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DENVER (KDVR) – Homeless advocates have been aggressive lately in criticizing city officials in a standoff between competing strategies, but nearby cities don’t offer many examples of homeless population reduction.

Denver Homeless Out Loud filed a class action lawsuit against the City of Denver Monday for the homeless sweeps over the summer that closed Lincoln Park, the latest in a longstanding battle among city leaders and activists over when, where, and how to provide safe shelter for the homeless while ensuring the city’s economics and safety.

Mayor Michael Hancock has gone back and forth on the idea of a dedicated sidewalk encampment area amid Denverites’ concerns about sidewalk obstruction, danger to schoolchildren, and negative impacts on businesses in areas with high homeless populations. This comes as the city has poured more of its budget into public services – including $1.5 million for homeless services and $5 million for a new homeless shelter on 48th Avenue.

Meanwhile, Colorado Village Collaborative showed off a 10,000 square foot homeless encampment as a model for sanctioned homeless camps. At 50 people per 10,000 square feet, the city would need as many as 30 acres to address its entire homeless population – an area roughly the size of Coors Field and its surrounding streets.

Denver’s homeless issues resemble other cities in the Western U.S. that have seen populations and costs of living explode in the last ten years.

Seattle, Portland, and Salt Lake City have each had similar issues and similar politics around solutions, beginning with ballooning housing prices. Like Denver, the three other Western cities have seen average housing prices skyrocket in the last decade – Denver’s by 110%, Portland’s by 53%, Salt Lake City’s by 49%, and Seattle’s by 93%.

These rising housing prices tracked with rising populations, of which the homeless are a generally consistent percentage. As these cities saw their plans to increase population boom into reality, emergency shelters did not keep pace with incoming residents.

Along with that, Seattle looks most like Denver in one important respect – advocates claim it has more homeless than places for the homeless to stay.

According to Seattle Catholic Social Services, which provides up to half the city’s homeless relief, King County, Wash. contains 11,751 homeless but only 8,155 emergency and transitional shelters. Like Denver, it does not allow sanctioned camps, but has massive unsanctioned camps with unsanitary conditions and high concentrations of crime.

Denver’s data from various advocacy groups says there are anywhere between 3,500 and 6,000 homeless in Denver but only 2,000 available shelters. Hancock’s homeless project disputes these numbers and says there is more than adequate supply for homeless demand.

Still, cities with the opposite problem have not fared any better in keeping visible clusters of encamped homeless off city property.

Both Portland and Salt Lake City have ample shelter space, but it is non-emergency space – it is deeply subsidized permanent housing designed for the poorest residents. Emergency shelter space is more cramped, and as Denver advocates often point out, homeless often refuse to stay in shelters for matters of comfort, sanitation, safety, or taste.

None of these cities has yet seen any decrease in homeless populations.