Things To Do In Denver When You're Seeking Asylum

Things To Do In Denver When You're Seeking Asylum
This is actually a Nice Time story!
Doktor Zoom
May 24, 2024

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‘Hola. We’re new here.’ Photo by Jari Hytönen on Unsplash

Since April, Denver has introduced a new program to help newly arrived migrants in the city: Instead of housing them in emergency shelters for a few weeks, the city is working with a number of nonprofits to get migrant families into apartments, with food assistance and other services, for up to six months while helping them prepare to apply for asylum and to get work.The city says its new Denver Asylum Seeker Program (DASP) will cost less and provide more complete services than temporary shelters. Along with rent, food, and utility assistance, each family among the initial 800 migrants in the program will be provided a computer, a cell phone, and bus passes.

It’s a big change from the situation up until now, which had often been chaotic, as High Country News outlines. The city had been providing shorter-term shelter in seven hotels that it rented out, as well as in some smaller, congregate shelters, but on a very short timeframe: about two weeks for individuals, six weeks for families. Once that was up, hundreds of immigrants began living in encampments. Others have obtained leases from city-run programs but then lost their housing because they couldn’t keep up with rent payments. The city has offered shelter to currently unhoused immigrants, but many are reluctant to re-enter the system, citing the poor conditions inside shelters. City officials have continually asked federal officials for more funding, to no avail.



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She noted that the city’s nonprofits can now better help newly arrived migrants get shelter by the time they leave city shelters, largely because the numbers are more manageable: Currently we’re receiving about one to two buses a day, around 20 to 30 people. The vast majority of almost everybody that arrives on the bus figures out their situation within the afternoon. Currently, there are only 31 individuals in short-term shelter. And if the numbers start increasing again, she said, the city is much better prepared to get them into DASP or other services if needed.

The AP notes that the anticipated costs of assisting migrants through the new program will be about half of what was initially estimated in January, allowing Denver to restore some services, like recreation centers, whose funding had to be shifted to cover shelter services. And as Plastino explained, providing rental assistance for apartments and help with groceries isn’t simply less expensive than renting out hotel rooms and paying for pre-made meals, “It’s also just the right thing to do.”We imagine there are also some rightwing jerks complaining that Denver is simply doing the bidding of George Soros and advancing the Great Replacement of white people, but fuck ‘em, this is a nice time story the end.

https://www.wonkette.com/p/things-to-do-in-denver-when-youre