The Neighborhood

On the corner of 22nd and Arapahoe a man wrapped in a tattered sleeping bag and heavily worn hunting attire was flailing on the sidewalk. He was rolling back and forth, stretching his arms out and upward as if reaching for the sky. He was letting out a series of grunts and moans that seemed to be an attempt at saying something. The man was covered in a layer of dirt and grime that can only be accumulated by living outside without adequate shelter. 

I found myself in the middle of downtown Denver, watching a man show signs indicative of a drug overdose because this was the story I was looking for. Face to face with it, I felt terribly unprepared.

One week prior, I read an article by Marc Sallinger (9News) detailing a record number of fatal overdoses in the area. In a span of roughly 25 hours, four unhoused people were found dead in the Five Points area. My goal was to explore this neighborhood and potentially find an answer to why drug abuse had gotten so out of control in this particular neighborhood that only covers about 1.5 miles.

And here it was potentially unfolding right before my eyes, and I had no idea what to do. Thankfully, for that person lying on the ground, someone in the area did know what to do.  

An employee of Denver drove up in a Ford F-150 marked with the city’s logo on the doors. The driver pulled the truck onto the sidewalk. He turned on the emergency lights mounted to the top of the vehicle and moved toward the man. I was down there to report but this was certainly not an appropriate time to be lingering. I decided not to interfere with what was an already delicate situation. 

I was beginning to feel more like a voyeur than a reporter. So, I decided to take a step back.

According to the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative (MDHI), there was substantial growth in homelessness during the last year alone. An already staggering 6,884 people were unhoused in Denver in 2022, that number has grown as high as 9,065 in 2023.

As the number of people experiencing homelessness grew so did the number of fatal overdoses. Not just in Five Points or even Denver, but throughout the entire state. In fact, Colorado has seen a steady increase of fatal overdoses since 2000. Still, since 2018 that trend has taken an enormous leap upward, increasing from 974 to 1,799 overdose deaths in 2022.

The number of overdoses occurring is frightening enough on its own. However, when the data is separated to show only fatal overdoses among users of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl during the same time, an alarming trend can be seen. Fentanyl went from claiming the lives of 101 Coloradans in 2018 to a chilling total of 920 in 2022.

Housing those living on the streets of Denver and providing recovery options to those who are chemically dependent on substances like fentanyl have been the topics of political reform among legislators and elected officials for years.

Although the problems have only grown more out of control with every passing year, there has been no shortage of ideas and efforts from elected leaders and legislators alike to repair the city.

Denver has tried enforcing more stringent legal penalties on those caught with fentanyl. Mayor Mike Johnston has directed the spending of millions of dollars to create temporary housing out of formerly abandoned buildings. The city has even approved filling the sidewalks and parking lots with piles of rocks to prevent homeless encampments.  

With all of these different measures in place to solve the complicated and intertwined issues of homelessness and fentanyl addiction, why are nice neighborhoods like Five Points continually plagued by these issues?

The sound of police sirens did not seem to ever stop in Five Points while I was there. The police moved from encampment to encampment, responding to calls and serving as security for city employees tasked with removing tents and other makeshift shelters in public spaces.

I couldn’t help but wonder if this high level of police activity was in some way the result of a bill passed earlier this year.   

On May 5, 2023, fentanyl was reclassified as a Schedule One narcotic as part of a nationwide bill, HALT (Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl). The intention behind the stiffer penalties was to deter people from using fentanyl for fear of severe punitive actions. The bill was met with both praise and criticism among Colorado lawmakers.

Supporters of the bill believe this will decrease the number of overdoses by reducing the availability of the drug. Opponents of the bill, like Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen, felt this kind of law would disproportionately affect drug users as opposed to the dealers and distributors of fentanyl. Instead, she promotes legislation that would create easier access to addiction treatment throughout the state.

Data from the Denver Police Department shows that the opposition's concerns could be very accurate. Of all drug-related arrests made in Denver, 76.6% are for possession, while distributing only accounts for 19.6% of arrests.   

The near constant sound of police sirens are mixed with the low rumble of large diesel-powered garbage trucks. Accompanied by police escorts, these trucks roam the streets, assisting with the teardown of homeless encampments.

Encampments had become burdensome and taxing on a number of Denver residents. These small, unsanctioned communities of unhoused people have been known to envelop entire city blocks, parking lots, and many of the city’s trails.

So, when Mayor Mike Johnston promised to end homelessness, he and his ideas on how to do so became popular topics in Denver.

His strategy for remedying the unhoused crisis is an initiative he calls House 1000. This effort plans to purchase abandoned hotels and convert them into temporary housing for homeless people. This temporary housing becomes available to them after the city performs a “sweep” of their living area.

A sweep is the removal of homeless people from their encampment by the process of throwing away or destroying any and all established structures.

In certain circumstances, transportation is even provided from the encampment area to the temporary housing facilities. Here, the residents will have access to 24-hour wrap-around services available through help from the Salvation Army. These services are in place to assist temporary residents in transitioning into their own permanent housing.

An estimated $48.6 million has been allocated for House 1000. The original goal when the project was announced was to have 1,000 homeless people housed by the end of 2023. With two weeks left before the new year, 279 people have gained permanent housing through the program.

Neither the Mayor’s office nor Derek Woodbury, a spokesperson on behalf of the city of Denver and this effort, responded to questions regarding the initiative's future.  

Following behind the garbage trucks are dump trucks full of boulders and gravel. These stones will fill the sidewalk space formerly occupied by encampments. These unsightly barriers are supposed to deter unhoused people from living in certain areas.

Piles of humongous rocks along the streets have become a strangely familiar sight to those who live in Five Points. Their neighborhood hosts the most famous pile of rocks in the entire city. On the corner of Broadway and 15^th St. lies the infamous “Wu-Tang Commemorative Gravel Pit.”

Four years later, there are more and more gravel pits being placed by the day. Unfortunately, not all these pits are lucky enough to be named after hip-hop royalty. Most are not called anything; they are just an ugly reminder of Denver’s inability to solve its growing drug and housing problems.

The gravel pits may be easier to look at than a person suffering from the harsh experiences of homelessness and addiction, but they are not helping or rectifying the issues in any way. They serve as a reminder for some that they are not welcome here.

I walked around Five Points for several hours on that bitter-cold Saturday. I had done some decent investigating around the area, but finding someone who was willing to speak with me on the record became a daunting task.

It’s never simple to get someone to up to you about their current and ongoing experience with homelessness, but something about miserable weather makes it even more difficult.

I was headed back to my car, and I cut through an alley off of 21^st St. I had nearly given up on getting an interview when I heard, “Can I help you find something?” from behind me. I turned around and saw a man I had walked past a few times earlier in the day. He wore a black balaclava-style ski mask, a red winter jacket, and sweatpants.

This man noticed me walking around, taking photos of the area, and jotting down notes on my phone, and became curious as to why I was snooping around. I told him I was there to report on the fentanyl overdoses occurring in the area. I asked him if he would be willing to talk to me, and he obliged.   

He told me his name was Matt. Like other unhoused people I interviewed in the area, Matt would not divulge his last name and refused to have his photo taken. Despite not knowing his last name or ever seeing any more of him than his eyes, he would be the most talkative person I came across on this endeavor.  We spoke for nearly an hour, during which he gave me the low down on fentanyl, blues, and the drug culture among the unhoused in Denver.

He told me that most people he knows who overdose on fentanyl are doing so by ingesting laced drugs. The most commonly laced drug that Matt has come across are “blues”. A real “blue” is a “Perc-30” or a 30-mg Percocet pill. But those are very difficult to come by anymore. More often than not, when these pills are purchased on the street, they have been cut and mixed with fentanyl, making them incredibly lethal.

Matt told me that when overdoses spike like they did recently, it can usually be traced back to a bad batch of “blues.”

This last summer, he was living in a tent with some friends when one of them had a very close call after taking a pill she had purchased in an encampment. “She just started foaming and shaking on this mattress,” Matt recalled.

A pill that Matt had acquired separately from his friend's batch had started to take effect on him when he noticed his friend was overdosing. Because of the drugs he was on, he told me the whole event felt like a dream. He said, “It was like I lived it two different times.”  

“I ran out of the tent and screamed ‘who’s got Narcan?!’” Nobody responded to his call for help. He shouted again, “If I said I had a Perc-30, you would be all over my tent! Now, who has Narcan?” Another member of their encampment finally ran over and gave Matt’s friend three doses in order to successfully resuscitate her.

I asked Matt what happened to her after she recovered from the overdose. He laughed sarcastically and said she was still using. Matt also added, “She’s a really beautiful girl. You can see her riding around here on her longboard sometimes.”     

As our conversation progressed, I eventually told Matt that I was in Five Points specifically because of those four overdoses that had all happened within a period of 25 hours. After I mentioned my reasoning for being there, his attitude changed.

“Do you know their names?” Matt asked me with a tone of genuine concern. I told him I did not, and I still do not know. Identifying unhoused people postmodern can be a very complicated process.  

“I’m going to have to ask around about who died. I hope I didn’t know them.” Matt said as he looked past me, gaze fixed far down the alley.

His reaction was a stern reminder that those people were much more than statistics in an article I read. They were someone's friends.

We spoke for a few more minutes, and I thanked him for his time. I started to head back toward my car. Matt stopped me before I got too far away and thanked me for speaking with him. He told me “It feels really good to talk about this.”   

I exited the alley and headed east toward 22^nd St. and Arapahoe Road, where I saw a man wrapped in a tattered sleeping bag and heavily worn hunting attire. He was flailing on the sidewalk and showing indications of overdosing.

I had also seen the area where events like this were unfolding. A neighborhood now experiencing increased police presence, further displaced homeless people, and sidewalks filled with boulders, as the result of inadequate solutions.

But that does not mean the streets of Five Points are without a number of caring people.

The employee from the city of Denver who parked his work truck on the sidewalk and got out to check the condition of the man lying on the sidewalk did not appear to have any formal medical training or be properly equipped to administer any kind of aid, but what this person did have was enough common sense to ask the man if he was feeling ok.

I couldn’t hear the exchange between these two but the man on the ground seemed to gesture that he was ok, or was at least going to be ok. The Denver employee then returned to his truck and pulled out a sack lunch, a Kroger brand water bottle, and gave it to this other man.  

It’s astounding that amid millions of dollars spent on bureaucratic solutions to homelessness and fentanyl addiction the most inspiring thing was a simple act of kindness and sound judgment.