KOA Headlines
12 06 24 Denver Mayor Johnston on opening of affordable housing at Northfield Flats
"Alright, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird-shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the Bartetian." "Bartetian?" "It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites too. I just got it for 50 off. So, how 'bout a clasma-palatin? Or a mistletoe margarita?" "I'm thirsty." "Watch." "I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength, and…" "Wow. It's beginning to feel more seasonal in here already." If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartetian, because Bartetian crafts every cocktail perfectly, in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off. "Tis the season to be jolly-er." Add some holiday flavor to every celebration, with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker Bartetian. Pick up your phone and shake it to get $50 off any cocktail maker. "Yes, you heard me. Shake your phone and get $50 off. Don't delay." I don't know if you know this, but when you don't have time to read the Washington Post, you can listen to it. Almost every article has a listening option. And right now, you can become a Washington Post subscriber for just 50 cents a week. It's an incredible deal. Stay on top of what's happening by signing up at washingtonpost.com/pod. 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 iHeart Christmas and North Pole Radio. The Roku Channel is available on all Roku devices, web, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, Samsung TVs, and the Roku mobile app on iOS and Android devices. So stream what you love and turn up the cheer with iHeart Radio on the Roku Channel. Happy streaming! Right now on Colorado's Morning News, affordable housing continues to be a struggle in the Denver area, but a new rental community adding to the number of units available for residences, a positive and a net in the right side. Joining us now on the KOA common-spirit health hotline to talk more about it is Denver Mayor Mike Johnston. Mr. Mayor, thank you so much for your time this morning. Good morning, y'all. How are you? Doing well, doing well. This week, we celebrated the grand opening of Northfield Flats in the Central Park neighborhood. Can you tell us a little bit more about that building and what else is being done in order to push for more affordable housing options in the city? Yeah, it's a great example of exactly what we want to do when we talk about affordable housing. I think sometimes people have a misperception to affordable housing as for, you know, folks come out of the homeless, that's for people on there in their toughest spots, and it's really fun. And this was opened up in Northfield up in the Central Park area. It serves folks who work at the airport who work in those retail shops and the restaurants in that neighborhood, and it's just seamlessly integrated into the neighborhood. You drive by and there's apartment buildings all around. You couldn't tell which ones are market, which ones are affordable, but if you're in a market, you didn't, you're paying $2,500 a month. If you're in one of these units, you're paying $1,500. It's got great amenities, access to public transit. And if you're, you know, if you're someone working baggage at the airport or working at the movie theater, you know, a place where you can stay in Denver and stay affordable. And so that's what we want a lot more of is making sure our workers in the city can stay here. That's another 200 units. We're going to be on path to think open 3,000 other units this year. And we think that's the key to making this city that we love, one that people can still afford to live in if they're hard workers here. Any other initiatives like that for other locations within the city to build something similar to what you're doing with Northfield flats? We do. We have, gosh, probably 20 or 30 of these going all around the city. And so we'll open a value on that. That was almost 200 units. We're open about 3,000 total this year. So we'll probably have another 15 or so of those. It'll come open or have over the course of the year. And then we'll keep trying to find more and more partners to help develop more of these. And in a lot of these buildings, it'll be mixed income. You might have 100 units and 70 of them are regular market rate. And you just have 20 or 30 units in that building that are set aside to be affordable. So then you'd have doctors living in the market unit and a nurse living in the unit that's subsized across the hallway. And so we're trying to do a lot more of getting away from what people think of as affordable housing 40 years ago and move towards more just beautiful apartment buildings. We're inside. You got some units that are market and some that are affordable. Mr. Mayor, we're now into the month of December, which is the last final month and trying to wrap up the All in Mile High initiative, or at least the hopes of getting 2,000 people into housing units. Where do we stand on that and when it comes to just the homelessness issues that continue in the city? Yeah, you know, we're really excited about the progress there. We've already cleared over 2,000. We're almost at 2,200 people that we've moved off the streets and indoors. Also important that we we've closed all 20 of the large encampments around the city. And more and more of those folks are now moving through our system and into permanent housing. And so that's a real success for us. You might have seen the reports this week that 911 calls and criminal reports are down dramatically. They're down about 66% at any of these sites. And so we think our supports have gotten better. People are using the resources more. We still have all of downtown and central Denver without any encampments in them. And we're working every day to house more and more folks that are what I call ones and twos. If you got two guys sleeping under a bridge or in a alleyway somewhere, we're getting those folks now off the streets and into housing. So we're making real progress. We're pushing hard by the end of the year to try to get every one of the veterans we have on our streets who want housing, access to housing. So we're optimistic the next few weeks we could be the largest city to get to what we call functional zero, which means every veteran that needs a bed has access to one. What are the current numbers? I think the last time you did the point in time account was August, if I recall. And it was up from what it was the year before. Do we know the current numbers now and where are the numbers heading at this point? Or is it stasis? It was actually down. So we were down about 13% year over year overall. But what we saw was massive change in the places that we're targeting. So we really focused in year one on getting these encampments closed and getting people out of tents. We saw about a 50% decline in the number of people that were intense and encampments around the city. And we also really focused on families this year. And that was really exciting. We have an 83% reduction in just one year and the number of families that are homeless. So we're making really great progress on those. Now we see more folks that might be living in cars. That's an area we're focused on now, as well as again, these people that aren't in encampments, but they're in just small pockets of one or two people around the city. And so that's our focus now. It's fine on these smaller groups and getting them housed. But headed in the right direction, we were at 1400 two years ago. We dropped to about 1300 this year. It's the first time in the history of the count that the city's population has actually declined. So I think that was a real dramatic turnaround for us and when we're proud of. Mr. Mayor, we didn't have a chance to chat last week for Thanksgiving holiday, but there is a story that we need to address that's gotten national attention as of late as President Elect Trump's pick for borders. Our Tom Holman has been saying that he's willing to put you in jail over your vow to protect migrants in the city. Are you worried about any of those possible consequences from the statements you've made? Yeah, I'm not. And you know, I've tried to be real clear about what we're saying here, which is if we are talking about addressing folks who are violent criminals in the city and reporting those folks, we have been doing that. We will keep doing that. We will partner with the administration to identify violent criminals and deport them. We think that's common sense and we'll keep doing it. You know, if we are talking about other changes to policy that make it easier for folks to get access to work authorization, we will help do that. We obviously are not going to get into a military conflict with the federal government. We're not going to deploy our police department or anything else against them. What I did say is I do think it would be a major breach of law. It would be illegal. It would be immoral. It would be un-American if Trump does what he says, which is if he's going to deploy the 101st airborne into Denver to round up 12 year old girls out of hatred history classes and deport them, I do not think anyone in the U.S. signed up for that or anticipated that. Most Republican senators have said they would vehemently oppose that. So I think that's the language we're worried about is we do not think that proudly serving American soldiers signed up to round up kids from middle schools around Denver. And so we don't think they should do that and we wouldn't support that. But if they're talking about focusing on violent criminals, we'll be happy to help. We've been doing that previously. We do it going forward. Quick follow up. I'm kind of sure I know the answer, but I'll ask anyway. It says, Tom Homan, anybody potentially that will be with him and part of the new movement going in with him, have they reached out to you all just even to have a conversation clear the year or talk more? They have not, but again, I'm always open to talking, always open to working together. I reached out to the governor of Texas in the past on this stuff. So I think we're looking for common sense solutions. I think Denverites are. But I think focusing on violent criminals is a reasonable strategy. You know, what I just remind people is that, you know, 65% of folks that are undocumented are working right now in jobs and 30% of them are children. And so that is the major bulk of the population. If you're focusing on violent criminals, great. That's, you know, less than 1% of the population of migrants and of residents. And so that's a very different strategy. That's when we could partner on. It's the roundup of people that are on the job and people that are in schools. I don't think makes sense for any business owners in the country or in the past school teachers. Mr. Mayor, two part question for you, both positive and negative because Broncos Monday night win was awesome to see and all the shots that we saw of Monday night football really put a nice, uh, shedding nice light on the city when we saw the skyline and the holiday lights and things like that. But locally, we also saw something that was flying in the sky, a banner that said Mike Johnson hearts crime. Your response to both of those pretty much. The second one I'd laugh. I know there's an effort by a white supremacist and felon who is working on hard, I think, to try to raise drama about our leadership. I'm always happy to be in the side fighting against white supremacist and felon. So I'm not too worried about that effort. But on the Broncos front was a fantastic night. I mean, I think that was one of the best Broncos games I can remember in a long time. I think I haven't been as happy on that past MIMS as I was since P. Bow through to the Marius Thomas for 80 yards against the Steelers. And so, just a fantastic night for Denver football. And yeah, we do love what Monday night football does for the city is you got, you know, 50 million people around the country looking at the skyline saying, gosh, that's a great place for me to either go visit or take my family for vacation or maybe I should want to live there someday. So it was a great profile of city and great profile of the Broncos and we're proud of both fronts. And quick follow up to that. Are you saying that this person, the white supremacist alleged and felon, this is somebody you think is behind the banner? Oh, yeah, I think it's the same effort. And so I think that's, I think that's what they've been engaged in. I think they were working on other protest efforts against me. And, you know, that's fine. I realize these jobs are not without people to get upset. But this is not a serious individual. This is a felon and white supremacist. I'm not going to waste a lot of time on Denver. Mayor Mike Johnson, real quick and wrapping up with you. Will you be taking part in the parade of lights this weekend? We are. I will be there Saturday night for the parade of lights and my family folks should come. It is a fantastic chance to come to downtown Denver and see all the amazing stores that are reopened. We got about a third of the 16th Street Mall now reopened. It is a really fun gathering. So bring, bring your family, come on down. Love to see you Saturday night. Denver Mayor Mike Johnson, thank you. Thanks so much, y'all. All right. We're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the Partition. Partition? It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites too. I just got it for 50 off. So, how about a clausemopolitan or a mistletoe margarita? I'm thirsty. Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength and... Wow, it's beginning to feel more seasonal in here already. If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off. Tis the season to be jolly-er. Add some holiday flavor to every celebration, with a sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker, Bartesian. Pick up your phone and shake it to get $50 off any cocktail maker. Yes, you heard me. Shake your phone and get $50 off. Don't delay. I have a way to make your morning more efficient. You can get caught up on the news in about seven minutes. That is my promise to you as the host of the seven podcast from The Washington Post. And in that time, I will run down seven stories, everything from the most important headlines to fascinating new information you might miss otherwise. My name's Hannah Jule. Go follow the seven right now, wherever you're listening. And we will get you caught up. 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 TVs, and the Roku mobile app on iOS and Android devices. So stream what you love and turn up that cheer with iHeartRadio on the Roku channel. Happy streaming!