Denver, CO. Aloft Residents Speaking to City Council Monday

5pm – City Council Public Comment inside City Hall (1437 Bannock St – 4th floor City Council Chambers) 

5:40pm – Press Conference outside City Hall on front Steps 

Aloft residents are demanding Housing upon closure of Aloft Protective Action hotel. Residents will be speaking to the City Council during public comment on Monday sharing their stories of vulnerable health and making a collective demand for housing. This will be followed by a press conference on the front steps of City Hall. 

The Aloft Hotel, ironically re-branded by banners saying BE KIND, has served as a Protective Action Hotel for Denver’s most vulnerable elderly houseless people for almost 3 years now, and at the end of April the City is planning to close the hotel and kick residents out to the shelters and streets. Aloft residents are there due to being most susceptible to deadly co-morbidities in the face of Covid-19 – they are Denver’s elderly, sick, and vulnerable. 

There are currently 92 residents at Aloft and as of today the large majority of them do not have housing lined up and are being told to go to a mass congregate shelter – the very places these residents were moved from due to health risks at the shelter. 

One resident’s feelings sum up the reality of this housing need well: 

“My name is Brendan Jackson. I am currently homeless and living at the Aloft hotel. Aloft has been a blessing for me the last several months. It, along with the staff, have provided me a safe place to regroup. Since living there I have had the opportunity to find work, get clean and better myself and my situation. I don’t know where I would be or what shape I’d be in and honestly, I am afraid of what may happen after it closes. I don’t have anywhere else to go and an unable to live in an open shelter do to social anxiety disorder and OCD. My fear is all the hard work and progress I’ve made will be for nothing and I will end up back homeless, on drugs or dead.” 

ACTION NEEDED

Email the Denver Office of Housing Stability (HOST) and demand Housing for all Aloft Residents! Email Director Laura Brudzynski Laura.Brudzynski@denvergov.org and Communications director Sabrina Allie Sabrina.Allie@denvergov.org 

See sample email attached

Onwards towards Housing for all Aloft residents…!!!