AURORA MAYOR SPENT FRIDAY NIGHTS ON A HOMELESS SHELTER COT
The Republican mayor of Aurora, Colorado, has been sleeping on a homeless shelter cot every Friday night, and he plans to keep going.
Mike Coffman, 71, the mayor of Aurora, a city bordering Denver, began the weekly overnight stays at the Aurora Regional Navigation Campus in February 2026. He also helps serve breakfast there on Saturday mornings.
“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,” Coffman wrote in a Facebook post.
Upworthy reported that Coffman said the stays help him understand residents’ challenges and speak with them directly.
“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.
He said showing up on the same night each week has paid off. “Consistency is important so that they know that I will be there every Friday . . . they have become more relaxed and open about talking to me about their challenges and expectations for their future,” Coffman wrote.
The campus and Coffman’s history
The campus opened to the public in November 2025 in a former Crowne Plaza hotel. The Denver Gazette called it a “one-stop shop” for homeless services.
It has 600 beds. The entry level is a low-barrier shelter with rows of cots in large first-floor rooms.
Axios reported that residents can move up as they engage with services, treatment and career development. The higher levels offer better and more private living conditions, and the model aims to lead toward transitional housing.
The New York Post reported that Coffman helped launch the campus through a nonprofit after earlier experiences with homelessness in Aurora. The paper also reported that Colorado spends $481 million a year on homelessness.
The Friday cot is not his first stint in the system. In winter 2021, Coffman 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 in temperatures that fell into the teens.
“It wasn’t fun. It was really hard . . . but incredibly impactful,” Coffman told CBS4 News.
He later called homelessness a “lifestyle choice, and it is a very dangerous lifestyle choice,” and pointed to “drug culture” as a cause. Those remarks drew criticism from homeless advocates.
Aurora Council member Juan Marcano called the undercover stay “the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen an elected official do,” the Colorado Sentinel reported.
Then-Mayor Pro Tem Francoise Bergan defended it. She called the week on the streets “a brave thing to do.”
The encampment outside the campus
On October 8, 2026, Denver7 reported a growing encampment on a grassy area outside the campus. The land sits inside Denver city limits, even though it is beside an Aurora shelter.
Coffman told the station he noticed it during one of his 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.
“We want to get this issue resolved. It’s inappropriate to have you know a homeless encampment right in front of a shelter designed to help people experiencing homelessness,” Coffman said.
A Denver city spokesperson, identified as Ewing, said the city was not handing over the land. “To be clear, we aren’t giving Aurora the land. We’re working on allowing them to manage it,” Ewing said.
Aurora and Denver were still discussing how Aurora could manage the encampment, and city officials gave no timeline for a solution.
