Advocates let Mike Johnston know what they thought of his plan to solve homelessness in four years at a roundtable discussion

Sarah Rowan, an infectious disease specialist at Denver Health [and associate professor of medicine at CU School of Medicine], said that the city will be making a mistake if services are limited to people who don’t use drugs. Individuals need private homes and fewer rules, if they’re going to participate in programs, advocates argue. “Not everybody wants to be in recovery right now,” Rowan said to Johnston. “If we only treat people who are in recovery, I think we’ll still have homelessness at a pretty large scale.”
 
Josh Barocas, from CU Anschutz, who this year published research that found encampment sweeps can decrease life expectancy for the unhoused, encouraged Johnston to change the narrative about how people discuss homelessness and what it means to create safe occupancy sites and tiny home villages in neighborhoods.