Delivering Denver's Historic Reduction in Unsheltered Homelessness: A Discussion with Denver Mayor Mike Johnston

Join the Institute of Politics, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, and the Initiative on Health and Homelessness at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health for a timely discussion on innovative approaches to ending homelessness with Denver Mayor Mike Johnston.

Since taking office, Mayor Johnston has led ambitious efforts to move thousands of people experiencing homelessness into housing through his House1000 and All In Mile High initiatives—programs that have become national models for collaboration and measurable results. He will reflect on Denver’s progress, lessons learned, and the challenges ahead in pursuing sustainable housing and health solutions.

The conversation will be moderated by Chris Herbert, Managing Director of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, and will include brief comments by Maya Yassine, a Master of Public Health student at Harvard, who will draw on her personal and professional experiences to reflect on the mayor’s remarks.

About Mayor Mike Johnston

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston was inaugurated as the 46th Mayor of Denver on July 17, 2023. Since the start of his administration, Denver has achieved historic reductions in street homelessness, enhanced public safety, expanded affordable housing, and invested in revitalizing downtown.

Mayor Johnston started his career as a high school English teacher in the Mississippi Delta. He returned home to Colorado to become a school principal, leading three different schools in the Denver metro area. He later served as a senior education advisor to President Obama.

In 2009, Johnston was elected to the Colorado State Senate where he served two terms representing Northeast Denver. During his tenure, he secured bipartisan support to pass Colorado’s version of the DREAM Act, advanced major gun safety legislation, and championed the state’s transition to renewable energy. He later served as the CEO of Gary Community Ventures, a local philanthropic organization, where he built broad, diverse coalitions to pass the state’s first plan for universal preschool and spearheaded efforts to fund affordable housing and homelessness statewide.

Mayor Johnston grew up in Colorado, speaks Spanish and lives in East Denver with his wife Courtney, who is a Chief Deputy District Attorney, and their three kids.

Work on homelessness: On July 18, 2023, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston signed an emergency declaration on unsheltered homelessness and set a bold goal: to move 1,000 people experiencing street homelessness indoors and permanently close their encampments by the end of that year. Through the House1000 initiative, the city permanently resolved encampments for the first time in its history by connecting individuals to housing and comprehensive support services, including mental health care, substance misuse treatment and workforce training.

That goal was successfully met by the end of 2023, with 1,000 people moved indoors and the city’s 10 largest encampments permanently closed.

Building on the success of House1000, Mayor Johnston launched All In Mile High (AIMH) in 2024 as the city’s long-term initiative to end unsheltered homelessness. AIMH set an ambitious goal to move 2,000 people indoors by December 31, 2024. That goal was surpassed, with more than 2,500 people brought indoors and over 350 blocks permanently closed to camping.

As Denver continues working toward the Mayor’s long-term vision to end street homelessness, AIMH has now evolved into a system-wide approach. This includes citywide efforts to engage people on the streets and connect them to services and shelter before encampments form, a dedicated focus on families experiencing homelessness and the alignment of services through Roads to Recovery. Roads to Recovery diverts individuals with complex mental health and substance use needs away from the criminal justice system and into a coordinated network of intervention, treatment and rehabilitation services. Together, these efforts are driving progress toward the AIMH 2025 goal: bringing an additional 2,000 people indoors and connecting 2,000 people to long-term housing solutions.

About Chris Herbert

Christopher Herbert is Managing Director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies and a Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Dr. Herbert has extensive experience conducting research related to housing policy and urban development, both in the U.S. and abroad. A key focus of his research has been on the financial and demographic dimensions of homeownership, and the implications for homeownership policy of the recession, housing bust, and foreclosure crisis. Having previously worked at the Joint Center in the 1990s, Herbert rejoined the Center in 2010 from Abt Associates, to serve as the Director of Research. In this role, Dr. Herbert led the team responsible for producing the Center’s annual State of the Nation’s Housing and its biannual America’s Rental Housing reports, essential resources for both public and private decision makers in the housing industry.

Dr. Herbert was named managing director of the Joint Center in 2015, and oversees the Center’s diverse sponsored research programs, its local and national conferences and symposia, as well as its student fellowship programs, designed to help train and inspire the next generation of housing leaders. He is also a Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in the Department of Urban Planning and Design.

Dr. Herbert is co-editor of Homeownership Built to Last: Balancing Access, Affordability, and Risk After the Housing Crisis (Brookings Institution Press, 2014), and a member of the Board of Directors of the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Community Development Research Advisory Council, and the Center for Responsible Lending Research Advisory Council. He holds a PhD and Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University, and a BA in History from Dartmouth College.

About Maya Yassine

Maya Yassine is getting an MPH; last summer she had a Center funded fellowship with the Mayor’s Office of Housing in Boston where she researched funding models for permanent supportive housing. In addition to having experienced homelessness as a child, before she came to Harvard she worked with entities in San Francisco focused on youth homelessness.