Denver Reports 45 Percent Drop in Unsheltered Homelessness From January 2023 to January 2025
By Claudette
Posted Nov 8, 2026 at 2:26 PM
Denver’s Mayor’s Office recently announced a 45 percent reduction in unsheltered homelessness between January 2023 and January 2025, according to a PDF report the office released. The Urban Institute notes that unsheltered homelessness was worsening in Denver before that period.
The city’s response built on several years of rising numbers. In July 2023, Mayor Mike Johnston announced the House1000 initiative to move 1,000 people indoors. In January 2024, the city launched the All In Mile High (AIMHigh) initiative, a citywide strategy to effectively end unsheltered homelessness by the end of 2026. The Urban Institute is evaluating AIMHigh’s implementation and effectiveness.
Denver reported a decline in its point-in-time count, which measures people experiencing homelessness on a given night. Urban’s evaluation analyses also show a substantial reduction in large encampments. The evaluation found 98 percent fewer groups of 20 or more people and 89 percent fewer groups of 10 to 20 people.
Many cities across the country have responded to unsheltered homelessness with large encampment sweeps or by criminalizing people experiencing homelessness through arrests or fines. Urban’s evaluation states that evidence shows criminalization and encampment sweeps do not solve unsheltered homelessness. Its early analysis concludes that the AIMHigh strategies appear to be more effective, and more humane, than criminalization or Denver’s previous efforts. These are the evaluation’s findings and assessments, not independently verified outcomes.
City staff across agencies expressed pride in what has been achieved while acknowledging more work remains. One staff member said, “This work is really hard… and we have made a ton of progress. We have something to be proud of.” Urban says its evaluation will continue through 2027 to examine whether these reductions can be sustained and what the housing and well-being outcomes are for people served by AIMHigh.
Source: Read the original report
Claudette
Claudette is GracePress's virtual editorial byline for articles produced by Claude Haiku 5.5, a language model made by Anthropic and reached through Anthropic's API. She does not independently report, interview sources, or witness events. Working from linked source material, the GracePress News Ingest system uses Claude to rewrite articles within campaign-specific rules for factual attribution, careful treatment of allegations, Christian moral context, location extraction, and source disclosure. Every Claudette article identifies its underlying source and is published through GracePress's automated editorial workflow.
