Denver migrant shelters cause strife but spark efforts to help

A recently shuttered migrant shelter in a former school building heightened tensions in Denver’s Athmar Park neighborhood for months.

An Nguyen said that, after the facility opened late last year, “there wasn’t any trouble” — at least, not initially. The owner of Savory Vietnam Restaurant in a plaza across the street, off West Alameda Avenue, empathized with the people staying there, most of them arrivals from Venezuela. Her parents immigrated to the United States as Vietnamese refugees, so Nguyen understood the feeling of coming to a new country with few possessions.

But as spring turned into summer, Nguyen noticed more people gravitating from the shelter to the business plaza’s parking lot. Then, she found human feces on the side of her building, and tents popped up nearby. Her customers asked questions about the people loitering outside.

Walking to her car at night, Nguyen said, “I did not feel safe.” The disruptions strained the Athmar Park community, she said, because of “pointing fingers” between neighbors and business owners over whom to blame.

As Denver city officials have worked to house the influx of thousands of migrants a month in makeshift shelters and other facilities, business owners and residents in the surrounding areas have been torn between supporting the city’s efforts and feeling frustrated by disturbances to their daily lives. Some Denverites recently rallied their neighbors to gather items and offer help to migrants ahead of winter, while others have weathered unwelcome disruptions down the block.

Both are responding to a city-marshalled migrant response that has cost more than $31 million, as of last week. As a surge of migrants began arriving from Texas border cities in late December, Denver first housed people in recreation centers and then found other places to turn into shelters.

“I see a problem happening that is not being helped quickly enough by government,” said Sunnyside resident Emily Wilfong. “At this point, it’s really taking everyday citizens stepping up and doing something.”

She’s a member of a Facebook group of more than 1,000 parents and neighbors that has coordinated donations for migrants at a motel off Speer Boulevard that serves as a shelter in northwest Denver.

Wilfong got involved after she heard that 52 newcomers — some of them refugees — enrolled at her children’s dual-language school.

The community efforts aren’t going unnoticed by Venezuelan migrants, such as 45-year-old Francisco Daniel.

“There’s a lot of people with good hearts who come over here and support us,” he said on Thursday through a Spanish translator.

He walked through eight countries and experienced “a lot of struggle” to get to Denver 25 days ago, he said. Back home, he worked in an office as an engineer, and his wife had a job as a nurse.

Now, Daniel’s family of five, including three girls under the age of 6, is among dozens of people living in tents near the motel, which has city-imposed time limits for migrants staying there. He said his priorities are to find antibiotics for his illness and to seek out better housing before winter.

“I know the cold is horrible,” Daniel said.

“We came here to get a better life,” one man says

Right now, about 2,000 people are staying in Denver’s four migrant shelters across the city’s northwest and northeast neighborhoods, said Jon Ewing, a Denver Human Services spokesman. That is quadruple the 500 who were in shelters in July before a more recent surge. The peak in early October was 3,136.

On a given day, several dozen migrants can arrive in Denver, typically by bus.

Since last December, the centers have served more than 27,000 people, primarily from Venezuela, where widespread violence and economic instability have sent residents fleeing for safety and opportunity, often on foot through Central America and Mexico. Many of those arriving in Denver are stopping en route to other cities, while some have stayed here while awaiting asylum hearings.

The city has used at least 10 locations, including the current four, as migrant shelters, Ewing said. Individual adults can stay 14 days, while families can stay for 37 days under the latest policy. The city has relocated some shelters based on capacity needs or once a short-term contract ends.

“Our resources are really, really strained,” Ewing said.

City officials are pressing the federal government for more money to help them better handle the continuous arrivals of migrants, with Mayor Mike Johnston and four other mayors calling on President Joe Biden for aid earlier this month.

Outside the motel serving as a shelter in northwest Denver in early November, migrants set up more than a dozen tents along sidewalks after the city forced them to move from parkland nearby. During one visit by a reporter, men, women and children sat outside in the sun, as a few made sandwiches on the hood of a parked car.

By last week, the number of tents had quadrupled. Adults asked passerby for work as children played, chasing each other down the pavement. On Wednesday, City Councilwoman Amanda Sandoval and her staff members counted 138 people living in the tents, Denverite reported.

She told The Denver Post that council members agreed to pool $330,000 so far in leftover money from their budgets to help get more people into shelters, especially children, when the weather turns.

Still staying in the motel was Simon Fernandez, 58, who recounted walking for 28 days after leaving Barinas, Venezuela, with his wife and two teenage children. They traveled through six countries, including the rain forests of Panama.

Back at home, he earned a living as a trucker. “I love my country, but there’s a lot of hunger, and the government over there is horrible,” Fernandez told The Post on Thursday.

His family could stay in the motel only until Saturday, he said, and then would have to find housing somewhere else. He’s walked the streets of Denver looking for jobs, but he’s still waiting on his work permit. The federal government made that process easier in recent months when it granted temporary legal status to migrants and asylum-seekers from Venezuela.

“We came here to get a better life, to get a job and to pay taxes,” Fernandez said. “I don’t want the government to support me.”

Jose Daniel Andrade, 30, left his family back in Portuguesa, Venezuela. There, “the economic situation is hard,” he said. “There’s no jobs,” which is what he hopes to find in Colorado.

Andrade arrived in Denver more than three weeks ago. To reach the United States, he and two friends train-surfed, the dangerous practice of riding on top of rail cars. Both of his companions fell off and died, he said.

“I do really feel very welcome in Denver,” said Andrade, who’s staying in the city with friends. Even as the colder months loom, “I’m not scared about the winter coming in. If I have to face a winter, I have to face it.”

“Don’t let us be in the dark,” former shelter’s neighbor says

Berinder Singh, who works at a gas station near the motel, has heard a few customers complain about panhandlers outside. But Singh usually just asks the migrants to leave the property, and they oblige.

“They don’t have any other source of income,” he said. “They have not bothered us.”

Several miles to the south, the former Denver Prep Academy gymnasium on South Zuni Street, near Nguyen’s Vietnamese restaurant, now sits empty, with little sign that it kept newly arrived migrants warm until Oct. 31.

City Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez described the area’s historic population as made up of immigrants, largely from Vietnam and Mexico. “Overwhelmingly, the neighborhood wants to do our part” to help, she said.

But in recent months, constituents began getting in touch with concerns about the shelter. Problems arose, she said, “when they started kicking people out at 14 days — so that was really tough because, then, that’s when encampments started to happen.”

Alvidrez faced trouble getting her own questions about the shelter answered.

“It turned into a single-male shelter, so that’s a red flag,” she said, particularly because of the schools located nearby.

In August, the Denver Police Department responded to four calls at 333 S. Zuni St.: two for assault and two for encampment. The next month, officers responded to a suspicious occurrence and another call to report an encampment.

In September, resident Teddy Zeskind reached out to Alvidrez and other council members repeatedly about the shelter.

“When we called your office previously, they told us many constituents were calling,” Zeskind wrote in emails to Alvidrez shared by him with The Post. “We’re concerned that if something isn’t done now, the situation is going to continue to get worse and the encampments will grow.”

Zeskind recounted seeing more litter on the ground, tents on public and private property, and “partying at all hours of the night in the parking lot next to Savory Vietnam,” he wrote. Recent attempts to reach Zeskind for further comment were unsuccessful.

The shelter closed because Denver Human Services’ contract ended with Denver Community Church, which purchased the building last year. The agency was able to find space at other facilities, Ewing said.

Nguyen, Savory Vietnam’s owner, said that in the future, Denver officials should pass out fliers to provide residents and business owners with information about migrant shelters in their area. A hotline to ask questions and report any issues also would serve as a helpful resource, she said.

“It’s really important to notify the neighborhood so they know what’s going on,” she said. “Don’t let us be in the dark.”

Overlapping challenges with homelessness

In northeast Denver, the Salvation Army operates a family migrant shelter in the Montbello neighborhood.

Councilwoman Shontel Lewis, whose District 8 includes the shelter, said she’s found that the top need among migrants is “overwhelmingly, jobs,” followed by access to housing, transportation and culturally appropriate food.

“There are folks who are able to work, ready to work and don’t necessarily have the authorization to do so,” she said.

When she discusses how the city can support migrants, she emphasizes the importance of ensuring “that we aren’t pitting our migrants against the folks that are unsheltered in our communities,” even if they have similar needs.

Councilman Darrell Watson represents neighboring District 9, which includes the River North Art District, Five Points and parts of downtown.

For decades, the area has hosted the majority of Denver’s service providers that help people experiencing homeless and, now, refugees and migrants. A migrant shelter is open in Globeville.

“I’ve heard no opposition” from constituents about the shelters lately, said Watson, a native of the Virgin Islands who empathizes with migrants. “What I’ve heard is the community wanting to do more.”

Andrew Mongrain works at a lighting contractor located near the Globeville shelter.

“We obviously see the traffic up and down the street,” he said, referring to migrants who often traverse the road in front of their building.