Upworthy · 1 day ago

Colorado Mayor Reveals He's Slept at a Homeless Shelter One Night a Week for 4 Months

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman - a veteran, former congressman, and the 71-year-old founder of a transitional housing program - has quietly spent every Friday night sleeping on a cot in the Tier I shelter he helped create, serving breakfast each Saturday morning to the people staying there. It started with something more dramatic: in 2021, Coffman spent a week living on the streets disguised as a homeless veteran, sleeping under a tarp in temperatures that dipped into the teens. That experience led him to build something, and then to keep showing up to it. He wrote that the overnight stays have helped him see residents "with compassion, as individuals, and not through a lens of condescension or contempt" - a sentence that quietly indicts how power usually operates. Even those who openly disagree with his politics found themselves moved, with one commenter offering what may be the sharpest observation: "You can pretend to care, but you can't pretend to show up."