(The Center Square) – Going into 2025, the City of Denver plans to focus on many of the same issues it focused on in 2024, including decreasing crime and homelessness.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston applauded the city’s efforts to meet its goals in 2024, saying the city achieved “remarkable success.”
“We launched historic investments in our downtown and expanded affordable housing options citywide,” Johnston said in the 2024 Annual Citywide Goals Report. “We created new career prospects for students and saw crime rates drop across the city. We welcomed new businesses and expanded economic opportunities to revitalize neighborhoods and benefit Denverites for decades to come.”
One of the 2024 goals, that will continue into 2025, was to lower the violent gun crime citywide. Last year, the goal was to lower it by 20%. The city met this goal, lowering the total number of persons shot by 23%.
While crime in the city still remains significantly higher than a decade ago, violent crime did see decreases in many of the major categories in 2024 as compared to 2023.
This followed similar statewide trends, with the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice reporting in 2024 that violent crime and property crime both saw decreases over 2023.
Another goal for the city was to make housing more affordable and to address homelessness in the city.
As the city has seen rapid population growth and increased construction costs, housing costs have quickly increased. Currently, the city’s median sale price for a home is $585,000, or 34% higher than the national average.
One of the ways the city worked to address that shortage in 2024 was by cutting the time it takes to review permits for residential homes, which it did by 37%.
Moving into 2025, Denver hopes to cut the wait times even more.
“We will continue to decrease review times to make Denver an even better place to do business, and to deliver more housing even sooner,” the city stated in its Goals Report.
Homelessness is another issue the city’s goals, and budget, are working to address. In 2024, the city “supported” more than 3,000 units of affordable housing.
It also surpassed its goal in the All in Mile High program to get 2,000 homeless off the streets. In 2024, 2,233 were moved off the streets and into housing.
Yet, going into 2025, the city’s budget has significantly decreased the amount of spending going into those programs. In the Mile High program specifically, the budget from 2024 to 2025 will see a $84 million decrease to $57.5 million.