Mike Coffman, 71, has a standing appointment every Friday night. A cot at the Aurora Regional Navigation Campus, the homeless shelter in the Colorado city he governs. It is not a courtesy visit. The Republican mayor sleeps there, spends time with the residents and the next day helps serve breakfast.
His goal is to understand firsthand how one of the state’s largest budgets is spent. 481 million dollars a year allocated to combating homelessness. “The experience has allowed me to understand them with compassion, as individuals, and not through a lens of contempt”, he wrote on Facebook. Before this ongoing gesture, in 2021 he dressed as a homeless veteran and spent seven nights outdoors in below-zero temperatures, a decision that drew strong criticism when he described homelessness as a “lifestyle choice”.
Today, with nearly 18,700 homeless people in Colorado, an increase of 90% since 2020, Coffman insists that he will continue sleeping there every Friday until he turns the program into a model for the country.
