For Aly Garrett, the safe haven provided by Tribe Recovery Homes is a source of inspiration and, she hopes, salvation.
The 34-year-old is on probation for charges related to fentanyl use. Her addiction started four years ago while she was in an abusive relationship and dealing with trauma that stemmed from her mother’s use of the potentially deadly drug. Four times, Garrett helped stop overdoses by giving her mom Narcan, a reversal drug.
Now, after completing a 21-day inpatient treatment program with another provider, she’s living in one of Tribe’s sober living homes in metro Denver and taking part in its intensive outpatient program. But Garrett said getting that kind of help for drug addiction isn’t always as easy as simply asking for it — the burden is often on users to find treatment programs, apply and figure out how to pay, even if scholarships are available.
“Honestly, Colorado has a problem. Every place in the country has a problem,” she said. “Probation doesn’t answer the phone. They’re overwhelmed. There isn’t help out there.”
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has zeroed in on situations like Garrett’s — people struggling with addiction who have to navigate a disjointed network of care with little to no support. After devoting much of his focus to homelessness since taking office in July, it’s the next persistent problem Johnston’s administration aims to tackle.
He said he wants to put a particular focus on people who have acute mental health and drug use challenges that contribute to them cycling through the city’s jails, emergency rooms and homeless shelters.
Much like the mayor’s House 1,000 homelessness initiative last year, this effort comes with a memorable name and an ambitious target.
The administration is calling it Roads to Recovery. At a February news conference covering his priorities for the year, Johnston announced the first goal of the program: by the end of the year, to divert 200 people who are struggling with addiction or mental health challenges out of the criminal justice system and into a city-coordinated pipeline of intervention, treatment and rehabilitation support.
“We want to be the convener and the center of gravity to say: We know these issues are difficult. We know they’ve been here for a long time. And we know that a lot of great people are working in this space,” Johnston said in an interview with The Denver Post. “We want to really organize and align and streamline all the services to make sure people get them.”
As of last week, city officials had identified and begun working with more than 30 people who were high utilizers of those emergency, safety and health facilities, said Jose Salas, a spokesman with the mayor’s office.
The next step: to keep them out of jail at all costs.
Better coordination could save money, mayor says
The new effort takes aim at problems that overlap with the city’s struggles with homelessness. Thirty-one percent of single adults surveyed as part of metro Denver’s point-in-time homelessness count in 2023 reported substance use as a factor in their situations.
And 38% of those survey respondents listed mental health concerns as a contributor.
Johnston views Roads to Recovery as a complement to the House 1,000 program, which centered on rapidly expanding the city’s homeless shelter options by opening converted hotels and micro-communities. That initiative has been redubbed All In Mile High as the administration aims to bring another 1,000 people inside this year.
That initiative has recently been plagued by reports of violence within the hotels in the program, including a double homicide and another shooting at the former hotel located at 4040 N. Quebec St. The city has had to step in to provide additional security at that shelter, which the Salvation Army manages.
In contrast to that initiative, which cost the city an estimated $48.6 million last year, Johnston doesn’t expect to need significant money to get Roads to Recovery off the ground. He is hopeful it will even generate some savings in the city budget.
“This is one area where we think it’s actually less expensive to do this in a coordinated way than it is to do it in an uncoordinated way,” Johnston said.
The administration has zeroed in on a problem and set a goal, but city officials have plenty of heavy lifting to do to flesh out Roads to Recovery as a program.
Officials at nonprofit providers, including the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and the Harm Reduction Action Center, have said they are waiting for more information to better understand the city’s initiative.
That is by design, according to Matt Ball, Johnston’s policy director.
Rather than approaching potential service providers with a detailed, step-by-step plan of action, the administration intends to solicit their ideas. Officials will have a meeting with outside organizations to gather input and ideas on how Roads to Recovery can be successful, Ball said; that meeting is scheduled for Wednesday with more than 40 organizations on the invite list.
Better coordination and communication could go a long way in the addiction and mental health treatment realm, Thomas Hernandez said.
Hernandez is a former addict and gang member who found sobriety inside prison. He’s now been sober for 11 years and disengaged from gangs for 17 years, he said. In 2017, he started Tribe Recovery Homes. The organization became a nonprofit in 2019 and, since then, has served Garrett and hundreds of other people.
On an afternoon in mid-March, after a group therapy session at Tribe’s headquarters at 1178 Mariposa St., Garrett reflected on what the nonprofit means to her.
“Everyone here is in recovery and it’s so inspiring,” she said. “We all have relatable things and we all want to get better.”
Tribe focuses on serving people who are already involved in the criminal justice system, either pre- or post-incarceration, Hernandez said. That keeps its beds mostly full, but he knows there are deeper needs for people struggling with substance use.
One challenge is the lack of a centralized data system, Hernandez said. It’s one of the big problems that Ball, Johnston’s policy advisor, says he’s heard about repeatedly as he analyzes the resources available. The lack of coordination can result in some people having case managers at multiple service providers, while other people slip through the cracks.
“Everyone needs to be on the same page. It has to be controlled and it has to be clear,” Hernandez said. “If we’re not on the same page with the budget and we’re not getting any impact, communication is going to break down. These are people’s lives we’re talking about.”
He said a key to providing better programming for the community is for community partners and justice agencies to develop new strategies together.
Not a mandatory treatment approach
Denver City Councilwoman Sarah Parady says she appreciates that the mayor’s administration is taking its time and talking to service providers.
But Parady, a progressive on the council who’s often on Johnston’s political left, worries the program could default to punishment over care. She is adamant that she would oppose anything that compels people into treatment programs.
So far, Parady has been encouraged that the mayor’s office is not talking in those terms — and that officials are looking broadly to include the mental health and substance treatment needs of people who aren’t already involved with the criminal justice system.
“I am really happy to see us move into this space,” Parady said, “because it’s incredibly fragmented and not an area we have focused on a lot at the local level — despite it being a crisis that interlocks so directly with our homelessness crisis, how youth are doing in our city, and lots and lots of other issues.”
At the Harm Reduction Action Center in central Denver, executive director Lisa Raville remains skeptical.
The center holds one of the city’s contracts to operate a needle exchange program. It also offers drug testing strips, overdose reversal medication and other services focused on reducing drug-related deaths.
Raville said Roads to Recovery had captured her attention, since city officials are talking about an approach that would move away from criminalization and incarceration as central tools for combating addiction and mental health challenges. Still, she said, a diversion program that presents someone with the choice of either going to jail or entering treatment would rely, at least in part, on the threat of consequences.
“I am concerned they are talking about mandatory treatment, which I do not support. It’s human rights abuse and it doesn’t work,” Raville said. “What is their substance use treatment vision?”
Johnston and administration officials insist Roads to Recovery isn’t designed to force people into treatment.
“I think … this is a very different approach than (what) you see other states doing around things like involuntary mental health holds. That is not our strategy,” Johnston said. “Instead, what we’re doing is saying: ‘How do we identify people that are high risk? How do we bring them in through any point of contact? And how do we connect them to services, and supervise them in those services, over and over again?’ ”
Will better services keep people out of jail?
While running for mayor early last year, Johnston touted a proposal to covert two pods in the Denver jail into units that provide addiction and mental health support.
That is not the focus of the Roads to Recovery, he said — at least not yet.
Intervention and diversion programs could make treatment options inside jails a far less pressing need, in Johnston’s view. It’s a concept akin to what the city and its partners tested out with the Social Impact Bond program launched under Johnston’s predecessor, Mayor Michael Hancock, in 2016.
That program, which used $8.6 million from private investors to get off the ground, provided housing and access to supportive services to more than 350 people who had been chronically homeless and had multiple arrests for low-level offenses over the prior three years.
According to a study by the Urban Institute, which followed 285 participants, 77% of those provided with supportive housing remained housed three years later. Those participants interacted with police 34% less often and were arrested at a rate 40% lower than that of a control group of people with similar situations outside the program.
Use of detox facilities also decreased significantly, according to the Urban Institute’s findings.
Ultimately, that program saved the city, state and federal government money. The annual cost of providing services to people enrolled in the program was $6,876 lower than the $25,554 spent on average to provide services to people in the control group, according to findings published by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
A second iteration has focused on a smaller population that frequents emergency rooms and uses Medicaid and Medicare. It was launched in 2022.
The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless has been a key partner in both versions of the Social Impact Bond program. Cathy Alderman, the organization’s chief communications and public policy officer, said the coalition also had been invited to participate in the new Roads to Recovery program.
If the focus is on cutting costs to other systems while focusing resources on high utilizers of city services, Alderman said, her organization is ready to help.
“It’s a little light in the details, but we understand that goal. It’s work that we essentially do,” Alderman said.
