DENVER (KDVR) — Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced Wednesday that federal help is on the way to bring more solutions to their goal of getting more people housed.

The work city leaders in Denver are doing to get more people in housing is getting national recognition. The White House wants to help Denver with that goal by giving the city a direct line to the federal government.

The leader of the nation’s Interagency Council on Homelessness commended Johnston on his plan to get 1,000 people housed by the end of this year.

“Denver gives me hope right now,” Jeff Olivet, USICH director, said about Denver’s efforts to get people off the streets.

“Yet this is only a first step. It’s a really important first step, but it’s only a first step. We have to scale the work beyond just those first thousand people, and we have to ensure the permanent solutions of housing and wraparound supports are also being developed so that people never return to homelessness again,” Olivet said.

‘A barrier-busting opportunity’ to address homelessness

The federal government is trying to make the process of getting people housed easier through an initiative called “All Inside,” a program that launched in May. It will place a senior-level federal official in Denver to help connect the city to federal resources.

“They will have one fully embedded federal leader who will help us partner with the federal government to figure out ways we can utilize resources, partnership, services, in all the effort we are undertaking here,” Johnston said. “So they describe it as a barrier-busting opportunity, all the ways that the federal government can be a great partner to us and being able to find more efficient, more effective routes to get that work done.”

Leaders said the goal is to remove barriers to improve the process of getting people sheltered.

“The Biden-Harris administration has invested more in homelessness than any previous administration,” Olivet said. “There are already a lot of federal resources coming into the community. This initiative is designed to make the best use of those resources.”

Once a federal staffer is selected for the role, the White House said they will remain in Denver until the end of 2024.