COLORADO MAYOR SLEEPS IN HOMELESS SHELTER EVERY FRIDAY

Mike Coffman, the 71-year-old Republican mayor of Aurora, Colorado, has slept on a cot in the city’s homeless shelter every Friday night since February 2026. He does it to understand the people the city is trying to help, and he said he will keep going until the program is a model for the country.

Coffman revealed the routine in a Facebook post, which Good Good Good dated June 17, 2026. Every Friday afternoon he leaves his office for the Aurora Regional Navigation Campus and meets the men and women staying in Tier I. He sleeps in the men’s congregate shelter, then helps set up and serve breakfast on Saturday morning.

“The experience has enabled me to better understand their unique and complex challenges and it has helped me to see them with compassion, as individuals, and not through a lens of condescension or contempt,” he wrote.

Showing up on the same night each week has changed how residents treat him. “Consistency is important so that they know that I will be there every Friday and as I’ve become more familiar to them, they have become more relaxed and open about talking to me about their challenges and expectations for their future,” he wrote. Upworthy reported that he hands out his business cards to Tier I residents so they can reach him during the week.

The photo in his post shows him on a cot just before the 10 p.m. lights-out. A shelter resident sent it to him. He brought ear protection because of construction noise, found it uncomfortable and decided to get used to the noise instead.

“I will continue to stay with those experiencing homelessness, every Friday night, until the program is everything that I believe that it can be and it is a model, not just for Colorado, but for the country,” he wrote.

Commenters, including some who said they disagree with him politically, were impressed. “You can pretend to care, but you can’t pretend to show up,” one wrote. Another said: “I’ll disagree with your politics all day long, but have no problem admiring your tendency to be a decent man.”

From “Homeless Mike” to a 600-person campus

This is not Coffman’s first stint in the system. In winter 2021, he disguised himself as a homeless veteran and spent seven days and nights in shelters and encampments in Aurora and Denver. He slept under a tarp as temperatures fell into the teens.

“It wasn’t fun. It was really hard . . . but incredibly impactful,” he told CBS4 News. “I never want to do it again.”

The week drew criticism. Aurora Council member Juan Marcano called it “the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen an elected official do,” the Colorado Sentinel reported. Then-Mayor Pro Tem Francoise Bergan defended it as “a brave thing to do.”

The New York Post reported that Coffman helped launch the campus through a nonprofit after those earlier experiences. It opened in November 2025 in a former Crowne Plaza hotel and has room for 600 people. The Denver Gazette called it a “one-stop shop” for homeless services. The Post also reported that Colorado spends $481 million a year on homelessness.

The campus has three tiers. Tier I is a low-barrier shelter for people coming off the streets. Axios reported that residents can move up as they engage with services, treatment and career development. Tier II offers semi-private rooms for people using addiction recovery, mental health and job training services. Tier III offers individual rooms as transitional housing for people with full-time jobs.

The rollout was rocky, with sewage and plumbing problems and complaints that the building was not ready.

The encampment outside the front door

On October 8, 2026, Denver7 reported that an encampment had grown on a grassy area outside the campus. The land sits inside Denver city limits, even though it is next to an Aurora shelter.

Coffman said he spotted it during one of his Friday visits. “I go there every Friday and spend Friday night there, and so, you know, I saw this thing expanded,” he said. He said some of the people camped there had been removed from the campus for breaking rules.

Jon Ewing, a spokesperson for Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, said the city was not giving up the land. “To be clear, we aren’t giving Aurora the land. We’re working on allowing them to manage it,” he said.

The day before, on October 7, 2026, CBS Colorado reported that Aurora was pursuing a boundary adjustment with Denver to bring the parcel into Aurora. “We need to clean it up, but we need to have the authority to do it by virtue of having jurisdiction over this area,” Coffman said. Officials expected the matter to be resolved in the coming months.