MOST RESIDENTS OF DENVER’S Safe Outdoor Space live in ice-fishing tents. But Grant Davis has his own tiny home, complete with built-in heating and cooling and a door that locks. Inside, there’s a narrow bed, a pillow plastered with NFL logos, and a portable speaker that lights up in rainbow colors. Also: a bag of bath salts. Where would he use those, I asked? Davis chuckled. He didn’t know, either. Though the Colorado Village Collaborative’s Native-Inclusive Safe Outdoor Space (SOS), where he’s lived since last February, offers showers, laundry, and housing referrals, there’s no bathtub in sight.
People here call Davis, 76, “grandpop.” He first visited Denver in 1971. The mountains reminded him so much of home — he’s a member of Alaska’s Tlingit tribe — that he stayed. Since then, he’d found work at the food bank and Hertz car rental, and received income from Social Security, the VA (he was a U.S. Navy cook), and his tribe. It was rarely enough for rent, though, and over the last decade, he’s cycled between staying with relatives, sleeping in his car and staying at shelters like this one. But he hopes that will soon change.
