Denver, CO. ACTION NEEDED! Defund Street Enforcement Team (SET) – Fund Actual Outreach

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The City budget is before the City Council and amendments are in discussion. One of these proposed budget amendments is to defund the Street Enforcement Team (SET) and instead fund actual outreach with resource connection. 

SET is a civilian team hired under the Safety Department as a non-police enforcement team. The City website describes SET as “an unarmed civilian team that conducts outreach, facilitates service connection, and offers quality-of-life resources to Denver’s unhoused population.” This is not even close to the truth!@# Direct experience and SET work logs show 100% of their actual job is to use the threat of enforcement to push houseless people ‘away.’ 

Contact City Council members to ask for their vote to end SET and move that funding to the City’s actual outreach team in the office of Housing and Stability! Thank Sarah Parady for bringing this proposal! The vote will likely be November 4th, but the sooner you contact them the better! 

Email Council members

Find my council district https://www.denvergov.org/maps/map/councildistricts 

City Council Contacts https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Denver-City-Council/Meet-the-Council-Members 

Speak at City Council budget hearing on October 28th 5:30pm

City and County building (1437 Bannock St) 4th floor 

You can sign up to speak starting Thursday October 24th at 5pm anytime until Monday October 28th at 3pm using this link https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Denver-City-Council/Public-Input/City-Council-Public-Hearings (If you can’t do that please show up anyway to support!).

Learn more about the data on SET and first hand experience of houseless people with SET –

Or access this on our website https://housekeysactionnetwork.com/2024/10/23/defund-set-fund-actual-outreach/ 

SET work log analysis 

SET work logs reveal that every single contact/attempted contact – the entire SET workload – is related to pushing houseless people and their property to move. The log sheet specifically includes a column for “# of tents, structures, RVs.” In 2023, of the 2,134 contacts/attempted contacts, only 556 of these list “0, N/A or No” for # of tents/structures/RVs. 73.9% (1,578 of 2,134) of contacts involved telling people living in tents, structures, or vehicle dwellings to move.

The large majority of contacts/attempted contacts that are listed with “0, N/A or No” for tents/structures/RVs specified in the notes either “Area clear,” “no encampments found”, “ready for trash pickup,” or occasionally had no notes. This indicates that most of these contacts were still related to calls about removing encampments, but the camp had already been cleared by the time they arrived.  

Furthermore, the notes on remaining contacts/attempted contacts listed under “0” revealed that all were still related to enforcement against houseless people. 45 of these simply state “full compliance” (without specifying what law they were breaking). In 9 cases, they refer to a person “loitering” despite this no longer being a law in Denver anymore after it was deemed unconstitutional many years back). In 3 cases they refer to trespassing and in 3 other cases they refer to people “actively packing”.

Other notes on contacts with no tents/structures are very telling about the nature of SET’s job:

• “Vans do not appear to be homeless, has current plates”
• “1 person by river passed onto rangers” 
• “One male sleeping, full compliance, area clear”
• “House breached, sent to D1”
• “1 female loitering, transported to hospital, welfare check” 
• “14 people in area, we were advised to leave location” 
• “Not homeless related” 
• “Three people sitting on grass covered, informed had to be uncovered” 
• “Four individuals camping under blanket, full compliance” 
• “One male leaving alley and large amount of items on sidewalk”
• “Five males, two females asked to leave the alleys”
• “One male in alley, walked away” 

This pattern continues in 2024 with 100% of contacts/work being to move ‘away’ houseless people. Between April and early June (the period with the more accessible data) 60% (396 out of 650) of actions involved tents/structures/vehicles. 

The major shift in SET work in 2024 is that now they are put on patrol duty for areas ‘closed’ by the Mayor (as if the Mayor has the power to ‘close’ public space) after encampments were swept. 72% (468 out of 650) their actions were ‘permanent closed area’ (PCA) patrol. All of the actions which did not involve tents/structures/vehicles, plus many that did, were patrols of these areas. And all of the actions which were not in a PCA patrol area noted ‘Full Voluntary Compliance, Follow up, Post, or Send to DOTI for trash’ showing the full focus on moving houseless people and their property.   

Probably most telling and disturbing are SET records on ‘resources offered.’ SET records for “resources offered” list “Yes” in about half of the contacts/attempted contacts. However, when you compare this to the notes, it is unclear if they actually offered resources in all these instances. In 2023, most notes never refer to resources offered, while just a few do. Of the 2,134 contacts/attempted contacts, only 41 noted a resource being offered or provided. 9 of these simply say “resource offered” without elaborating and many others are unclear about whether the resource was actually provided/received, or simply “offered”. 

The notes on these resources can be seen below, but of note, the only times in these 2,134 contacts that resources involved direct support (not just a referral or offer) are 6 to a hospital, 1 to a solution center, 1 to a safe house, and a single time they administered Narcan. 

• SET Team Notes on “Resources offered” –
  • “Offered resources” – listed 9 times
  • “Seeking/Referred to EIT (City’s Early Intervention Team)” – listed 8 times
  • “SUN (Substance Use Navigators) offered/referred” – listed 6 times
  • “Transported to hospital” – listed 6 times
  • “2 males accepted MAT treatment” 
  • “SUN and EIT helped get back to Mexico”
  • “One male overdosed and we had to Narcan”
  • “Needed mental health services”
  • “Transported to solution center”
  • “Provided services – AID Center”
  • “Safe House”

In 2024 (April-June), only one note was made about a resource offered – “AID Center advised.” No other notes were made on resources offered indicating no resources – or at least none of note – were provided. 

Experience of houseless people with SET

We in HAND, together with organizers from Mutual Aid Monday and Together Denver, recently surveyed 100 houseless people about their recent experiences with enforcers (police, private security, SET, etc). This survey was conducted across Denver from June to August 2024. 

In this survey, 39 people reported incidents with SET enforcement. Of note, the findings show a racial bias in SET enforcement with indigenous people being twice as likely to face enforcement by SET than other enforcers. Findings also show bias against disabled people, with SET enforcing against disabled people over twice as much as other enforcers. 

When asked what they were doing when SET approached, the most common answer was sitting, tied with sleeping/resting. The second answer was cleaning/organizing, and the third was camping/in tent. 

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Nearly half of SET enforcement incidents don’t tell people what laws they are violating. And if they are told what law, it is largely for trespassing or camping. 

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Over 70% of SET enforcement incidents do not actually tell people whose property they are on. When they are told, it was City property, DOTI property, or railroad property. 

Nearly one third of SET enforcement incidents lead to ID/Warrant checks. 

Only 20% of SET contacts included an offer of resources. The 12 total resource reported were as follows:

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Of these handful of resources given, only 13% reported them as actually helpful. 

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When asked to describe their interaction with SET more here is some of what was said:

• They tell us to leave, give us an hour or 2
• They were jerks and treated me I was beneath them. I demand respect
• They showed up to tell us all to leave where we were posted up at. They treated me like a dangerous criminal and an animal.
• I’ve tried to be respectful and feel like they made me feel like I don’t matter
• Tagged and bagged – disposed of property
• It was ok
• They’re barbaric. No respect for human life other than what they deem fit
• Started out respectful, but ultimately ending up in a “FU” from both sides. Have contacted me about pretty much anything like vending without a license, camping by the river which is supposedly privately owned
• They quote law and misquote the real law
• Very Cool
• Give out bs contract + wait for you to split
• walking through ally by post office, sitting smoking cigarettes, came & told had to move cause it’s place can’t be (20th St & Curtis) no resources offered

Out of 37 comments 30 of these comments were negative, 3 of them were neutral, and 4 of them were positive. 

The following description of a houseless person’s experience with SET gives a good picture of what SET does.  

‘The SET teams, they come up and down the alleys telling you have to move every 15 minutes…telling you you have to move from where you sit – no matter where you are, you could be on public property, by the road, it doesn’t matter… they are gonna tell you you have to move you are trespassing  – there has never been a complaint or anything and they threaten to arrest you and all that – never a crime being committed.

They will go to the business or house or wherever and ask of its ok if there is a “bum” sitting out there, and of course they are going to say no – then we have to move or we are trespassing.

Since 8^th ave got swept over here, that is when it started, its pretty much been ever since. 

Not setting up a tent – I’m just sitting there with my wheelchair and my dog…

I have been out here 8 years and not harassed and now they F’ing with me all the time…’ 

This data and quotes show us very clearly that SET is not an outreach team, but rather a poorly trained enforcement team with the job of pushing houseless people ‘away,’ 

Action Needed

All statements that SET is a resource provision team are lies. SET is what its name stands for – a street enforcement team. 

Last year during budget proposals when discussions came up about shifting funding away from SET, a number of council members questioned the effectiveness of SET but wanted to give it another year to see how they do. Well, it’s been another year and records show SET has continued the same job of enforcement against houseless people, and connected a disturbingly low number of people to resources. It is time to give up on any illusion that SET exists to provide resources and instead fund an outreach team that is focused and equipped to support instead of harassing people without housing. 

In June-December of 2022 SET kept a referral log (the only time they did appear to have done this). In this log every referral noted was to the Early Intervention Team (EIT) which is HOST’s outreach team (now re-named). Notes in 2023, show of the very few times SET made a referral EIT was most common. 

HOST’s outreach team’s actual job is to connect houseless people with resources. As with all outreach teams, they are overworked and unable to keep up with the need on the streets. Increasing the size of this team would enable them to do the outreach and resource connection that SET is purported to be doing and which can actually help people living on the streets to connect to useful resources. 

This is also a budget neutral proposal – just moving money from one department to another. 

Please tell the City Council to support our houseless community by voting to move funding from SET to outreach with effective outreach approaches and connection to resources. (See info above on how to contact Council)