Three weeks past its own deadline, Denver still has no substantial, documented strategy in place to mitigate the spread of coronavirus among people experiencing homelessness.

Individuals are packing homeless shelters and continuing to gather in public, despite pleas from health officials for people to maintain safe distances from each other during the pandemic.

Denver has lined up about 150 individual rooms for an estimated 4,000 people without permanent housing. Next door, Aurora, which has a homeless population one-tenth the size, has secured at least 120 rooms.

Meanwhile, the number of people exhibiting symptoms and testing positive within Denver’s homeless population is rising. Six had tested positive for the virus as of Friday, according to Heather Burke, a city spokesperson — up from two last week. The numbers are likely low because of the widespread shortage of tests.

Denver’s lack of strategy puts an already vulnerable population at more risk as the pandemic worsens, experts say. Protective steps underway are either going in the wrong direction or moving far too slow, they say.

“If we act in the next few days, we might be able to protect this community, but it’s got to happen,” said Cathy Alderman, a spokesperson for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless.

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

At some of the Denver Rescue Mission’s shelters, beds are approximately 4 feet apart, spokesperson Alexxa Gagner said — far short of the 6-foot minimum “social distancing” that health officials are recommending.

Of the 150 additional individual rooms — called respite rooms — secured by Denver officials for those needing isolation to quarantine while awaiting test results or to rest while exhibiting symptoms, 91 are currently occupied, Burke said.

Additional group shelter space is available for symptomatic people experiencing homelessness, and so far 15 of those 48 available beds are taken, said Derek Woodbury spokesperson for Denver’s Department of Housing Stability.

Department officials have said they’re working to find hundreds more rooms, but Chief Housing Officer Britta Fisher has estimated Denver could need thousands. The city is now preparing to open a larger temporary shelter to relieve the pressure on the system.

Housing the homeless is a challenge in the best of times, said Dr. Sandy Johnson, director of the University of Denver’s school of global health affairs.

“Now we have this crisis where we’re forgetting about the most vulnerable people in our population,” she said.

While Denver is behind the curve, so is the rest of the country, said Tristia Bauman, a senior attorney with the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.

Denver’s strategy

The first case of coronavirus in the United States hit a man in his 30s in the Seattle area around Jan. 21 after he returned from a trip to Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began.

But Denver officials didn’t adopt an action plan for COVID-19, the highly contagious respiratory illness caused by the virus, until March 5. That was the same day the state announced the first two cases of COVID-19 in Colorado. That plan called for the development by March 13 of a strategy to manage cases of the virus among the homeless population.

Asked for that strategy this week, city officials said there is no document.

Rather, officials establish an objective and the tasks needed to accomplish it, which are then delegated to Denver’s Emergency Operations Center, said city spokesperson Ryan Luby. The ongoing strategy for the homeless is to expand existing shelter and supplemental shelter space and to add more individual “respite rooms.”

City officials have taken steps meant to help the homeless, said Terese Howard, a spokesperson for Denver Homeless Out Loud, but she questioned whether that amounts to an actual strategy.

“The whole nation and world has been told to stay at home, separate yourself from others,” Howard said. “When it comes to homelessness, all those rules seem to change. They say ‘Oh, you can just keep your mats at the shelter three feet apart. Just wash the doorknobs every hour.’”

Denver does appear to have a strategy for assisted living and congregate care facilities, under which homeless shelters might fall. Again, however, there’s not a specific document, and the strategy offered by city officials is only eight vague sentences long.

It describes Denver’s partnerships with public health organizations to corral the needed experts, aligning with those organizations “to implement certain restrictions and control measures to keep residents and staff safe.”

Examples include limiting group activities, regularly disinfecting commonly touched surfaces and recommending that health care providers wear personal protective gear so that they don’t contract the virus. The brief outline also describes calling those facilities regularly for case updates and symptom overviews.

“Maybe it’s an information strategy, but it is not a strategy for how to address the crisis of a virus spreading among the population of people experiencing homelessness,” Alderman said.

More shelter space planned

In the meantime, city officials appear poised to consolidate shelter space at a larger facility that has yet to be named, though the Colorado Convention Center and the National Western complex are among the facilities under consideration.

“It’s still not going to be enough,” Howard said. “You’re still going to have close to 2,000 people in one facility. That’s not quite the standards we’re trying to meet in this nation.”

Officials from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment did not respond when asked whether the department — which is leading the statewide effort against the coronavirus — agrees with Denver’s consolidated shelter strategy.

Instead of creating more shelter space, homeless advocates said, the city should be securing more individual spaces. Late last year the Apartment Association of Metro Denver estimated a 4.7% vacancy rate among the area’s more than 350,000 units, totaling more than 16,000 vacant units.

Denver Homeless Out Loud and partner organizations in Fort Collins and Boulder filed a request in Denver County District Court on Wednesday to order Gov. Jared Polis to use available properties for emergency housing, Howard said. A spokesperson for Polis did not say whether the governor is considering such an order.

Another approach, Johnson said, would be for the city to allow outdoor homeless encampments as the weather warms, and to provide showers and restrooms. If scores of portable restrooms can be made available for outdoor concerts and events, she said, surely the city could do the same in this case.

No major American city has a well-rounded strategy for protecting people without housing during the pandemic, Bauman said, but some have promising aspects of a strategy. Los Angeles, for example, enacted a moratorium on vehicle ticketing, towing and impounding, offering relief for the many who live out of their cars.

Denver lifted many of its parking restrictions, which Bauman applauded. But still, she said, much more work is needed.