DENVER (KDVR) — The mayors of Denver, Aurora and Lakewood are starting a group to work on addressing homelessness in the metro area.
Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman announced via Twitter Saturday that in January 2020, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock contacted Coffman and Lakewood Mayor Adam Paul about working together on solving the metro area’s homelessness problem.
Coffman said that at the time, his top priority was reducing violence among young people.
“At that time, the Town Center at Aurora had just experienced a shooting, between rival gang members inside the mall, that left one 17-year-old dead. There had been previous incidents of youth violence in and around the mall earlier that year prior to the shooting inside the mall on December 27th,” Coffman said.
He said he began to work with Hancock on that issue and developed a joint plan to address it.
Coffman said that last week, the Denver Mayor’s Office contacted him about working with Hancock and Paul to develop a “metro-wide vision to address homelessness.”
“The idea would be that after we agreed on a general direction we could expand the working group to include other Metro mayors to work on the details,” Coffman wrote. “I informed (Hancock’s) office that I’m willing to start working with him on developing solutions to try to solve the challenges of our growing homeless problem.”