Residents are asking Denver Health to move the program that pays drug users cash to take HIV tests and surveys

Homelessness, street crime and vandalism are nothing new along the Broadway corridor south of downtown Denver. But Chris Specht, owner of a condominium in the Broadway Flats building at 2nd and Broadway, claims Denver Health is making the problems worse by operating a community site in Specht’s building that pays people who inject drugs to enter the building for HIV tests and to take medications. an investigation into their lifestyle.

Each participant will earn $35 in cash for taking the survey, another $35 for taking an HIV test and they can earn another $100 by recruiting up to five other people to do the same.

The money comes from the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which sponsors the REACH (Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health) program to collect data on people at higher risk for contracting HIV.

“If you feed the bears, you get more bears,” says Specht, who argues that the REACH program, which is administered locally by Denver Health, attracts a volatile and unpredictable population of drug users that threatens the safety of drug users. the residents who live in the ten apartments in the Broadway Flats building. Denver Health has rented a ground-floor space for the program.

Specht says he’s seen program participants get paid in cash, and then, “They call their dealers, their dealer guys come over… and sell their drugs and they sit here and do drugs. They give cash.” payments to these guys and gals for doing STD tests, but all it does is attract more and more of them to this neighborhood and our building. More drugs, more drugs, more drugs — that’s all they care about,” said Specht, who has also lived in the building since 2006.

“I don’t allow my wife to walk around alone in the afternoon, and certainly not at night,” Specht said. “We’ve had incidents where they threw rocks at us, yelled at us, made a motion like they were going to kick our dog,” he said.

Specht said REACH customers regularly hang out in the building before and after they undergo testing.

Eric Cadman, who runs a ground-floor digital marketing firm, said he regularly sees “drug users and addicts waiting outside the door of the Denver Health site.”

“We’ve even been chased and had things thrown at us. I’m now escorting some of the workers to their cars. We’re afraid of the violence and trouble that’s going on there,” Cadman said.

Dr. Bob Belknap, executive director of Denver Health’s public health institute, said he believes the building’s residents are mistaken about who makes them feel unsafe. He says an increase in the number of homeless people along the Broadway corridor is the real problem.

“We really think that this is probably the concern for them and not actually our program,” Belknap said.

When asked why the program is in a mixed-use residential building and not on Denver Health’s main campus just a few blocks away, Belknap said, “We’ve found that the community we recruit for feels comfortable there. When we talk to people about where they want to come and be interviewed, it’s not on a medical campus, it’s in the community.”

The REACH program that tries to bring drug users to the 2nd and Broadway location operates in cycles every few years. This year it started in June and ends on November 22.

“The data we collect is incredibly important,” Belknap says.

He said it helps connect people to care, take preventative measures and reduce the number of HIV infections in the community. In previous years, the program handed out grocery store gift cards to drug users who agreed to come in for testing, but this year the program switched to cash, which Denver Health said is in line with what other REACH clinics are handing out across the country.

Belknap said administrators heard the complaints and shortened the clinic’s hours, met with the building’s landlord and worked with Denver police to address the concerns.

But at least some Broadway Flats residents are unimpressed by Denver Health’s reasoning.

“Why do we as citizens who work hard and pay taxes pay for something that makes the problem worse?” Specht asked.

“It makes a lot more sense to have it on their property (main campus),” he said.

Cadman was blunter.

“We’re dealing with unstable people, and when we combine that with drug use, it’s a recipe for disaster. It’s absolutely insane and it has to stop.”

Denver Health said the lease for the office space on Broadway runs through 2026 and they have no plans to vacate before then.