Tackling the Housing Crisis One Heated Ice Fishing Tent at a Time

In the summer of 2020, the mayor’s office joined forces with Colorado Village Collaborative to launch the Safe Outdoor Space program as an emergency measure to help address Denver’s crisis of homelessness. Safe Outdoor Spaces, or SOS sites, have since provided warmth, shelter, food, restrooms, trash service, and more to more than 240 unhoused Denverites. Still, many people were against the sanctioned campsites and fought hard to keep them out of their neighborhoods. Today on the show, Host Bree Davies talks with Cuica Montoya, SOS Program Director for the Colorado Village Collaborative, and Ian Stitt, an SOS Site Manager liaison for the St. Francis Center. They discuss how these spaces create community for our unhoused neighbors, how the SOS program convinced the haters, and how they attracted another $3.9 million in city funding this year. 

Learn more and support the Colorado Village Collaborative’s Safe Outdoor Space program here.

Check out previous City Cast Denver episodes from 2021 about the Safe Outdoor Space program from the perspective of an SOS resident, and learn about the battle one local church that fought to bring the program to its neighborhood. 

Did you know Quiznos is from Denver? The first location ever opened on 13th Avenue in 1981, and it looks…. like every other Quiznos. But the chain has gone through A LOT since then, and Peyton’s got the whole story for you in our newsletter today. Read and subscribe here: https://denver.citycast.fm/newsletter/

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