KOA Headlines
11 22 24 Denver Mayor Johnston on audit showing gaps in homeless shelter spending
But there's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one. Member FDIC. If you put aside 25 cents every week for a year, what could you get at the end? A few cups of coffee maybe? A candle? Or you could get a year of the best reporting from all over the world. Go to washingtonpost.com/bf24 right now. You'll get a Washington Post subscription for 25 cents a week for your first year. This is a Black Friday sale, so it won't last long. It's beginning to sound a lot like the holidays! The Roku Channel, your home for free and premium TV, is giving you access to holiday music and genre-based stations from iHeart all for free. Find the soundtrack of the season with channels like iHeartChristmas and North Pole Radio. The Roku Channel is available on all Roku devices, web, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, Samsung TV, and the Roku mobile app on iOS and Android devices. So stream what you love and turn up the cheer with iHeartRadio on the Roku Channel. Happy streaming! Now on Colorado's Morning News, a new report from the City Auditor's Office says Denver has spent $150 million in sheltering homeless people, but also states that that number was pretty difficult to track. Also raising concerns about the safety and security of some of the city-run shelters and joining us now to talk about this more KOA Common Spirit Health Hotline is where we find Denver Mayor Mike Johnston. Mr. Mayor, glad to have you back on with this. I just want to start from jump. Do you think there's enough accountability in the Department of Housing Stability when you see this audit? We do. We have worked hard to tighten that. I got to say, Marty, when we looked at this report, we agree with a lot of it. There's a bit like KOA issue report saying, "We suggest the Broncos should consider moving on from Russell Wilson and looking for a long-term franchise quarterback that's young and works with our offense." We knew that a year ago, we've been working at these for the last nine months, all these improvements are in place. We are seeing far better outcomes. We've gotten more people exited out of these all insights into housing in the last 60 days than we have in the last six months before that combined. We put in new systems, new security, new support, new tracking. It is working now as we wanted it to, and we've been ahead of this for about a year. Mr. Mayor, $150 million is a lot of money that they just said was pretty difficult to just find where it went, what it happened, where it goes. Why now? Why was this all conducted and what was the end results and clarification that we have going forward? Yeah. To be clear, they're looking at spending over the last four years. A lot of this audit was practices that were started in the previous administration that we weren't even a part of, and important to know that as people remember in the budget, we've actually cut our spending on homelessness by about $70 million from this year in 2024 to next year in 2025. Our expenditures are down. Our results are up, our security is stronger. These are all things that were part of the process. We knew last year we would spend more money because we were acquiring units. We were buying hotels, we were building tiny home villages. Those were one-time capital costs, but we knew we could bring down long-term the total cost of the program. That's what we've done. We've dropped it by about $70 million going into next year, so those are four-year totals, but our costs are down dramatically and our outcomes are up. The security and safety piece of this audit, what have you done? What are you going to do to make that better, more efficient, more practical? We had sites where we had asked providers to set security practices in place. We weren't satisfied with those, and so we intervened in those sites and we changed those practices ourselves. We now have cameras, we now have security guards at the doors. We now have done room searches for weapons. We have metal detectors on the way in, and so we've really wrapped it up. Security is the same way you would if you go into the airport, and that's been really successful for us, and we're really insisting on making sure that every one of the individuals at these sites are safe. The security measures piece really focused on the former double-tree hotel that had three reported shootings, two resulting in death back in March. Was it insufficient security from the start? Was it something that needed to be addressed sooner? We had put in clear expectations what we wanted to have at those sites. As you know, when you convert a hotel, which you think about a hotel you go to, it's got seven or eight entrances and exits. It's different than a secure facility, and so there were some accommodations that needed to happen, but there were, you know, sometimes there are people that do work in the space or ambivalent about what kind of security protection should be in place. It should be the same as walking into your house, where you don't have a metal detector because that is what home should feel like, but when you have large facilities with a lot of folks with a lot of needs, we think it's important to have more heightened security. So we had pushed for that. It didn't happen as fast or as rigorously as we wanted to, and so we stepped in and took over and put all those pieces in place, and now we feel good about it. Mr. Mayor, while we have you on, we're going to pivot a little bit here. We saw you in the news recently talking about the discussion of President-elect Trump with mass deportation, saying he's going to do it on day one. You as a city leader, where does the law begin and end with what you can and can't do with that? Yeah, and I think there, I've had some questions. Let's be clear. Denver has no plan to be in armed conflict with the federal government. No, we do have any desire to do that. That is not our purpose. But I also think it's important for people to realize what the president is talking about. He's talking about rounding up 12 million Americans. It's more than the entire population of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, combined. And these are folks that have been here for 10, 15, 20 years. 60% of them are working on the job. A quarter of them are kids, and he's talking about using the US military to do it. So that would be taking a soldier from Ford Carson and bringing them back into their hometown to take a 13-year-old girl out of a high school class in North High School and put her in handcuffs. I don't think anyone in America signed up for that. I think that would be illegal. That would be immoral. That would be an American. So we would not participate or support that. But we think there are lots of ways that we can try to prevent it, and that's what we hope to do. You had a quote in the Denver rights that has gained some traction on social media, saying Denver police would be stationed at the county line. Tens of thousands of Denver rights would also be joining in to stop federal forces out of the city. What did you mean by that? Yeah, and I think that's what I was trying to clarify. We have no plan for federal conflict. We have no desire for on conflict. But I do think what people are not realizing is that if you're talking about 100,000 people across the metro area have been here for 20 years, if you were talking about actually deploying the US military to show up at King Supers and pull people out of the line in front of you or to show up at a high school baseball game and pull a mom out of the crowd or to show up at the hospital and take a mom away from her kid who's getting treatment. I don't think Denver rights are going to stand by and accept that, nor do I think residents of any part of the country would. I mean, you think about last time we saw something like this was the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, and that has been a stain on this country for 80 years, and that was a time of war. And so, you know, our governor Ralph Carp stood up and opposed that, that time then. I think that the president will find a whole set of governors and mayors and regular citizens who would oppose that kind of roundup of residents. Final question from us just in a rare, I know tonight is an important night downtown Denver kicking off the holiday season, share about some of the festivities they're going to be taking place, not only tonight, but getting underway for the holiday season this year in the city. Yes, I'm looking at it outside. It's going to be fantastic. We're opening the Chris Crindall market tonight. We all have some young people here to help me light this giant tree in Civic Center Park. It is a great place to come shop, eat your way through the Chris kind of market over the next few weeks. We'll obviously have the parade of lights coming. So there's a whole set of wonderful holiday activities happening in the city. So come on downtown and check it out. People have a great time. Mr. Mayor, I have to applaud those drone shows that we have downtown now too, because those are pretty incredible for sure. I'm so glad you like them. Yeah, we'll have those heading up throughout the winter. So come downtown and you can catch a fantastic drone show. Mayor Mike Johnston, thank you. Thanks for having me. There's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank, you deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one member FDIC. If you put aside 25 cents every week for a year, what could you get at the end? A few cups of coffee maybe, a candle, or you could get a year of the best reporting from all over the world. Go to washingtonpost.com/bf24 right now. You'll get a Washington Post subscription for 25 cents a week for your first year. This is a Black Friday sale, so it won't last long. It's beginning to sound a lot like the holidays. The Roku Channel, your home for free and premium TV, is giving you access to holiday music and genre-based stations from iHeart all for free. Find the soundtrack of the season with channels like iHeartChristmas and North Pole Radio. The Roku Channel is available on all Roku devices, web, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, Samsung TV's, and the Roku mobile app on iOS and Android devices. So stream what you love and turn up the cheer with iHeartRadio on the Roku Channel. Happy streaming!