Denver Supportive Housing Models for Healthy Youth Project

Community Youth Housing Map

The project team is collaborating with the CU Denver GAMLab to create an interactive map of publicly available data and survey data to illustrate a full picture of Denver neighborhoods. The map will be used to pinpoint potential locations for proposed housing options.

The map currently includes geospatial data related to service providers, municipal amenities, transportation, criminal justice and crime, age, education, hydrology, land use, and geography. Data was collected from publicly available sources.

The CU Denver project team is grateful to the Colorado Futures Center for allowing us to include data gathered as a part of their work developing the Colorado Disproportionate Impact (CODI) Indicator. This data is included in the “CODI Variables” layer of the map. 

View the map.

Youth Housing Continuum of Care Findings

Grant deliverables and outputs will be added here as they are completed. These include:

• Zoning and land use policy guide
• Denver Youth Service Provider Survey results
• Denver Youth Survey results
• Identified location(s) for youth housing in each Denver neighborhood based on youth survey data, advisory council recommendations, and youth research team input
• Management models and recommendations
• Proposed funding revenues

Advisory Council

Advisory Council Members:

• Offer specialized knowledge in their respective fields and from their lived experience to guide the development of the continuum of care.
• Assist in the creation and refinement of strategic plans that enhance service delivery and coordination.
• Contribute to the development of policies, procedures, and reports that support the continuum of care framework and ensure sustainability.
• Participate in the evaluation of potential program outcomes and provide constructive feedback for improvement.

Qualifications

Ideal candidates possess:

• A commitment to improving care options for youth and their families.
• Broad experience with youth advocacy, homelessness, mental health, housing, government, law enforcement, foster care, or out-of-home placement.

Time Commitment

Advisory Council members are asked to:

• Attend regularly scheduled zoom meetings until project concludes (June 2026).
• Participate in sub-committees or workgroups as needed.
• Engage in ongoing communication and collaboration with council members and stakeholders.

Estimated monthly time commitment: 4 hours

Contact

Advisory Council meetings began in November 2025, but spots are still open! If you are interested in joining, please complete this form.

For more information, please contact Hope Yohn. 

Youth Research Team

Youth research team members are enrolled in a research methods course led by the CU Denver research team. The course is offered in the Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 semesters. Throughout the course, students will:

• Learn and practice the basics of research design and survey methodology
• Apply their knowledge to the development and dissemination of a survey designed to understand the impact of housing insecurity and homelessness on Denver youth
• Build a foundational knowledge of social science research, research ethics, and research design
• Apply these concepts to a real-life research study
• Define the role of research in knowledge creation
• Utilize surveys effectively in data collection
• Gain experience working on a research project
• Analyze and advise on the research design based on their lived experience as youth, to ensure the research design appropriately speaks to issues facing housing-insecure youth in Denver
• Earn college credit for their work on the project

The course is open to all youth and young adults; participants do not need to be current CU Denver students to enroll.

For more information, please contact Hope Yohn. 

Annie Miller serves as the Associate Dean at the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs. She is also an assistant teaching professor, was the Bachelor of Arts in Public Administration faculty program director, and leads Collaborative Management Consulting LLC. She is an active board member at the Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking and the co-PI for the Colorado Project to Comprehensively Combat Human Trafficking. Formerly, she was an Assistant Professor at Washburn University, a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Denver in the International Disaster Psychology Department and served as Co-Founding Director of the Colorado Resilience Collaborative.

Her scholarship focuses on the effectiveness of networks and collaborations seeking to combat human trafficking and prevent targeted violence. She leads efforts aimed at improving nonprofit management and increasing capacity across networks and systems to end wicked problems. Her research and community-based efforts focus on supporting communities to reduce hate, discrimination, bias, and identity-based violence by enhancing protective factors locally and globally. Dr. Miller holds master's degrees in Higher Education Administration and Political Science, and a doctorate in Public Affairs from the University of Colorado Denver. She was born and raised in southwest Colorado and was a high school football, swimming, and youth soccer coach, whitewater raft guide, and beertender at a local Denver brewery.

Hope Yohn graduated from Regis University with a BS and MS in Criminology. She also has extensive management experience and is a Training, Learning, and Organizational Development professional, informing her passion for organizational behavior and effective management. She hopes to research the organizational culture of criminal justice institutions, including organizational barriers to employee wellness, crime prevention, rehabilitation, and effective policy implementation. Hope volunteers as a victim advocate for a local police department and facilitates trauma-informed workshops on nonviolent conflict resolutions in prisons and community groups with the Alternatives to Violence Project.

Elizabeth Ewers holds a bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education from Kansas State University and a master’s degree in Public Administration from Wichita State University. Prior to pursuing her MPA, she worked as a middle and high school English teacher. She has worked as a researcher at the Public Policy and Management Center at Wichita State University and in local government management at the City of Andover, KS, and Sedgwick County, KS. Elizabeth’s research interests include housing and education policy, and she is passionate about working with young people and including youth voices in crafting local policy solutions.

Ben Scanlan is from a small suburban town located 20 miles south of Boston, Massachusetts. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of New Hampshire, receiving BAs in Psychology and Justice Studies.

He moved to Denver in the summer of 2022 to enroll in the University of Colorado Denver’s Master of Criminal Justice program. The environmental change of moving from a suburban Massachusetts house with a two-car garage to a studio apartment in downtown Denver sparked Ben's interest in studying housing and homelessness.

Ben's research focuses on understanding the social construction of homelessness, both a s a policy issue and a societal phenomenon. He aims to use these insights to reduce the exclusionary stigma surrounding homelessness and help build a more affordable housing future.

Britnie Smith completed her undergraduate studies at Rutgers New Brunswick where she got her BA with a double major in Political Science and Linguistics. She earned her MA in International Affairs and Policy Analysis from American University in addition to Graduate Certifications in Data Science and Social Innovation for Global Impact.

Britnie has worked across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors with a theme of combining empathy and analytics to create social equity and innovation. In the Public Affairs PhD program, Britnie’s research focuses on systemic inequality.

Student Geospatial Specialist

Geospatial Analysis and Mapping Laboratory

Mandy Rees is a Lecturer in Geospatial and Human Geography courses in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences and a Ph.D. student in Geography, Planning, and Design. She is interested in using data to locate geospatial problems related to historical legacies of development. Her specific interests include statistical analysis, critical cartography, and human geography, as she highlights contemporary politico-structural disparities related to discriminatory urban policies.

 

Associate Professor Department of Geography & Environmental Sciences

 

I was attracted to geography's breadth of approach and topic and have sought to take advantage of its holism throughout my career by working with a range of topics. The primary focus of my work is around the geography of health, which is the study how places and spaces (locations) affect human health. I began my career by exploring patterns of malnutrition in poor regions, while most of my work since arriving in Denver in 2008 has centered around the links between the built environment and children's physical activity behavior.

A secondary focus of my work has been on geographic education, specifically on teaching spatial thinking skills to elementary-aged children. I’ve recently become involved with a project that examines the ability of the National Geographic Society’s giant maps to teach children spatial thinking skills.

I was drawn into the geospatial world through cartography and quantitative analysis, which constitutes the core of my teaching load at UC Denver as well as the basis of my contributions to research on a variety of other topics.