Disability Law United filed a lawsuit against the City and County of Denver on behalf of Housekeys Action Network – Denver (HAND) and seven individual plaintiffs, arguing that the shelters Denver funds and contracts with to serve the city’s unhoused population routinely turn away people with disabilities, in violation of the ADA, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Fair Housing Act, and the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act.
Denver contracts with multiple agencies to run its shelter system, ranging from walk-in overnight shelter to transitional housing. City Council staff and outreach workers with Denver’s STAR program approached DLU with reports that disabled people were being turned away even when City staff were actively trying to place them: people denied because of mental illness symptoms, because a physical disability was wrongly read as an inability to care for themselves, because they used a wheelchair or walker, because a shelter wouldn’t refrigerate medication or allow medically necessary tools like small scissors, or because accessible beds had gone to non-disabled residents while other beds sat open. HAND, a grassroots nonprofit made up largely of people who have themselves experienced houselessness, confirmed through its own outreach and interviews that these were not isolated incidents.
The seven named plaintiffs describe a pattern across shelters; being denied refrigeration for insulin and other medication, denied shelter access due to lack of wheelchair accessible beds, inaccessible shelter bathrooms causing unsanitary conditions, denied medical scissors needed to maintain a colostomy bag and forcing use of dirty nail clippers instead, causing an infection, and being forced to abandon a wheelchair when transported to a cold-weather shelter and later denied help retrieving it.
DLU sent Denver a letter in October 2024 detailing the pattern and asking the City to enter structured negotiations; the City declined.
The lawsuit seeks an order requiring Denver to revised its policies and practices, and monitor its shelter contractors and grantees for compliance with disability law, establish a grievance and intervention process for people who are unlawfully denied services, train City and shelter staff, and include people with disabilities in the City’s homelessness planning process, along with a declaration that Denver is responsible for the discriminatory treatment happening at the shelters it funds, damages for the individual plaintiffs, and attorneys’ fees.