As soon as nightfall hits, the rats emerge. Outside of thin tent walls, people hear the scamper of small feet, and prepare to ward off the rodents, sometimes several at a time.

“They’re huge,” Melissa Hernandez says, one of dozens living at an encampment in Denver near the corner of 22nd and Stout Street, her tent pitched a few paces away from the skeleton of one of the pests.

Hernandez has been living “unsheltered” — a category of homeless people that, in surveys and official documents, refers to people who sleep in public spaces — in Denver’s encampments for two years, working odd jobs as she can, while applying to open positions.

The challenges of living in the encampment are traumatic and compounding, the residents there say.

But so are, they add, those that come with urban camping sweeps carried out by the city. That includes the sweep planned for 7 a.m. on Friday in response to the reported rat infestation.

A companion of Hernandez’s, who asked not to be named, would be packed up and ready to move by the next morning, he says on Thursday afternoon.

The two spoke to Mayor Mike Johnston when he visited the encampment earlier that day. The visit was a show of good faith, and the mayor’s plan to get 1,000 people off of Denver’s streets by the end of 2023 sounds good, they say.

But they would be watching closely to see if the mayor follows through. They have heard promises before, they add.

Hernandez wants two things for people living in encampments: stable, “supportive” housing, and jobs. Work is a privilege, she says, and important because “it allows you a sense of being.” “Supportive” housing means offering affordable housing assistance, along with other services, including behavioral and social programs.

“A shelter is essential for someone who wants to work,” she says.

When their encampment closed the following morning, however, that is one thing they would not have, they say. Neither Hernandez nor the man camping next to her knows where to head to once their encampment is closed.

The same is true for Ken, who lives several tents away and asked to be identified only by his first name.

Although Johnston’s long-term plan is to amass enough housing that the city can simultaneously match people living in encampments with a unit as their camps are closed, none is ready by the time his administration approved the first sweep since he took office, the mayor earlier said.

Ken has been waiting for nine months to hear if his case manager can match him with housing, he says. In the meantime, he feels safer and has more “personal agency” living outside.

Shelters can be dangerous and restrictive, he insists. Roughly a year ago, Ken was stabbed near a shelter. He bled for four blocks before reaching help and nearly died.

“It’s just like an institution. They treat you like you are a convict,” he says.

Johnston’s first encampment cleanup and the problems he and the tent residents have identified illustrate the complexity of metro Denver’s homelessness crisis. One central question for his administration is what to do when homeless individuals insist on staying in the streets. Some maintain that Denver has more than enough shelter beds to enforce the camping ban, while others insist that sweeps don’t work.

Others still argue that the chronically homeless, particularly those who live in encampments and who refuse city services, suffer from deep addiction to drugs notably fentanyl and methamphetamine, and that, unless the Johnston administration specifically address substance abuse and mental health, his “housing first” approach is bound to fail.

Denver has poured significant resources into tackling the crisis, spending $152 million in 2022 and authorizing $254 million to address the problem in 2023, but the crisis shows no signs of abating. The city this year saw an 8% increase in the number of homeless people who sleep in public places, based on the most recent point-in-time count. All told, the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative counted 9,065 homeless people throughout the seven-county metro area, a nearly 32% increase from 2022.

A lifelong Curtis Park resident, Ken wants to stay near his home. He has a job waiting for him if he can get housing. Ken estimated he has already been affected by roughly 20 sweeps in his two years living as a homeless person, but on the eve of yet another, he has nowhere to go but another city block to set up camp.

“I’ll be ready. I’ll be packed tonight,” he says.

Both he and Hernandez say if the city could provide them with a “supportive” housing unit, they would accept it quickly, optimistic it would give them the chance they need to stabilize.

At The Gathering Place, a which provides at-risk and homeless services, several tents stand outside the front entrance. They start popping up in the spring, Christian Nesbitt says, the director of wellness and recovery programs.

A 35-minute walk from the Stout encampment, she thinks more and more people filtered toward the nonprofit, perhaps seeking a less crowded encampment as the Stout location grew.

The sweep won’t change the circumstances of anyone living at the Stout encampment, she says. Sweeps seem to be more geared toward supporting the surrounding neighborhood, while shifting the burden onto a new area as people relocate their tents, she says.

“It’s not helpful. I’m not going to pretend that it is,” she says.

Unconditional housing with supportive services is the most crucial action the city can take, she says.

Her first thought in regard to the rats, she said, is to compare the city’s response to how a rat infestation would be handled for a person with housing. People bring in pest control, she says. They don’t ask residents to give up their home, and even hoarding has to reach extreme levels before a person is evicted, she says.

“The threshold for what is unsanitary and a public risk for a tent is so low compared to how people are treated when they are in their homes,” she says.

Cathy Alderman, chief communications and public policy officer for Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, hopes the additional time Johnston’s administration is taking to give encampments notice before a sweep and conduct outreach will prove more successful at getting people connected with services, she tells The Denver Gazette by email.

But the outcome of this cleanup will be the same as in years past — because there are not any new housing resources available, she says.

“It’s disappointing that Denver had to re-engage in cleanup efforts around encampments before being able to bring more housing and shelter resources online. However, as a provider in the area, we also recognize the need to address the health and safety concerns that were identified and need to be addressed,” Alderman says.

The group has previously pushed for more supportive services, she says, such as trash removal, sanitation supplies and only temporarily vacating an area in order to remediate it, “so that individuals who are not offered meaningful housing or shelter services, they can return to area once it is remediated without fear of punishment.”

To prevent this from happening at the next camp closure, “the city of Denver needs to accelerate the pipeline of supportive and affordable housing by all means possible and double and maybe triple down on making investments in housing, non-congregate shelter, shelter, and alternatives to shelter,” she says.

The city should also look at every vacant rental and find ways to use housing vouchers, master leases and relationships with landlords to help house people in encampments, she adds.

“I believe that Mayor Johnston is starting out with a more compassionate approach by providing more resources, more notice, and more engagement prior to this clean-up action,” Alderman says. “However, as I mentioned, it is disappointing that the city wasn’t able to make more units or options available prior to the clean-up.”