Wayne Wilkins has been homeless in Aurora for just over a year after failing to pay his $1,375 monthly rent at an apartment he used to lease in the city.
He now lives in a tent with his girlfriend — pitching it anywhere in Aurora where he thinks he will least likely be asked to move along. Last week, the couple slept in a field between Toll Gate Creek and the sprawling Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center, with the roar of Interstate 225 just off to the east.
“We set up late in the afternoon and pack up first thing in the morning,” said Wilkins, who goes by the nickname Smokey.
While both Wilkins and his girlfriend have managed to avoid encounters with law enforcement, that may not be the case for much of Aurora’s homeless population in the coming months as elected leaders aim to toughen the city’s urban camping ban and decrease the number of tents that pop up.
It’s an approach to homelessness that integrates with other initiatives Aurora has launched, including a court created to specifically deal with those who have no roof over their heads and a soon-to-debut housing program that places conditions of employment on residency. Aurora’s work-first strategy contrasts with Denver’s, where a housing-first ethic infuses all of the city’s efforts to help the unhoused.
Wayne “Smokey” Wilkins, 42, talks outside of the tent he and Tahneaa Estes, 45, share at their camp near Interstate 225 and 17th Place in Aurora, Colorado, on Wednesday, June 19, 2024. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
On Monday, the Aurora City Council will cast a final vote on an ordinance that eliminates the requirement that the city provide 72-hour notice to those camping illegally before disassembling and clearing their encampment. Backers of the measure say it’s too easy for people now to temporarily move down the street before reestablishing their camp where they were.
“In order to change behavior, we have to make it untenable to be on the street — or you are just going to stay there,” Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman said. “This is going to be a more aggressive approach.”
Aurora will target encampments — initially with plenty of no-camping and no-trespassing signs — in the I-225 corridor, though it could gradually expand enforcement to other parts of the city. Violations of the updated camping ordinance could result in sanctions ranging from a warning, a ticket or even arrest, depending on whether police find another crime being committed.
Coffman was the primary force behind the enactment of Aurora’s camping ban two years ago. He says elimination of the 72-hour warning doesn’t come without other measures being taken to help those unhoused find stability.
Earlier this month, the City Council established the HEART court — Housing Employment Assistance Recovery Team — in Aurora Municipal Court. It’s geared at individuals experiencing homelessness who have been charged with low-level, non-violent offenses, which the city says will hold “participants accountable while connecting them to assistance and service providers.”
And next year, a new regionwide navigation center is set to open in Aurora, providing beds and rooms to those without shelter in the former 255-room Crowne Plaza Hotel at 15500 E. 40th Ave. The city purchased the hotel and convention center in January for $26.5 million, using American Rescue Plan Act funds.
“It’s not good for you, it’s not good for the city, to have you on the street,” Coffman said. “This is a tough love approach.”
“Push people around faster”
But Councilwoman Alison Coombs said the new ordinance will do little to help people living on Aurora’s streets. She was one of three council members to vote against it on first reading nearly two weeks ago.
“The 72-hour notice gives people the choice of somewhere else to be,” she said. “All this is going to do is push people around faster.”
And farther out. While the city focuses on encampment hot spots along the I-225 corridor — on East Mississippi Avenue, East Iliff Avenue, Colfax Avenue and South Parker Road in particular — Coombs said people without housing will migrate to other parts of Aurora and away from their support networks.
Remnants of an abandoned camp near Interstate 225 and 17th Place in Aurora, Colorado, on Wednesday, June 19, 2024. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
“And that could make people experiencing homelessness harder to reach, harder to identify and harder to stay in touch with,” she said. “We don’t have shelter capacity to cover even the people that got counted in the Point In Time survey, which is widely acknowledged as an undercount.”
That survey, conducted on a single night in January 2023, showed 572 people were without shelter in Aurora. The Metro Denver Homeless Initiative hasn’t yet released numbers from the 2024 count.
Cathy Alderman, public policy officer for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, said a housing-first approach — one that doesn’t come with a precondition like sobriety or a job — is what works best She worries that “putting up more barriers” for those living on the streets — like new restrictions or rules — will be counterproductive.
“Efforts to criminalize homelessness do nothing to solve homelessness,” she said. “It’s not just telling people they can’t be there — but telling them where they can be. Housing really needs to come first to provide the foundation for everything else.”
Aurora is home to the Comitis Crisis Center, which has been providing beds to homeless people for years. More recently, the city added nearly 100 prefabricated Pallet shelters at two sites to provide additional living spaces for those who don’t have them. Aurora has two safe parking operations, where people living out of their vehicles can get respite for the night without having to worry about their safety.
Hundreds more shelter beds will come online next year when Aurora’s regional navigation center opens in the former Crowne Plaza Hotel space. The city also has a mobile outreach team that it deploys to make contact with those living on Aurora’s streets.
Councilman Steve Sundberg said the new ordinance, which he supports, is “not designed to be punitive in nature.” It’s meant to get people off the streets and out of city parks, he said, which belong to everyone in the city.
“Our goal is healing,” he said. “We want to hold people accountable to help them. We want to get people back into society and working again.”
It’s a basic safety measure to curtail the health hazards that go along with living outdoors, Sundberg said, like people “defecating in public view and trashing these areas.” Wildfires fueled by unattended campfires are also a concern.
“Should they be sleeping on the street two feet away from where traffic is going past at 50 mph?” he said. “I don’t think so.”
Coupled with the new navigation center’s emphasis on providing private rooms exclusively to adults who are looking for work or engaged in job training, Coffman calls Aurora’s approach a “work-first” model. It could make for an interesting test case versus the housing-first approach neighboring Denver embraces, he said.
“Putting someone in a hotel room who’s suffering from addiction or mental health issues without any requirements just doesn’t make sense to me,” Coffman said. “In exchange for public assistance, someone should be doing something affirmative to change their behavior.”
“We don’t want to be out here”
Denver Mayor Michael Johnston launched his homelessness initiative — then called House 1,000 — on his second day in office last July. So far, what’s now called All In Mile High has moved more than 1,620 people off the streets and into at least temporary shelter, according to city data, though nearly 200 of those people are listed as “no longer indoors.”
The Point In Time survey counted more than 5,800 people without shelter in Denver in January 2023.
Last week, Denver announced that, after start-up costs, the All In Mile High homelessness initiative will cost the city $57.5 million a year to run, which breaks down to nearly $29,000 per person based on an anticipated volume of 2,000 people served.
Cole Chandler, the mayor’s senior adviser on homelessness, touted the program as a “housing-first approach” that works. There are fewer encampments in Denver today than there were last summer, he said, when Johnston took office.
“Once they have a door to lock, some consistency in their lives — we find they are more successful once you take care of their basic needs,” Chandler said of the city’s homeless population. “What’s worked for us was providing an indoor option and a pathway to stability and supportive services. Yes, we need laws. Yes, we need teeth — but we also need indoor options for people.”
Wayne “Smokey” Wilkins, 42, follows Tahneaa Estes, 45, into the tent at their camp near Interstate 225 and 17th Place in Aurora, Colorado, on Wednesday, June 19, 2024. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
Daniel Brisson, executive director for the Center for Housing and Homelessness Research at the University of Denver, said “putting people to work is good.” But he worries that demanding too much of people who are in tenuous situations to begin with could lead to bad outcomes.
Moreover, forcing them to relocate with no warning is a tough ask.
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“Yeah, give me some notice so I can find a better place to be,” he said. “People who don’t have houses don’t have many choices. Testing ideas is really good — testing them humanely would probably be my biggest concern.”
Wilkins, aka Smokey, said he hopes he never has to be a part of that test. The 42-year-old North Carolina native said he is about to start a job at a cannabis dispensary in Aurora and is in line to get housing through the Aurora Housing Authority’s Rapid Re-Housing program.
That should pull him, and his 45-year-old girlfriend Tahneaa Estes, off the streets. Wilkins calls himself a “go-getter” who wants more than anything to have a job and a home.
“Not everybody is a bad person in their tent. Remember, we’re still human,” he said. “They don’t want us out here and we don’t want to be out here.”
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