caring for Denver and many of its grantees at Monday’s meeting. Councilwoman Sarah Parady, a lawyer, supported the organization’s argument that not all of its documents were subject to the state’s open records laws because Caring for Denver is a nonprofit, not a government entity.

The council approved the contract unanimously as part of a block voter with other legislation. During a public comment session later in the meeting, representatives of several organizations that have worked with Caring for Denver spoke in support of the foundation.

“Denver faces a mental health crisis marked by rising rates of what public health (officials) call the diseases and deaths of despair. The best antidote for this is often the type of empathy and human connection that no licensure or certification can provide,” said Jason Vitello with the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition.

The Caring for Denver tax was projected to bring in $50.5 million in revenue by the end of 2024, according to city finance officials. It had collected $209.2 million as of the end of 2023.

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“To me, it’s big loud voices — but I don’t see the substance,” Denver City Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, one of the measure’s three sponsors, said of the advertising and emails those industries have directed her way.

The ban would prohibit the sale of nearly all flavored tobacco products within city limits, including flavored offerings for e-cigarettes, vaporizer cartridges and nicotine pouches as well as menthol cigarettes. It was introduced at the council committee level in late October, with backers portraying it as a matter of protecting young people’s health by making products that are already off-limits for them less appealing. On Monday, it will get its first reading before the full council.

Behind the scenes, some of the biggest players in the tobacco business have been working to derail the measure. The city of Denver’s online database of lobbying activity shows that lobbyists have registered this year on behalf of ITG Brands — the tobacco manufacturer behind Winston, Kool and other cigarette brands — as well as industry giant Philip Morris International.

Other recent registrants include the Colorado Wyoming Petroleum Marketers Association, which has paid for advertisements in opposition to the ban on Instagram and in The Denver Post. The organization represents the interests of companies and individuals who sell supplies to convenience stores, according to its website.

In a Thanksgiving Day print ad, that association called out the Denver City Council and Mayor Mike Johnston, who has signaled his support for the ban: “Instead of getting bad actors off our streets,” the ad reads, “Mayor Johnston and the City Council are fixated on banning flavored tobacco products.”

Just how much those lobbyists are spending on efforts to sway city officials has yet to be made public. Financial disclosures for activity in November and December are due Jan. 15, according to the Denver Clerk and Recorder’s Office.

But that advocacy does not appear to be bearing fruit.

On Wednesday, the council’s Safety, Housing, Education and Homelessness Committee voted 6-1 to advance the ban for consideration to the full body. Following a first reading on Monday afternoon, council members expect to hold a courtesy public hearing about the ordinance on Dec. 16, followed by a final vote.

Observers expect it to pass — as it did once before in recent years.

Councilwoman receives dozens of emails daily

The lobbying this year has certainly caught the attention of Denver city leaders, and even officials in some neighboring jurisdictions. Denver also saw intense lobbying in 2021, when the council passed a similar measure only to see it vetoed by then-Mayor Michael Hancock.

But none of it has swayed Gonzales-Gutierrez’s commitment to banning flavored tobacco products. For the mother of three, the dozens of teens, educators and medical professionals who have spoken in support of the ban during public comment sessions before the council over the last month have carried much more weight.

“I think, in particular, kids coming is incredibly important because that is the impetus for this — thinking about young people having access to these products and just limiting that access,” she said.

She noted that the proponents’ side has its own coalition of supporters. Among them are the Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund, a registered lobbying group; the American Heart Association; the American Lung Association; and Donna Lynne, the CEO of Denver Health.

The most visible way opponents have lobbied council members has been through emails utilizing prewritten templates. Gonzales-Gutierrez says she is receiving 35 to 45 such emails a day.

Sponsors have made good-faith efforts to work with local businesses, she said. She pointed to a change to the bill that exempted hookah tobacco in part because of its cultural significance for people with Middle Eastern and North African roots.

The lobbying effort has referenced the city of Golden’s ban on flavored tobacco and nicotine products that took effect on Jan. 1.

CHOICE — the Coalition for Health, Opportunity, Innovation and Consumer Education — ran a wraparound ad in Wednesday’s edition of The Denver Post that implored the Denver City Council: “Don’t repeat Golden’s mistake.” CHOICE is a nonprofit funded by Philip Morris, according to its website.

The ad refers to Golden’s decision to set up a $100,000 fund to support smoke and vape shops and convenience stores that lost revenue as a result of the ban.

“Denver can’t afford to make the same mistake,” reads the ad, which claims that a flavor ban would cost Denver north of $20 million in economic activity each year.

Golden Mayor Laura Weinberg was part of the unanimous vote that passed that city’s ban last year. She supported a similar measure in 2019. That one was tabled in hopes that the legislature would pass a statewide flavored tobacco ban, she said, but that never came to fruition.

Weinberg said the city had a history of using one-time grants to support local small businesses impacted by special circumstances, so the fund for smoke shops and convenience stores was not an outlier.

To her knowledge, two businesses that exclusively sold vape and tobacco products have gone out of business since the ban took effect. She expects impacted businesses that use the grant money to pivot away from a reliance on flavored tobacco products will be stronger after that transition.

Overall, she said, the ban has had a positive impact.

“I think it has been a win for our city,” Weinberg said. “It was a big ask from our community that we do this. There were real concerns for the health of the community — not just kids, but overall for the health of who we are as a city.”

Vape shop lobby is preparing for loss

Lobbyists working for independent vape shops are already projecting that Denver will adopt its proposed ban and are pivoting to efforts to mitigate the economic damage to their clients. They have sought to center responsible small business owners — a majority of whom are members of racial or ethnic minority groups, they emphasize — while keeping their distance from the big tobacco companies involved.

“There’s clearly an agenda, and they most likely have the votes,” said Joe Miklosi, who represents the Rocky Mountain Smoke-Free Alliance, a group of independent vape shops that has 25 dues-paying members in Denver.

Miklosi has argued Denver will hurt adults trying to ween themselves off deadly combustible cigarettes. Now his hope is that council members will delay the effective date of the ordinance — from 90 days after adoption to a year out — to give business owners time to make plans for their futures.

He said a third shop in Golden was likely to close before the end of the year after losing 80% of its revenue following that city’s ban.

“People are going to lose their homes as well as their businesses,” he said.

There is at least one firm “no” vote on the Denver City Council: Kevin Flynn. He also opposed the 2021 attempt to ban flavored tobacco and nicotine products.

Flynn says his opposition isn’t driven by lobbying. Nor it is driven by studies and research around the health effects of these products. He knows tobacco products are bad for people. But he said he had yet to be convinced that placing a prohibition on products that are legal for adults is an effective way to keep them out of the hands of children. Colorado’s minimum age to purchase tobacco products is 21.

Denver police officials have told council members they are not concerned about expanding crime related to the ban, but he is, based on the history of alcohol prohibition in the U.S.

“All it is going to do now is lead to a black market, and it’s going to lead to trouble,” Flynn said. “It’s going to create more police interaction with our young people, and I thought our progressive policy is (that) we want to diminish that.”

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As the city brings at least 2,000 people off the streets next year — roughly matching the number sheltered in the initiative since its launch last fall — the bigger goal, in some ways, will be to place at least 1,000 participants in more permanent housing situations. That means shifting them beyond the tiny homes in micro-communities or rooms in converted hotels that the city has used as temporary shelters so far.

Adjustments to the program in August put the city more firmly in the driver’s seat when it comes to coordinating housing placements. Officials say the rate of those placements ticked up in recent months — giving the mayor and his advisers confidence that the systems are in place to make moving 1,000 people into full housing next year a reality.

The administration’s ability to hit that mark will help determine if the All In Mile High homelessness initiative, as it’s now called, is considered successful and sustainable. By the end of 2024, the initiative will have cost the city more than $150 million, according to official estimates. The stated goal was never to warehouse people who otherwise would be living on the streets, but rather to give them a stepping stone on the path to housing and stability.

“(We’re) definitely ahead of schedule this year, so we’re excited about that — excited to keep going and keep bringing people indoors — and getting people connected to permanent housing as the year goes on,” Cole Chandler, the deputy director of the initiative, told The Denver Post. “We’re really tracking to try to produce a total of 500 permanent stable housing outcomes by the end of the year, and then looking at continuing to increase that in 2025.”

But a recent report from the Denver Auditor’s Office amplified lingering questions about the program’s cost-effectiveness and safety in the converted hotels that make up its backbone.

And while Johnston has touted All In Mile High’s success in closing 350 blocks of downtown Denver to camping, neighborhood residents and City Council members outside the city’s core say they have seen increases in visible homelessness and related drug activity this year.

It’s an indication that, at least in some cases, people are moving around the city rather than moving indoors.

“If trust doesn’t exist, you can’t get things done,” said Tony Frey, a West Colfax resident and a safety committee co-chair for the West Colfax Association of Neighbors. “If facilities like those in this program aren’t managed in a way that promotes safety effectively, more people are going to refuse help in the first place. And then they are going to travel down the (RTD) W-Line and into my alley and do nefarious things.”

Johnston administration officials emphasized that the November audit hinged on months-old data and covered security practices that had already been updated and upgraded.

The mayor compared the program’s evolution this year to the Denver Broncos becoming more successful under coach Sean Payton in his second season on the job.

“It’s like (during) the first year, you build the system and get the right personnel. The second year, you start to see the improvements,” Johnston said in an interview. “What we know now is we have the raw ingredients we need to be able to put ourselves on a path to end street homelessness.”

The Salvation Army, the city’s largest partner in the All In Mile High program, is echoing that optimistic outlook on the program as well as its impact on both the city and people who are homeless.

“We’ve improved our case management of individuals so that people are getting focused attention and care so their transition phase is smooth and far more systematic,” said Major Nesan Kistan, the nonprofit’s divisional commander based in Denver. “I’m telling you, we’re winning.”

“Housing command center” improves outcomes

Johnston’s big goal for All In Mile High in 2024 was to move another 1,000 people out of street encampments and into the program’s shelters and communities. That meant doubling up on the initial 1,000-person goal the mayor set — and the administration and its partners reached — in the second half of 2023, when the initiative was still called “House 1,000.”

The initiative quietly crossed that threshold of bringing a combined total of 2,000 indoors early this fall. The city sent out a news release on Oct. 21, but there was no celebratory press conference or public event.

The figure that has city officials more excited is 37%.

That’s the share of previously homeless people served by All In Mile High who, as of the most recent data update on the city’s dashboard on Nov. 18, have now been placed in more permanent housing — not just sheltered in tiny homes or hotel rooms.

That 37% comprises 804 people out of the 2,169 counted as having moved indoors. Not all of them spent time in All In Mile High shelters and communities. Some moved directly from the streets into housing, according to city officials.

That rate has ticked up from 29% in late April, an increase administration officials and outside partners attribute to a better-designed system and better cooperation among all organizations and city agencies involved in All In Mile High.

At a meeting of the council’s Safety, Housing, Education and Homelessness Committee in mid-November, Chandler provided a rundown of the new housing placement methodology he calls the “housing command center” or “housing central command.” The setup hinges on the city’s Department of Housing Stability, or HOST, taking on the role of system coordinator.

It provides better-defined roles for other participating city agencies and city contractors, such as Housing Connector, a tech-centered company that works with landlords to find apartments for people exiting homelessness, and shelter operators like the Salvation Army, the St. Francis Center, Bayaud Enterprises and others.

That command-center approach involves multiple meetings with on-site service providers each day, Chandler said. Through that focus, the partners are able to zero in on between 80 and 100 residents and work intensively to connect them with appropriate supports, like federal housing vouchers, and match them with apartments.

The work doesn’t stop after move-out. The city and its partners now also connect those people with “housing stabilizers” who are assigned to work with them over the following 12 months to keep them housed.

“At the beginning of the year, we had a bunch of new programs sort of operating independently,” Chandler told The Post. “Now we’re working with the site-based (housing) navigators, we’re identifying units in partnership with Housing Connector, we’re getting people access to furniture — and just really orchestrating the whole environment to ensure that people are moving out and into permanent housing.”

The Salvation Army operates three of the four largest facilities in the All In Mile High shelter network. The 289-room former DoubleTree hotel, 4040 Quebec St., is the largest. The organization now calls that facility The Aspen.

That shelter was the site of the program’s most painful failure. In March, two people in the program — Dustin Nunn, 38, and Sandra Cervantes, 43 —  were fatally shot in that hotel.

It was later revealed that the Salvation Army had not spent any of the $800,000 authorized by the city for security on the property. After the shooting, the city stepped in to take over that piece of the operation, hiring security guards, securing doors, installing metal detectors and beefing up cameras in the building.

While no homeless shelter can guarantee 100% safety, the Salvation Army’s Kistan said that since the city stepped in with more resources, The Aspen and the organization’s other facilities have become much safer.

Tyler Burwell, who oversees all three of the nonprofit’s All In Mile High shelters, said living in the shelter setting had saved some residents’ lives, including when staff members provided lifesaving responses during what could otherwise have been fatal overdoses.

The benefits and results of the city’s more clearly defined approach to housing placements have also been evident to the Salvation Army. At The Aspen, the organization has served 546 people since it opened last December. In that time, it has moved a combined 210 people into apartments of their own, a success rate of 38%. As of November, the organization was counting 130 successful housing placements, meaning many of those 210 people moved into units together, including couples.

“Previously, I would say my experience with some of these housing resources is (that) many organizations were left to implement them on their own,” Burwell said. “And now we are working more closely with the city and other community partners to … split up the responsibilities,” allowing each “to focus in and tailor our services to specific individual needs.”

Mayor is confident in “formula”

The initiative has been expensive. Including the start-up costs of acquiring and retrofitting properties like the former DoubleTree to turn them into suitable shelters, city officials expect to spend $154.8 million by the end of this year.

Next year, that startup spending will be in the rearview mirror. The program is expected to cost $57.5 million in 2025, city housing officials say.

Johnston has touted the city’s homelessness spending going down next year as a sign the program is stabilizing. But the recent audit cast a negative light on the city’s bookkeeping practices around homelessness shelters at large.

The audit covered not only the All In Mile High program but also emergency overnight shelters. Auditor Tim O’Brien’s office found that over more than two years, going back to before Johnston took office, the city didn’t clearly track how nearly $150 million in shelter spending was used.

“Without regular tracking of the department’s overall spending on homeless shelters, the department cannot effectively monitor or enforce accountability for shelter spending,” the audit report reads.

That report gave pause to people like Frey, in the West Colfax neighborhood. Over the last six months, Frey has heard from numerous neighbors about an increase in visible homelessness and aggressive behavior linked to drug use.

He and the neighborhood association are focused on making small differences, including by using micro-grants to improve lighting in alleys and encouraging neighbors to get to know each other and communicate about safety concerns. They’re also using the city’s 311 system to report problems, including neglected properties that have become magnets for bad behavior.

Frey emphasized that he views the problems in West Colfax as temporary and he wants the mayor’s homelessness initiative to succeed.

But, he added: “If you can’t tell the voters what their money is going toward, how can you demonstrate a return on investment? And we want that.”

Chandler, at the council committee meeting last month, laid out how forthcoming contracts for All In Mile High service providers will build on lessons learned this year. They will set standards for how many intake specialists, housing navigators and housing stability staff members will be needed to successfully hit housing placement goals. And they will set expectations for the generation of security needs assessments and plans for each site.

Johnston campaigned last year on a promise of ending street homelessness in Denver by the end of his first term in 2027. He says now that he believes the city has what it needs in the All In Mile High program.

“The formula is quite clear. We built it. We have the (shelter) units. We have the case management,” Johnston said. “The challenge is now to make sure the case management works really well — and then, of course, the next challenge is to make sure there are enough affordable units for people to move out to. That is the same challenge we see across the city.”

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