Support Fund for At-Risk Rodeway Residents

The Rodeway Inn is the only women/transgender/non-binary/gender-expansive hotel shelter in Denver. For 3 years, it has been a critical safe place for people who are otherwise unsafe on the streets or in shelters. Here they had a place with privacy, dignity, and safety... The majority of residents being survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.

Now, Denver Housing Authority (DHA) is pulling the rug from underneath more than 70 at-risk women, trans, non-binary, and other LGBTQIA+ individuals. The fact that it is a housing authority at fault for causing all these people to suddenly face the threat of returning to the streets and physically unsafe mass shelters once again due to DHA's desire to sell the property and turn a profit would be ironically comical, if it wasn't so heartless and life-threatening.

Recently the residents of Rodeway showed their resilience and strength at a meeting with the City (HOST). Residents asked direct questions of HOST about what they are doing to ensure housing for all residents, and again and again, they were told to “engage with their case managers” to seek housing. In the words of one resident at that meeting: "For many of us here, [Rodeway] is the only source of stability we’ve had... Taking away our last source of stability is bullshit. The idea of being out on the street for many of us is just not an option at all… I have a service dog, an insulin pump, I can’t even charge it on the street..." Another resident, a young black woman, told of how if she does not get housing secured, CPS will not allow her to get her 8 year old child back. We cannot let the positive trajectory achieved through critical hotel sheltering get abruptly interrupted for all of our valuable community members and neighbors!!! They deserve support and protection from a society that disproportionately harms them!!

While much work is being done by the Gathering Place, the Reciprocity Collective, and some others to secure housing for all Rodeway residents, the needed housing is not secured yet. The City is not providing any housing. DHA, who owns this property and is responsible for displacing all these residents, has only provided a small number of housing vouchers for less than a quarter of the residents... Acting like giving some token vouchers will amend for their act of kicking 71 houseless women and queer people to nowhere!@?#!

The Rodeway Inn is owned by DHA, leased to the City, and operated by Gathering Place. DHA bought this property with “D3” dollars (bond money specifically meant for low-income housing in partnership with the City) and yet are planning to sell off this property for private market rate housing!@$ - saying they will use the money made to buy other properties for low-income housing. This “trickle down” housing tactic makes the most ideal housing locations for rich people, and makes poor people wait for some of those dollars to trickle down into housing in worse locations, years later - after they have been displaced to the shelters or streets. All in the interest of profit!%$! DHA should keep this property, do needed renovations/rebuild, and ensure it can remain housing for formerly houseless women and the transgender community!

PLEASE DONATE to support our neighbors who have been through enough as is!!! As we get closer to the closing date, we hope that the City and DHA will do what's right by these residents and secure safe housing. If not, donations from the community will go to extended hotel stay, housing appointment transportation, storage units, and moving costs. If the City and DHA do what is right, then we can focus on using the funds for the many other pressing needs - car repairs, pet needs, medical appointment transportation, storage costs, etc.

This fundraiser will send funds to our fiscal sponsor Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) to be transferred to HAND for resident support. More information about Western Regional Advocacy Project: WRAP was created to expose and eliminate the root causes of civil and human rights abuses of people experiencing poverty and homelessness in our communities.