Things aren’t going great in the sanctuary city of Denver, where a $60 million budget deficit has forced it to shut down several migrant shelters and scale back some services for illegal immigrants. Instead of changing its sanctuary city policy, however, Denver is begging local property owners to rent to illegal immigrants, to whom it refers as “newcomers.”
The move came as the mayor of Denver, Mike Johnston, said that the city needs to reign in its massive budget deficit, and so will be shuttering shelters and consolidating other existing ones in an attempt to better fund city services. So, the sanctuary city needs a new way to house the many migrants who have flocked to it, and property owners are being encouraged to fill the gap.
Those requests for landlords to welcome the illegal immigrant “newcomers” came alongside a data-gathering operation that requested property owners with vacancies that would rent for less than $2,000 a month to inform the city of those vacancies, presumably so they could be used for housing the illegal immigrants.
Mayor Johnston, discussing what is to be done about the migrant situation, said, “For ongoing housing, we’re trying to do more and better at the case navigation that gets people directly from shelter opportunities into housing, or into workforce options for normal travel, and so that continues to be our focus and it’s been successful for us over the last five weeks.”
Similarly, Denver Human Services employee Jon Ewing spoke to Fox 31 about how the city is working to house migrants with a $2,000 a month budget cap for housing units, hence the vacancies for the $2k program. He said, “We put out a feeler to all the landlords we have connections with. Basically said, ‘listen, we’re going to have some newcomers who are going to need housing.'” He added, “We’ve got kind of a rent cap — $2,000.”
Ewing then added that the city’s illegal immigrant population living in shelters has fallen from a January high of 4,500 to under half of that, saying, “We’re at below 1,800 right now, which is the first time that number’s been that low since September.”
Further, Ewing said that many of the migrants are now looking into furnishing apartments, which he characterized as being better than them living in the shelters. He said, “A lot of those posts have now been replaced by, hey, I now need to furnish my apartment, what do I do? And so it’s a good problem to have when that’s what you’re running into.”
He added that the city has obtained work permits for many of the illegal immigrants, which in turn has led to them being able to afford living in apartments rather than shelters. “1,300 people right now, over the last two weeks or so, that we’ve been able to help get their work permits,” Ewing told Fox 31. “That’s a huge step,” he added.
Denver has seen massive costs thanks to its sanctuary city policy. It has so far, Fox 31 reports, supported nearly 39,000 migrants at a cost of about $58 million, with Venezuelans reportedly making up the vast majority of those who have migrated to the city.
Watch the report on Denver’s housing situation here:
"*" indicates required fields