Colorado lawmakers are finally doing what should have been done years ago by acknowledging that homelessness doesn’t end at city limits, county lines or any political boundaries.
House Bill 26-1202, approved by the House and now moving through the state Senate, is a long-overdue step toward confronting one of the state’s most visible and vexing crises with coordination, something the state and local communities have sorely lacked.
For too long, state agencies and officials have allowed a patchwork of policies to define their response to homelessness.
Cities, counties and towns have each adopted their own approaches, sometimes in stark contrast to their neighbors. The result has been dysfunction.
Some communities have even leaned into criminalization, effectively treating homelessness as a law-enforcement issue rather than a humanitarian, public safety and economic one. That approach doesn’t solve homelessness. It only burdens taxpayers with policing, court and jail costs while doing nothing to address root causes like housing instability, mental health problems and addiction.
Others rely on “move along” policies, pushing unhoused residents out of one area, only to see them reappear a few miles, or even a few blocks, away. That shell game redistributes the problem. In many cases, it shifts the burden onto neighboring communities, fueling resentment and deepening regional divides.
This is precisely why House Bill 26-1202 matters. By allowing local governments to form multi-jurisdictional homelessness response authorities, the state is recognizing the reality that homelessness demands a regional solution.
The bill’s framework enables cities and counties to collaborate, share resources and align strategies. As advocates and lawmakers have pointed out, homelessness is driven by a complex web of factors, from soaring housing costs to untreated mental illness and substance use disorders.
No single jurisdiction can effectively tackle all of that alone, nor should it.
There are already hints of what regional collaboration could achieve. Aurora’s Regional Navigation Center, designed as a hub for services and pathways to housing, offers a glimpse of a more coordinated response. It brings together resources in one place, aiming to move people off the streets and into stability.
But even that model is not without flaws. Its “work first” components, which require employment readiness before enjoying stable housing services at the former hotel, are likely limiting its effectiveness. Evidence from across the country increasingly supports a “housing first” approach, which prioritizes getting people into stable housing before addressing employment or other challenges, or addressing those issues at the same time. If Aurora’s model evolves in that direction, it could become a far more powerful example for the region and the state.
House Bill 26-1202 also opens the door for participating governments to seek voter approval for new taxes to fund homelessness programs. That flexibility is important. Effective solutions require sustained investment, and local voters should have a say in how those efforts are funded.
But the state cannot use that provision as an excuse to sidestep its own responsibility, nor can the federal government.
If state lawmakers truly believe that homelessness is not a local problem but a statewide one, then the state must commit meaningful funding from state coffers.
Passing the burden down to cities and counties only perpetuates the fragmentation this bill aims to fix.
It is not the fault of Denver, Aurora, Wheat Ridge or any other community that people experiencing homelessness end up within their borders. Economic forces, housing shortages and gaps in health care systems are statewide and even national in scope.
When the state fails to invest adequately, it effectively encourages local governments to adopt short-sighted, punitive measures that push the problem elsewhere.
This bill is not a silver bullet. It will not, on its own, end homelessness. But it represents a critical shift away from isolation and toward collaboration.
Part of the solution to the growing homelessness crisis must be to make it harder for able-bodied individuals who refuse to work, and instead, choose to live off others. It is no coincidence that the more we make government responsible for everyone’s care and financial well-being, the more “slackers” we will have. It is human nature. Ask Los Angeles how well their “housing first” strategy has worked. Can we learn from their experience, or like some rebellious teenager, do we need to find out everything for ourselves.
Homelessness is a regional problem, but that doesn’t mean the state should lock every city into a single, ideology‑driven “housing first or nothing” model. The strongest studies show housing‑first improves one thing very well – keeping people housed – but has limited impact on addiction, mental health, or long‑term employment. That matters for neighborhoods that are living with visible street disorder even after millions have been spent.
Regional cooperation should support a toolbox, not a theology: cities ought to be free to pair housing with expectations around treatment, work, and public safety, and to adjust when a strategy is not delivering results on the ground. The Sentinel keeps insisting “work first” doesn’t work without offering serious evidence or acknowledging the mixed record of pure housing‑first in West Coast cities and elsewhere. Metro Denver needs flexible, accountable partnerships, not a one‑size mandate blessed by a struggling paper that treats debate as heresy instead of a responsibility to the community.