Not long after the Reagan administration's massive cuts to public housing and housing assistance, John Parvensky saw a need to help people facing homelessness. After 36 years leading the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, Parvensky has announced his retirement.

He said the number of people experiencing homelessness has varied over the years, but the root causes remain. Denver, for example, has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in new convention centers, sports stadiums and other infrastructure.

"Yet when it comes to human infrastructure, for housing and the support services," said Parvensky, "the dollars are a fraction of those amounts and a fraction of what's needed to meet the needs of the community."

Looking ahead, Parvensky said he hopes funding recently approved by voters for services can be put to work redirecting pipelines to homelessness, for example, by helping youths aging out of foster care and people discharged from criminal-justice and mental-health systems access transitional housing.

Denver estimates it has a shortage of 27,000 housing units considered affordable for families earning less than 30% of the area median income, about $33,000 a year for a family of four.

Parvensky said ramping up nonprofit development is key to meeting demand. When housing is treated as a commodity, property owners win when home values and rents go up, and developers only want to build high-end units for high-end profits.

"If you don't own housing, or if you're a renter, you fall further and further behind as those costs go up," said Parvensky. "That gap can't be solved by the market alone, it needs to be solved with community and public investment."

Parvensky said he also sees opportunities to build on successful efforts connecting people with medical, mental and behavioral health services, and safe housing for partners fleeing domestic violence.

He said while no one wants to see tents lining city streets, most people realize that homelessness is a complex problem and requires complex solutions.

"It requires a lot of collaboration," said Parvensky, "and it just requires more investment across all communities to be able to meet the level of need that we are seeing on the streets and in our shelters."

The faith-based nonprofit Our Calling is working with unsheltered clients in north Texas to create a long-term exit plan to help them rebuild their lives.

More than 4,400 unhoused people live in Dallas and Collin counties. A recent study by the Dallas County Health Department shows it costs more than $193 million annually to care for people experiencing homelessness.

Wayne Walker, founder and pastor of the nonprofit Our Calling, said in its 15 years of operation, it has found a lack of community sends people into homelessness.

"All of us have financial problems, and every single person has crisis in their life," Walker pointed out. "The difference between someone who's experiencing homelessness and one who's not is one of those people had a team of friends that they could call, family in their life, coworkers, and the other one doesn't."

He noted before COVID, they assisted about 15 people per week. The number has now increased to 75 people a week.

Walker explained data collected during the intake process helps them decide the best way to help the unsheltered person.

"We've built a technology platform that allows us to use artificial intelligence as we're looking at the best exit plan for this person," Walker stressed. "Traditionally, years ago, you'd send someone to a shelter or try to get them into some kind of government housing. Well, we would consider that two different exit plans, and in our system we have over 800 different exit plans."

Once a plan is designed and implemented, Our Calling stays in contact with the individual for a year to ensure they are in a healthy community with all the services and support they need to thrive.

They have also created the Neighbor Solutions app to help individuals assist anyone experiencing homelessness. Walker added it can be used by police officers, first responders and everyday citizens.

"Individuals across the U.S. will pull out their phones and open this app to figure out, 'Where is the closest shelter? Where is the closest domestic-violence center? Where can I feed my family?'" Walker outlined. "And that app is the beginning of a platform of apps we've put together to help not only the person experiencing homelessness, but the people that want to help those people experiencing homelessness."


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Once homeless and suffering from addictions himself, Joplin's mayor now leads a crusade to help others overcome the same hardships.

About 53,000 people live in Joplin, where a 2023 study found more than 600 individuals experienced homelessness, largely driven by the effects of the 2020 pandemic, high housing costs and mental health challenges.

Keenan Cortez, mayor of Joplin, has partnered with shelters and local nonprofits to offer support in response, which includes access to recovery services, job training and housing initiatives. Cortez said faith and determination led him from living on the streets to similar programs.

"I just got on my knees and I said, 'Help me,'" Cortez recounted. "I was able to get into a drug and alcohol treatment plan and then being able to be exposed to 12-step programs that, to this date, have been able to help me maintain my sobriety."

Between 2018 and 2023, homelessness in Missouri rose by about 22.8%.

Cortez expressed his excitement about partnering with Vita Nova Village, a Joplin nonprofit building affordable tiny homes. He emphasized the initiative will provide more than just a roof over people's heads. It will offer essential training and resources to help people address the root causes of their challenges and work toward stability.

"Do they need specific training so that they can get into a career that will offer them income?" Cortez asked. "Do they need mental health services, or do they need simple health services, so they can get healthy enough to get back into the workforce?"

Cortez added the city has recently approved a parcel of land so Vita Nova Village can purchase inexpensively from the city and the nonprofit has also raised money to begin building the tiny homes.


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Denver's homeless population hit an all-time high in 2024 but there is actually no shortage of available housing units, according to a new report.

Omar Ocampo, researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies and the report's co-author, said much of the housing built over the past two decades is not homes for people. Those units, many of which remain vacant, are being used by hedge funds and the wealthy as a safe and profitable place to park large sums of untaxed wealth.

"We have seen, over the past decade or so, a boom in luxury real estate," Ocampo observed. "Basically, the only people who can afford it are people who are ultrahigh net worth, or at the top of the income distribution."

The report showed how corporations and wealthy investors from across the globe have amassed large tracts of single and multifamily residential units since the housing market crash in 2008. The scale of the purchases has put upward pressure on prices, causing rents to skyrocket and putting homeownership out of reach for millions.

There are 16 million vacant homes across the U.S., which means there are 28 homes for every American experiencing homelessness.

Developers can apply for tax incentives to build affordable housing but the profit margins for luxury units are simply too large for all but nonprofit builders to resist. Ocampo pointed to the Homes Act, recently introduced in the U.S. House, as one way to turn things around for the vast majority of Americans who cannot afford what the marketplace is building.

"We need public investment and to establish a housing development authority, which authorizes hundreds of billions of dollars to develop permanently affordable housing," Ocampo contended

Corporations have also increased their earnings by converting rental stock into short-term vacation homes. Ocampo noted a shareholder report by executives at Blackstone, which now owns more than 300,000 residential units across the U.S., promising profits as rental stock went down.

"Chronic housing shortages meant their ability to raise prices and be able to extract more wealth from vulnerable working-class tenants," Ocampo added.


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