Aurora lawmakers stall mayor’s homelessness plan over amendment controversy

AURORA | Aurora City Council conservatives threatened to walk away from Mayor Mike Coffman’s “work-first” plan for addressing homelessness Monday night, after he endorsed amended language brought by progressives.

Councilmember Juan Marcano on Monday repeated that he was uncomfortable with putting conditions on aid offered to the homeless. He argued it would lead to the city helping fewer people.

“I’m trying to ensure that in any project that we invest public resources, and our time, and our residents’ trust in, that we’re doing everything we can to serve the maximum population possible,” Marcano said.

“As we’re looking for partnership here with our surrounding jurisdictions, we need to ensure we’re not leaving folks out, and I would hate for us to lose this opportunity because we’re shutting the door on certain segments of the population.”

Coffman supported some of Marcano’s amendments, saying he did not think they significantly changed his plan and that he had spoken about them with a representative of the Colorado Springs Rescue Mission, which he described as a model for how the City of Aurora should approach homelessness.

Councilmember Francoise Bergan and others said they were committed to the language in Coffman’s proposal that said homeless people must meet certain conditions before receiving more significant help, such as transitional housing.

“It does no good to put people in housing that are going to continue to have mental health problems, continue to have drug addiction problems, and never really fully realize their life,” Bergan said.

She and Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky threatened to vote “no” on the plan as a whole if Marcano’s amendments were incorporated into the plan.

At a study session last week, Coffman brought forth an outline for addressing homelessness in the city, described as “work-first” for the fact that participation in drug treatment, employment programs and other services will be introduced as conditions for aid beyond emergency shelter and other essentials.

The plan includes:

• Creating conditions for accessing transitional housing and incentives for using support services.
• Quantifying the city’s success at addressing homelessness based on the number of clients who have achieved self-sufficiency.
• Consolidating homelessness services into a single navigation center, which the city may wait to build until it secures the help of a private nonprofit.
• Offering employment services, emergency support and case management for the homeless.
• Developing a public communication strategy to educate the public about how the city’s program works and how they can support it.

“I fully understand that a singular approach will not meet the needs of everyone, such as those suffering from acute mental illness, and that other paths must also be recognized as viable,” the mayor said Monday.

“But the dominant direction for the city of Aurora will be to focus on getting those experiencing homelessness the care that they need that will enable them to become employed so that they can attain stable housing. … This approach is compassionate to those experiencing homelessness and fair to the taxpayers of our city.”

Coffman drafted the plan after he and other council members visited Houston and San Antonio to study those cities’ responses to homelessness. When it was presented during a study session last week, he invited other City Council members to give input on the plan.

On Monday, Coffman went into greater detail about the navigation center, which he envisions will be located on a city-owned property near the Aurora Animal Shelter and the intersection of Chambers Road and East 32nd Avenue.

Unlike a traditional shelter, Coffman said the navigation center would be open all day, every day to homeless clients, as long as they are working with case managers and making progress toward securing housing. It would also allow clients to bring partners, pets and belongings with them, which otherwise turns many people off of the idea of congregate shelter.

The mayor said American Rescue Plan Act funds would be used for construction, with help from surrounding counties and the state. He said he hoped operating funds would come from individuals, foundations and government grants, and accepted an amendment by Bergan specifying that the campus will be operated by a nonprofit and prohibiting general fund dollars from being used for operations and maintenance.

Bergan told Marcano that she would be open to lifting the restriction on the use of general fund money if the city needs to provide matching funds for a grant.

Marcano presented 17 amendments to the plan on Monday, four of which were discussed by the group before Coffman agreed to put the plan on hold for two weeks.

The first of Marcano’s amendments would have replaced the resolution’s commitment to “employment-based programming and conditions-based transitional housing that leads to self-sufficiency” with a commitment to “evidence-based policy that prioritizes housing, supportive services and workforce development opportunities that lead to self-reliance.”

That amendment failed on a party-line vote. The second amendment, which passed with Councilmember Dustin Zvonek as the only “no” vote, added an acknowledgment that homelessness has been increasing in Aurora “for years” and that the COVID-19 pandemic had “dramatically increased” the incidence of homelessness.

Marcano’s third amendment would have replaced another statement that “providing an approach of supportive services with defined conditions and incentives can transform the lives of people experiencing homelessness” with the statement that “it is inhumane and far more expensive to allow people experiencing homelessness to languish on the streets than it is to provide housing with supportive services to this population.”

The third amendment failed with Coffman and progressives in favor. A fourth amendment by Marcano would have replaced a statement in the resolution which said the council wants to expand homelessness services in the city to include “employment-based programming and conditions-based transitional housing to increase the number of people who exit homelessness on an annual basis.”

The amendment replaced that language, saying the city would instead expand offerings “that empower individuals experiencing homelessness to choose for themselves their path to self-reliance, to include mental and physical health care, job training, educational assistance and low-barrier housing.”

No vote was taken on the fourth amendment; after Coffman said he would support the change, Councilmember Curtis Gardner questioned why the amendments that Coffman agreed with weren’t simply added to the proposal before it was brought to council, rather than considered one-by-one during a meeting.

Bergan and Jurinsky said they would not vote for the proposal if the “work-first” philosophy of the plan was eroded by Marcano’s amendments, and Coffman agreed to bring the plan back in two weeks, with the amendments that he felt comfortable with worked into the plan.

Marcano also said he would bring back in two weeks a competing plan of his that was also on Monday’s agenda and which included the language of his amendments.