Denver is spending more than TWICE as much per homeless person than it does on a public school student, new report claims
The City of Denver may be spending more than twice per homeless person than it does on a public school student.
According to a report released Thursday by the Common Sense Institute in collaboration with researchers at the University of Colorado Denver, the City of Denver spends anywhere from $41,679 to $104,201 per homeless person, compared to $19,202 per K through 12 student.
The report also compared the figure to the average yearly rent for an apartment in Denver, which is $21,156 and the per capita income for an individual living in the Metro Denver area, which is $4,806.
The City of Denver may be spending more than twice what it does per homeless person than for a public school student according to a recent study. Pictured a homeless encampment being removed by city workers in April
Researchers with the Common Sense institute suggested the city's spending on the homeless may be excessive
Overall, the report notes that the Metro Denver Area, which includes the cities of Boulder, Denver and Aurora spends more than $481.1million on homelessness, with the vast majority of it - $434.6million - in the City of Denver.
That exceeds a handful of state-level department budgets in Colorado, such as the state's Labor & Employment agency, which has a fiscal year 2020-2021 budget of $259.3million.
It dwarfs the state's Military & Veterans Affairs Agency budget at $132.3million.
Researchers for the report say their figure comes from the amount the spent annually on shelters, supportive services, health care and public assistance for people experiencing homelessness.
They said their estimates likely undercount the true expenditures because their study does not capture charitable donations or support from public municipal agencies such as health care and emergency responders.
The study's researchers compared what they believe the city spends per homeless person to a number of other metrics, such as average household income and rent
The range in spending per homeless person is broad, the researchers say, because it is difficult to count the true number of homeless.
Using a variety of methods they estimate there are between 15,260 and 31,207 homeless people in the Metro Denver area.
For the city of Denver, a spokesperson for Mayor Michael Hancock, told the Denver Post that the city does not track spending for the homeless on a per-capita basis.
The report, however, also notes that the number of guests in homeless shelters, and by relation their capacity has increased in recent years, with 2,142 guests recorded in City of Denver in January 2021.
While the researchers acknowledged it was difficult to get a true count of the homeless in the area, metrics for guests in the homel
The reports researchers said they did not look into how much the Metro Denver city governments spent on the homeless compared to what it spends on stable housing initiatives.
The Post reported that in recent weeks Hancock's administration had conducted a number of homeless encampment sweeps, and this week released a 5-year-plan intended to combat homelessness, and place them in stable housing.
'The aim of all these steps and our entire strategy is to help as many of our unhoused residents as possible to enter housing — and to stay housed,' Hancock wrote in a letter along with the release of the plan.
'When homelessness occurs, we should do everything in our power — as a society, not just as a government — to make it brief and one-time.'