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Homelessness Resolution

Goal 20: Make homelessness rare, brief, and singular for any household’s experience through early, efficient, and effective connections to temporary, transitional, and permanent housing, health, income, and supportive services.
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Homelessness is a regional concern in the metropolitan area. The City works closely with non-profits and neighboring communities to assist Lakewood residents enduring homelessness. From 2020 to 2024, over 7,000 people experiencing homelessness connected with Homeless Navigators in Lakewood, 138 of whom were connected with resources to find permanent housing. Homelessness will continue to be an issue as long as affordable housing stock availability is low. Current estimates suggest over half of all renters in Lakewood are “cost-burdened” by their rent—spending 30% or more of their income on housing. The City partners with organizations dedicated to responding to homelessness and regularly coordinates with other area jurisdictions. Continued, expanded, and improved regional care will be vital to resolving homelessness.

The Lakewood Strategic Housing Plan recommends expanding supportive housing options proven to resolve homelessness and providing trauma-informed shelter options that can intervene when people cannot arrive to another safe indoor option. The Plan also introduces programs that keep residents in their own homes and improve overall access to affordable housing options.

Goal 20 Strategies: Homelessness Resolution

Each episode of homelessness is solvable, and homelessness should not be a long-term or permanent situation for Lakewood residents. The City of Lakewood, alongside our regional and community- based partners, can prevent homelessness through supporting housing affordability and helping to resolve circumstances that lead to evictions. If a resident does fall into homelessness City of Lakewood partnerships will work to deliver individualized services, shelter, and housing solutions through outreach, mobile responses, and collaborative programming. Lakewood will continue to learn and improve interventions in housing and homelessness through improved data and outcome tracking.

Primary Strategies

  • Expand mediation services to proactively assist tenants who are at-risk of eviction, by engaging landlords and tenants in mediation before their cases reach the County Court responsible for evictions.

  • Establish and maintain regularly updated or real time data on homelessness services through the Homeless Management Information System administered by the HUD CoC (Metro Denver Homeless Initiative). Develop a data dashboard to monitor continuous progress toward permanent housing outcomes.

  • Work towards sustaining facility-based navigation and housing-focused case management services, including 24/7 access to emergency shelter, for people experiencing homelessness and domestic violence.

  • Develop and implement, as resources allow, disaster preparedness and response strategies for people experiencing homelessness and other social vulnerabilities.

  • Support a common housing needs assessment that can identify individual or family housing needs in community/institutional sectors such as business, healthcare, justice, and education.

  • Partner with neighboring communities to identify and connect individuals and families to housing opportunities.

  • Explore innovative partnerships and means to identify housing insecurity, prevent eviction, and keep individuals and families in their homes when possible.

  • Standardize interagency encampment interventions that lead with navigation to safe and available camp, shelter, and/or housing alternatives while asserting and assuring public spaces remain safe, accessible, and unencumbered.

  • Expand and refine current programming to provide specialized peer support that can integrate newly re-housed individuals within communities and ensure continued housing and neighborhood success with a wide-range of supportive services.

Supporting Strategies

  • Prioritize the preservation and production of housing that is affordable to low to moderate income residents by assisting Public Housing Authorities (PHA) or nonprofit housing developers through programs, policies, and incentives that ensure long-term affordability.

  • Minimize the involuntary displacement of vulnerable populations, such as low-income households, older adults, and people with disabilities, as the city grows and changes. Use tools to allow reinvestment in and preservation of existing housing stock, and allow appropriately scaled infill such as accessory dwelling units, duplexes, and tandem houses.

  • Evaluate the feasibility of establishing a local Lakewood affordable housing fund and/or collaborating with regional partners to identify funding mechanisms that could support affordable housing across multiple jurisdictions.

  • Connect renters with legal resources to ensure quality living conditions and prevent evictions.