By Joe Rubino
The Denver Post Denver homeless shelter
(The Denver Post) — 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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