Douglas County has reduced unsheltered homelessness by 50%, officials say. Here’s how they did it.

Douglas County provided a sneak peek of its homeless count Thursday and the news was good — the number of unsheltered people in the wealthy suburban county south of Denver dropped by 46% this year from last.

The tally was based on the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative Point-in-Time survey, conducted once a year, in which volunteers fan out across the metro area and count those without a home. This year’s survey was conducted on Jan. 30.

In total, the survey found 57 people experiencing homelessness in Douglas County last month, both in a shelter and on the street, versus 78 in 2022 — a drop of 27%. The unsheltered number dropped from 50 last year to 27 this year.

The full Point-in-Time results for the entire metro area won’t be released until late summer.

Commissioner Abe Laydon credited the drop in the homeless population in Douglas County in large part to the county’s Homeless Engagement, Assistance & Resource Team, or HEART.

The team, which launched in October, is made up of three “navigators” who respond alongside police to calls involving homelessness. The navigators, who have experience in behavioral and mental health or case management, refer people in need to appropriate community services.  The end goal is to keep people with specific mental health needs out of jail.

“What we know undoubtedly today is that there are fewer people living on the streets in Douglas County than there were in 2022,” Laydon said at a press conference Thursday. “Having a navigator paired with law enforcement seems to be the secret sauce that is leading to so much success.”

Sheriff Darren Weekly, elected in November, said he doesn’t want homelessness “to get a foothold in our community.”

“We want to connect them with services. We want to assure that everyone is safe,” he said.

By the same token, his department will not allow criminal conduct to occur under the guise of homelessness.

“We’re not trying to criminalize homelessness certainly, we’re not trying to solve it by putting people in jail,” Weekly said. “But we’re also not going to look the other way if the laws are being broken.”

Homelessness in Douglas County became a bit of a flashpoint last summer, when Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman protested that his southern neighbor was transporting some people without a home to his city after being released from jail.

“It’s still ongoing and it’s wrong,” Coffman told The Denver Post Thursday. “(Douglas County) is becoming a more urban county and they’re going to have more urban problems, and homelessness is one of them.”

Douglas County, with a population of 370,000, doesn’t have a permanent homeless shelter and residents last year cried foul when the county proposed erecting 17 temporary homes for those without one.

The mayor said “there needs to be a statewide solution” to homelessness to avoid cross-jurisdictional conflicts. The 2022 Point-in-Time survey found that Aurora had 612 people experiencing homelessness.

Laydon, in an interview with the Post, disputed that Douglas County was “shipping people to Aurora.” He said more than 85% of the inmates in the county’s criminal justice center aren’t even from Douglas County. But quite a few are from Aurora.

“If people ask for a ride, we will take them,” he said. “No one is being shipped against their will.”