John Kenady climbs out of his 1977 four-tone Chevy van in a Long­mont church park­ing lot, his leashed Rot­tweil­er, Bel­la, and black-and-white cat, Rob­bie, in tow.

Sev­er­al emp­ty plas­tic bot­tles fall from the pas­sen­ger seat of his over­stuffed home on wheels, bounc­ing on to the pave­ment. Kenady picks them up and heads into the church for a hot meal and to use the bath­room — one of 11 home­less peo­ple using this park­ing lot as a secure overnight sleep­ing spot.

“It gives me a place to show­er; it gives me a place to eat,” said the 67-year-old mechan­ic, who has been side­lined from work by a debil­i­tat­ing injury he sus­tained 20 years ago. “It’s great.”

Kenady is one of the faces of home­less­ness in metro Den­ver — liv­ing not on the streets or in a shel­ter but out of his vehi­cle. And he’s nowhere near the down­town Den­ver encamp­ments most read­i­ly asso­ci­at­ed with peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness, but deep in the suburbs.

He’s been sleep­ing aside the church since June, when the SafeLot pro­gram was launched by HOPE, a home­less out­reach orga­ni­za­tion in Long­mont. A staff mem­ber with the orga­ni­za­tion stays each night at the church to ensure the safe­ty of those park­ing there.

“It’s been full basi­cal­ly since we opened,” said Renee Ikemire, pro­gram man­ag­er with HOPE.

Yet, even with inno­v­a­tive con­cepts like “safe park­ing” to accom­mo­date the increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple lack­ing sta­ble shel­ter in and around Den­ver, social ser­vice offi­cials and home­less advo­cates wor­ry that the ongo­ing coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic — with its dev­as­tat­ing eco­nom­ic impacts — will stymie progress on get­ting and keep­ing peo­ple housed.

Of spe­cial con­cern is an evic­tion freeze — put in place in Sep­tem­ber by the U.S. Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion in direct response to the pan­dem­ic — that’s sched­uled to expire at the end of the year. Gov. Jared Polis ear­li­er this month extend­ed a statewide evic­tion mora­to­ri­um for anoth­er 30 days.

“When (the fed­er­al) mora­to­ri­um lifts, I think we’re going to see a huge wave of evic­tions,” said Cathy Alder­man, a spokes­woman for the Col­orado Coali­tion for the Home­less. “It’s going to be a flood of peo­ple enter­ing homelessness.”

Between 150,000 and 230,000 house­holds in the state could be at risk of evic­tion by Dec. 31, accord­ing to a report issued in Octo­ber by Colorado’s Spe­cial Evic­tion Pre­ven­tion Task Force, formed this sum­mer by Polis through an exec­u­tive order.

The pan­dem­ic-dri­ven fall­out is already hit­ting com­mu­ni­ties sur­round­ing Den­ver, said Matt Mey­er, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Metro Den­ver Home­less Initiative.

“The sub­urbs are now see­ing an increase in vis­i­ble home­less­ness,” he said.

Just last week, the Ara­pa­hoe Coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers passed a mea­sure to use up to $200,000 in Com­mu­ni­ty Devel­op­ment Block Grant mon­ey to give hotel vouch­ers to peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness as part of an effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

“Debt is crippling”

The Den­ver metro area has pri­mar­i­ly count­ed its home­less pop­u­la­tion through the annu­al point-in-time sur­vey — a one-night, on-the-street tal­ly of those with­out shelter.

This year’s sur­vey, con­duct­ed in late Jan­u­ary, showed a steady increase in home­less­ness, from 5,317 in 2018 to 6,104 this year. There were notice­able surges in Dou­glas and Boul­der coun­ties, as well as in Aurora.

And all of that was before COVID-19 hit in March.

“I am fear­ful of the extent of home­less­ness in the sub­urbs,” said Daniel Bris­son, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Hous­ing and Home­less­ness Research at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Den­ver. “I am wor­ried that when our next counts of home­less­ness come out — in the sub­urbs, rur­al areas and in the cities — it will be con­sid­er­ably high­er than pre­vi­ous counts.”

The point-in-time sur­vey is sub­ject to weath­er con­di­tions and is lim­it­ed by how many peo­ple choose to spend that night out­side. The Metro Den­ver Home­less Ini­tia­tive has pro­duced a more com­pre­hen­sive, first-of-its-kind “State of Home­less­ness” report, released last month.

The report shows that more than 31,200 peo­ple in metro Den­ver accessed ser­vices or hous­ing sup­ports relat­ed to home­less­ness from July 2019 through June 2020. It also found that there are near­ly 13,000 stu­dents iden­ti­fied by school dis­tricts as expe­ri­enc­ing homelessness.

And peo­ple of col­or are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed by home­less­ness through­out the metro area.

Mean­while, the unique chal­lenges of a pan­dem­ic cou­pled with metro Denver’s already-high home costs — rents hit by COVID-19 ear­li­er this year began inch­ing back up in the most recent quar­ter — con­tin­ue to wreak hav­oc on hous­ing sta­bil­i­ty. An evic­tion mora­to­ri­um doesn’t erase ten­ants’ finan­cial oblig­a­tions, even if they’re out of work because of the pandemic.

“They’re going to have accu­mu­lat­ed a lot of back rent that needs to be paid, and they’re not going to have the means to do that,” Mey­er said.

That’s a famil­iar sit­u­a­tion to Cassie Ratliff, pro­grams direc­tor of the home­less­ness pro­gram at Fam­i­ly Tree in Jef­fer­son Coun­ty. Not all of those with­out a home in the coun­ty are job­less, she said, but they are often employed in low-income work that doesn’t keep up with costs.

“I don’t know of any­one come Jan­u­ary with $6,000 to pay the land­lord,” Ratliff said. “We see peo­ple who have enough mon­ey to pay for a hotel room, but they can’t get out of that sit­u­a­tion because every­thing goes to that. That debt is crippling.”

Accord­ing to Jef­fer­son County’s 2019 Com­pre­hen­sive Home­less Count, the medi­an home val­ue in the coun­ty is 5.13 times greater than the medi­an annu­al house­hold income. That com­pares to a 3.71 mul­ti­pli­er for that same cat­e­go­ry in the Unit­ed States as a whole.

“For income lev­els in Jef­fer­son Coun­ty to be com­pat­i­ble with hous­ing costs, rel­a­tive to the nation­al aver­age, the medi­an annu­al house­hold income in Jef­fer­son Coun­ty would need to increase 31%, from $85,890 to $112,421,” the report stated.

The coun­ty found in its count last sum­mer that there were 997 peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness — 668 of whom met the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment def­i­n­i­tion of lit­er­al home­less­ness, mean­ing they were in an emer­gency shel­ter, tran­si­tion­al hous­ing or a place not meant for human habitation.

Near­ly two-thirds of those sur­veyed as home­less in Jef­fer­son Coun­ty report­ed hav­ing a dis­abling con­di­tion, includ­ing a seri­ous men­tal ill­ness, dis­abil­i­ty, sub­stance use dis­or­der, HIV/AIDS, or chron­ic health problems.

Ratliff said the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic turns those com­pli­ca­tions into a warn­ing sign for fur­ther trou­ble as case num­bers in Col­orado mount.

“Peo­ple who are home­less are extreme­ly vul­ner­a­ble — a lot of them have under­ly­ing issues and are old­er than 65,” she said.

New shelter in Aurora

Across town in Auro­ra, home­less­ness has received polit­i­cal atten­tion of late. January’s point-in-time sur­vey count­ed 427 peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness in Colorado’s third-largest city — up from 357 in 2018. 

May­or Mike Coff­man has been vocal in his con­cern about Aurora’s bur­geon­ing home­less encamp­ments, tweet­ing pho­tos last month of garbage-strewn areas in the city and say­ing he wants Auro­ra to be “more aggres­sive about clos­ing down these encamp­ments once we have an alter­nate place for them to go.”

Trash and Home­less Encamp­ments pic.twitter.com/xZE3myhARy

— May­or Mike Coff­man (@AuroraMayorMike) Octo­ber 12, 2020

Ear­li­er this month, the city announced that it will open a win­ter emer­gency shel­ter with a capac­i­ty of 100 peo­ple and room for social dis­tanc­ing. The con­vert­ed ware­house in north­west Auro­ra opens on Tues­day and will oper­ate through April.

It will include a safe park­ing area and space for tents to accom­mo­date those “who are not com­fort­able in an indoor con­gre­gate set­ting but still would like access to a secure area with ser­vices,” accord­ing to a city press release.

Auro­ra also held a vir­tu­al open­ing cer­e­mo­ny recent­ly for the new 60-bed Renais­sance Vet­er­ans Apart­ments at Fitzsi­mons, a per­ma­nent sup­port­ive hous­ing unit for veterans.

While there’s been talk of enact­ing a camp­ing ban in Auro­ra, as has hap­pened in Den­ver, Boul­der, Park­er and Cen­ten­ni­al, a for­mal pro­pos­al to do so has not been put for­ward. In the mean­time, Aurora’s direc­tor of hous­ing and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, Jes­si­ca Pross­er, said the city has tapped $3 mil­lion in fed­er­al COVID-19 pan­dem­ic mon­ey to help peo­ple out with mort­gage and rent payments.

“What’s crit­i­cal is to keep housed those who are already housed,” she said. “It’s more expen­sive to rehouse someone.”

At the state lev­el, offi­cials have spent $25 mil­lion of $33 mil­lion in fed­er­al Coro­n­avirus Aid, Relief, and Eco­nom­ic Secu­ri­ty, or CARES, mon­ey to help with rental and mort­gage assis­tance across Colorado.

Ali­son George, , a top offi­cial with the Col­orado Divi­sion of Hous­ing, echoed Prosser’s thoughts on the impor­tance of keep­ing peo­ple from los­ing a roof over their heads to begin with.

“All of these pro­grams are focused on keep­ing peo­ple sta­bly housed,” George said.

“Not quite home”

And there is help for those who no longer have per­ma­nent shel­ter, said Chelsey Bak­er-Hauck, co-founder of the Col­orado Safe Park­ing Initiative.

The orga­ni­za­tion, whose goal is to estab­lish areas for peo­ple to safe­ly park and sleep overnight, launched this past spring. It has loca­tions in Long­mont, Arva­da and Broom­field, with plans to expand south­ward. The Gold­en City Coun­cil recent­ly dis­cussed open­ing a safe park­ing site there, as well.

“Our hope is to con­tin­ue scal­ing this up,” Bak­er-Hauck said. “This is a solu­tion for a pop­u­la­tion that hasn’t been served well or ful­ly. It’s tai­lored to indi­vid­ual needs, and the goal is to meet them where they are.”

The Col­orado Safe Park­ing Ini­tia­tive most­ly works with church­es will­ing to open their lots — just as it’s church­es that have stepped up to allow sanc­tioned home­less encamp­ments in Den­ver. Typ­i­cal­ly, a safe-park­ing site per­mits few­er than 10 cars, Bak­er-Hauck said, though the orga­ni­za­tion has to work with each city on zon­ing and oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry issues.

“These are hid­den in plain sight,” she said of the park­ing sites.

Bak­er-Hauck said many of those fac­ing home­less­ness in the sub­urbs have cars to get around tran­sit-chal­lenged areas but work ser­vice jobs that don’t cov­er the cost of per­ma­nent housing.

“These are the peo­ple work­ing at your gas sta­tion or hus­tling on food deliv­ery runs and then going back to their cars to sleep at night,” she said.

Then there is Kenady, who is too injured to work any­more. Call­ing Boul­der Coun­ty home for more than half a cen­tu­ry, he said he has found respite wher­ev­er he can since becom­ing home­less — house sit­ting, couch surf­ing and sleep­ing in his van in what­ev­er qui­et spot he could find.

But he’s thank­ful for the safe park­ing pro­gram in Long­mont, which has allowed him an extra mea­sure of assur­ance and con­ve­nience as he drifts off every night.

“It’s not quite mom and dad’s house, but it’s close,” Kenady said.