Denver is in the process of evicting about 800 migrant families from the city’s overcrowded shelters.
Colorado’s capital is struggling to metabolize the more than 40,000 illegal migrants who have arrived in the city in recent months.
So far, the city has kicked out about 140 families from the temporary shelters, city officials said. About 660 more families are set to be evicted over the next few weeks.
Starting this past Monday, migrant families can only stay in a shelter room for six weeks, Mayor Mike Johnston’s office announced last month.
“We have filled every single hotel room that we have available in the city and county of Denver,” Johnston, a Democrat, said at a town hall meeting last week.
“Now we have the terrible decision that if we don’t start exiting folks, we will have 250 folks that will arrive today or the day after who don’t have anywhere to go at night,” the mayor said.
Last week, Johnston said his city is “very close” to a breaking point due to the migrant crisis.
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Originally, the city did not want to limit how much time migrants could stay in shelters. In November, the city stopped evicting migrant families and welcomed some families back to shelters.
However, a spokesperson for Johnston’s office explained that the migrant influx is “straining capacity” and that “over the past two months, Denver has seen a dramatic uptick in arrivals and is currently sheltering 4,000 people.”
Johnston said the city would likely need $100 million over the course of this year to pay for migrant costs such as housing, school, and health care.
Meanwhile, city hospital Denver Health has about $10 million in unpaid medical bills from migrants. The hospital has requested more money from both Colorado and the federal government.
The city’s public schools have received nearly 3,000 new migrant children, hundreds of whom are coming in with little to no previous schooling.
Also, more tent cities are cropping up in Denver, which already has a significant homeless problem — the homeless population spiked more than 30% last year.
Denver has only 710,000 residents, meaning the new migrants have increased the city’s population by more than 5%. The new arrivals now make up a more significant segment of the city’s population than they do in larger cities that have seen a recent migrant influx, such as New York City or Chicago.
Denver says on the city’s website that it has helped more than 38,000 migrants at a cost of more than $42 million.
“This influx of migrants is straining capacity, and based on current projections, could force the city to cut as much as $180 million from its annual budget,” Denver said in a press release.