Denver Mayor Michael Hancock knows what he’ll regret most from his three terms as the most powerful elected leader in Denver: Thanksgiving, 2020, when Hancock was caught traveling in the thick of a raging pandemic despite having urged the public to stay home.
He wanted to keep a promise to his daughter, he said, having assured her over the summer he would do his best to visit for Thanksgiving. So he went — despite his community needing a mayor who led by example “during these very dark, difficult moments,” and against the advice of staff.
"That’s a moment that, quite frankly of everything, of any misstep that I’ve had, is the one I regret the most,” he said, calling the incident the biggest lesson in his 12 years as mayor.
His “most painful moments” occurred when he made the job about himself, he said in an expansive interview with The Denver Gazette. He tried to learn, keeping in mind people will not only judge him for his decisions but also on how he responds when held accountable.
“For any elected official, the most dangerous moment is when your service becomes about you and not the people who brought you here,” Hancock said.
Twelve years later
Hancock tried to approach his job with a focus on serving Denver, not being served, he said.
Now he is entering the final months of a 12-year run as mayor. His leadership generated heaps of praise from colleagues who knew him as a devoted and steadfast public servant, but also criticism from those who saw him as a member of the political establishment that let Denver's most vulnerable down.
Hancock helped put Denver on the world map. His efforts attracted international businesses to town, expanded Denver International Airport's connectivity to the globe, and pulled the city through economic recessions. New residents flocked to Denver as its popularity as a place to live and work soared.
Traveling during the pandemic was one of the major controversies during his tenure, but, in his words, Denver voters have been forgiving. He won re-election — twice.
The first real controversy Hancock faced revolved around accusations of soliciting a Denver prostitution ring after winning a runoff in 2011. Dozens of protesters and other public officials called for his resignation, according to reports at the time.
In 2019, he faced stiff competition from Jamie Giellis — but won in a runoff. The victory followed allegations of sexual harassment, in which Hancock admitted to sending inappropriate messages to a female member of his security detail.
Hancock regarded moments of controversy as ones to remember and learn from, he said.
“I look at those mistakes as moments where you'd be judged not only about a mistake you made but about how you respond, and I tried to respond with honesty, and integrity and transparency,” he said.
He thinks Denverites approved of how he handled controversy. The significance of that wasn’t lost on him.
“I never took for granted their vote,” Hancock said. "People have seen that over the years I didn't come to be served. I came to serve.”
Hancock’s service to Denver began by leading an uncertain city. Denver residents still acutely felt the fallout from the Great Recession in 2011, though Denver recovered more quickly than other major cities.
And Hancock would lead his city through — not one — but two recessions, as the COVID-19 pandemic rocked the nation's economy.
In between, he faced gargantuan challenges magnified by Denver's unique characteristics, notably a homelessness crisis that is spiraling out of control, a housing affordability challenge that is pricing low-income and often longtime residents out and a sense of resignation that soaring crime is here to stay — all happening amidst a population explosion that caught Colorado flatfooted.
District 2 Councilman Kevin Flynn said Hancock's 12 years are "bookended" by severe economic downturns and he guided the city through them.
“It's a testament to him and his finance staff's ability to stay ahead of the crashing wave,” Flynn said.
An evolving mayor
One of Hancock’s first actions was controversial.
On May 17, 2012, he signed legislation prohibiting "unauthorized urban camping” on public and private spaces in Denver. Denver's business community, particularly the Downtown Denver Partnership, backed the bill, which city councilmember Albus Brooks originally introduced.
In the coming decade, the policy would face multiple legal challenges and ample criticism.
Denver voters in May of 2019 soundly rejected Initiative 300, which sought to overturn the camping ban.
However, in December of that year, a Denver County Court judge ruled the city violated the 8th Amendment by the city's conduct during encampment sweeps as part of the ban. The legal battles continued, and, in 2020, the district court reversed the previous decision. Last week, a judge dismissed the complaint.
All the while, Hancock has remained steadfast in his support of the ban.
“It is a immediate and almost absolute threat to public health and safety,” he said. “We have not gone into an encampment where we've not found public health threats.”
Weapons, feces and urine — or dangerous amounts of propane that could level a city block — have all been found in Denver encampments, Hancock said. He also referenced sexual assault and a culture of drug use as issues he believes fester within encampments.
“When my family experienced homelessness, I am grateful that no one said, ‘Go sleep outdoors,’ as opposed to trying to do everything they could to find temporary shelter for us and then help us to move to more stable transitionary housing,” Hancock said of the difficult circumstances during his years growing up.
In June 2012, Hancock said the ban was working and that those sleeping outside had gone to live indoors with family and friends. But in the decade since, homelessness exploded. Today, almost 7,000 people are homeless in the Denver metro, and the debate over what caused that explosion and how to address it rages on. What's clear is that local governments, notably Denver, have poured significant resources into the crisis, which shows no signs of abating.
Legal battles aside, opponents of the ban insist it’s ineffective policy, a Band-Aid solution to a systemic problem that merely shuffles people from one site to another without successfully connecting them to an array of services.
Cathy Alderman, the chief communications and public policy officer at the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, who started in her current role roughly a year after the camping ban passed, said Hancock, at that time, was "very committed to that being the way to deal with homelessness.”
The ban is “just as ineffective today as it was when it was passed,” Alderman argued, adding she has come to accept that she and the mayor will have to agree to disagree about the policy.
“We’ll keep talking about how bad we think the camping ban is, and it will stay in place under this mayor,” she said.
Despite his firm stance on camping bans, Hancock made real commitments and investment in supportive housing — an approach that combines housing with social services — and alternative shelters, Alderman said.
“This mayor has evolved a lot on those issues,” she said.
She believes the launch of the Social Impact Bond Initiative, which his administration championed, propelled this evolution. Working on the initiative helped cement his resolve on building supportive housing and "housing first" policies, she said.
Today, she sees Hancock as one of the biggest advocates for supportive housing.
“I think we’ve made a difference in hundreds of people’s lives because of that evolution,” she said.
Denver launched the Social Impact Bond in 2016. The Urban Institute, in collaboration with the city, randomly identified 724 homeless individuals in Denver. Of those, 363 were assigned to treatment and 285 (79%) were housed.
The study found that, of the 285 housed, most participants remained housed over the long term, shelter stays decreased dramatically and there were fewer and shorter stays in jail. Advocates described the the program as a resounding success and it eventually evolved into the Housing to Health program, which was recently extended. The program is partially funded by the national Social Impact Partnership Pay for Results Act.
Housing first principles — which prioritize quickly providing permanent housing, while connecting the homeless to services — have always been part of his values, Hancock said, adding that it was the new types of transitionary, temporary housing strategies that he eventually warmed up to.
“I was not about tiny homes, and then, of course, during COVID, we had to rethink that strategy,” he said. “There are safe outdoor sites, something else I had to warm up to.”
Relying on data is a hallmark of Hancock's leadership style and his 12 years in office, according to at-large City Councilwoman Robin Kniech.
“The mayor has some deeply held values and he is willing to reevaluate policies, or the role of the city, in light of those values, especially when it's backed up with some data,” she said. “He's willing to do that even when it is hard, when it requires changing a position that he's had for a long time.”
One of Hancock's longtime critics sees things differently. Hancock and his administration rarely changed positions unless facing intense public scrutiny, mayoral candidate Lisa Calderón said.
Hancock has not served Denver at-risk and homeless populations well, said Calderón, who ran for mayor in 2019 and later became Councilmember Candi CdeBaca’s chief of staff before joining Emerge Colorado, a group that recruits and trains Democratic women who want to run for office.
Calderón claimed Hancock dispatched staff to work with the homeless rather than having firsthand conversations with them and that he tried to use law enforcement as a liaison, something they are not set up to do. Hancock, she said, governed over the homeless challenge at a distance, intentionally, to avoid direct scrutiny. Instead of a housing first approach, he took a shelter first approach, she said.
"This is someone who knows better. Who has lived through tough times and yet ushered in a very cruel policy," she said.
Affordable housing
Denver’s struggle to address homelessness was interwoven with another pressing issue: Housing affordability.
The affordable housing crisis has been felt nationwide, but, in Denver, it has been especially acute. In March 2011, the median house price stood at just over $200,000. In the 12 years since, that value more than doubled to $560,000.
Surging housing costs became a crushing problem for Denverites, and the city's low-income residents have felt the sting in particular.
Growth in homelessness is largely due to the cost of housing increasing, Alderman said. Focusing on economic development and tourism — early pillars of the Hancock administration — can sometimes get in the way of “keeping cities affordable for the people who live and work there,” she said.
Although important issues in their own right, Alderman said they need to be balanced with maintaining quality of life for existing residents.
“The damage from living in a high-cost housing market has already kind of been done, and now we’ve got to do everything to try and course correct,” she said.
Many of Hancock's critics come from the progressive end of the ideological spectrum. Calderón, for example, sees Hancock's response to affordable housing, like many elements of his leadership, as contradictory.
He should have pushed the housing authority to preserve public housing units rather than selling them off at market-rate, she argued. Instead, she said, Hancock signaled to developers that "it's open season in Denver to build to your heart's content, luxury housing."
To Flynn, Hancock did what he could to address housing affordability, a regional problem.
“Denver is the middle of a big metropolitan area. We are 700,000 plus people in a sea of about 3.2 million ... There needs to be a regional solution to homelessness and to housing affordability,” Flynn said. “I'm not saying that Hancock failed to do this. I'm saying that he wasn't able to do it.”
Tackling housing affordability requires more than just one mayor, Flynn said.
And the city has taken steps to try and tackle it.
Denver’s Expanding Housing Affordability policy, which the council passed in 2022, requires that certain new housing developments designate 8% to 12% of the available units as “affordable.” Affordable housing means housing that costs up to 30% of one’s monthly income. Rents are determined by the tenants' income. The policy drew praise, as well as criticism, notably from developers, who argued that it would discourage new construction.
While Hancock is unafraid to show loyalty to leaders in his administration, Kniech said this backfired as the city attempted to create the Department of Housing Stability.
Some inefficient and ineffective structures were left in place longer than they should have been, despite data and best practices showing the need for change, Kniech said.
“We got there, but we might have been better off as a city if we'd gotten there a little faster,” Kniech said. “I think that was about his respect for people and balancing the pace of change.”
The pace of Denver’s change has certainly been rapid. Between 2010 and 2020, Denver's population grew by more than 115,000, although it dropped slightly to 711,000 in 2021 from about 716,000 the year before, according to the U.S. Census bureau.
“That is just absolutely massive growth,” Tami Door, the former longtime CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership said, adding the boom quickly spurred increased housing and infrastructure needs.
Door and Hancock, through their respective organizations, worked fervently to redevelop Denver's Union Station into the economic and civic driver it has become today. That work wrapped in 2014.
Hancock's efforts to reshape Denver’s transportation infrastructure as Denver grew up will have a lasting impact, too, she said.
“The mayor’s legacy will be preparing us and guiding us through unprecedented growth in a city that required significant changes to infrastructure, social policy, safety and security,” Door said.
Hancock said he is glad Denver is a popular destination.
But coming out of the Great Recession, Denver was “nowhere near prepared” for that explosion in population. Rents and for-sale costs “went up exponentially,” and demand for housing outpaced supply at times by a 3:1 ratio, he said. The only city with comparable growth at that time was Texas capital Austin, Hancock said.
He is proud that, along the way, Denver kept recreation centers accessible, dedicated more parkland, opened new parks, made some gains in expanding the housing stock, and helped Denver became a multi-modal city.
In fact, Flynn said Hancock added more park space than any mayor before him.
Shannon Dennison, director of Denver’s Mountain Parks, said Hancock brought Denver’s Mountain Parks “back to life.”
“He's probably taken more interest than any other mayor since Mayor Speer,” she said. “I've been really grateful for his support; the previous administration had a hard time understanding the value of the Mountain Parks.”
A ‘friend’ to business
As the city grows, so, too, has its economic position and visibility on the world stage.
During Hancock’s administration, Denver began the 16th Street Mall redevelopment, “an iconic street in our community,” Door said, and one that Hancock made certain to launch. He fought to keep the Stock Show going in Denver, a “really critical piece of our city’s history,” she said.
He also understood that the economy is held up by business, and when the business community thrives, that creates city revenue and opportunities for residents, she said.
Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce President and CEO J.J. Ament called Hancock “a great friend of the business community.”
Because his time in office began with the Great Recession, the mayor has maintained a focus on ensuring people can access jobs and fostering an environment for entrepreneurs, he said.
“I think we will continue to emerge on the global scene as a destination for business,” Ament said.
Economic development, with an eye toward global positioning, must also expand outward, Ament said. Since 2012, Denver International Airport added just under 20 direct international flights. More are still to come, but this is a huge economic and tourism driver for Denver. Hancock isn’t done delivering in that arena, Ament said.
“We're going to be busy over the next six to eight months, focused on getting on the continent of Africa, further penetration to the European markets, mainly in Dublin. We're working hard on this thing,” Hancock said.
Recently, Hancock traveled to Europe to pitch Denver as an international destination. The focus was on Istanbul and Dublin, the former highly sought-after destination that could open even more doors to the Middle East and Asia.
A spokesperson at the mayor's office said previously the Denver-UK relationship is valued at $1.5 billion and is responsible for more than 9,000 jobs.
But even beyond economic opportunity, there is a social aspect to expanding markets, as well.
“This is a world of global competitiveness. The byproduct is that our children need to grow up knowing that they're competing with children all over the world,” Hancock said. “And how do we do that? The best way to do that is to make sure they're exposed to other cultures and other parts of the world and make sure that it's accessible to them.”
Crime, behavioral health crises
Ament noted Hancock’s accomplishments took place against the backdrop of a rise in crime and substance abuse, two of the city’s significant challenges, he said.
To that end, Ament wished Hancock pushed back sooner and stronger against a 2019 effort to "de-felonize" certain drug possession charges. The city needed "a more aggressive strategy” to address substance misuse, particularly in the downtown area, Ament said.
Hancock believes many people regret not resisting that legislation harder. He counts himself among them.
That regret drove his administration to call for a review of the changes to the law and for lawmakers to again consider how deadly some of the drugs within the city are, he said. Hancock said he wants to see the legislature monitor the crisis, be willing to modify state law and put more resources into the behavioral health system.
“You may think you are taking one opiate, but that opiate might be laced with something that can take your life in an instant, and won’t give us a chance to save you,” Hancock said. “That’s real. That's not conjecture, that's not me hypothesizing. It's real. People are dying.”
Fentanyl hit communities swiftly and lethally. Many, including elected officials, did not realize what communities were up against, he said. Hancock and his leadership needed to know, so they sat down with first responders and experts to get educated on the crisis.
“Unfortunately, that came after the laws were passed,” he said. “Once we educated ourselves, we were at the state Capitol saying, ‘You must address this. This is a danger to our people.’”
And Hancock eyed a state law, which legislators passed this year, on how to treat simple possession of fentanyl with much skepticism and effectively traced the sharp rise in overdose deaths to a 2019 law that reduced the charges for possession of up to 4 grams of schedule II drugs, which includes fentanyl, from a level four drug felony to a level one drug misdemeanor.
Calderón, however, has not been impressed with the administration's response to the substance use crisis. Arguing for a progressive approach, she said Hancock recently touted a "compassionate crackdown" on crime and safety in the downtown but was joined by law enforcement and the Downtown Denver Partnership, not service providers or mental health professionals.
CdeBaca, too, has been a frequent critic of Hancock, with the two clashing about Denver's strong mayor system and policing, including a 2020 proposal from CdeBaca to replace the Denver Police Department with a "peace force."
Hancock supports the police department, something not lost on former police chief Paul Pazen. He said Hancock deserves “a ton of credit" for this, especially amid national and even local calls for defunding police departments.
“We had some voices that were saying defund, decenter or abolish the police, and this is where the mayor's leadership stepped up. And he publicly stated that he will not defund the police,” Pazen said. “I'm proud of our mayor and others that stood up and say ‘No, that's not what we're doing.’”
In fact, spending on police rose in Mayor Hancock’s 2023 city budget, most of which will go towards hiring more officers and giving better training to those in uniform.
The budget also included an expansion of the city’s co-responder initiative. Called the Support Team Assisted Response unit, or STAR, these teams respond to low-risk calls that may not require a police officer. This frees them to pursue more major cases like homicide.
What's next?
Many who have watched Hancock’s career said they’re curious about where he will go next.
“He strikes me as somebody who’s not done,” Ament said.
The chamber president pondered: Could Hancock open a consulting company? Businesses around the country would likely have interest in tapping Hancock’s experience connecting to the global stage, he said. Perhaps he might step back and write a book, Alderman said, or take a break from public office as outgoing elected officials sometimes do?
Door had no clue, she said, and sensed Hancock is unsure, too.
Addressing speculation he might go work for the billionaire Robert Smith, Hancock said he gets a laugh out of how quickly the rumor mill can churn.
“Robert is a friend who I've known for some time,” Hancock said. “But we're not having a direct conversation about working for (him).”
The mayor knows rest is on the agenda, as is spending time with his grandchildren, and he is excited to transition into his next chapter — whatever that may be.
“For the first time in my life,” Hancock said, “I don’t know what’s next.”
Denver Gazette reporter Julia Cardi contributed to this story.
