[RA]

Michael, thanks for calling last night.  Sorry the connection was bad, but here's a summary of what's going on, and how you can help:

Long and short - the City of Denver has threatened to shut down the Shepherd's Studios at 1525 Valentia St, Denver, CO 80220, a residential apartment building that has no criminal activity, is a safe, and well maintained complex, that has passed every city and independent inspection.  The building is an approved vendor for the Colorado Department of Corrections Parole Division (which required inspection), accepts clients from the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, and from Wellpower, and accepts all housing vouchers from nonprofit and government agencies.  The reason for trying to forcibly remove 30 families from this complex, is they denied the owner a lodging license to operate, not because of any issues with the complex.

The denial of the license is mostly pretextual, and is really about the fact that the owner, Randy Ankeney, has felonies from 20 years ago.  It's a violation of state law to deny an applicant a license solely because of his or her prior criminal record, particularly when those charges have no bearing on the type of activity being licensed. 

The Backstory:  After months of working with the Denver Police Department Randy Ankeney cooperated with the District 2 liaison, Officer Ryan Nelson, who asked him NOT to remove a drug dealer from the property, because of their investigation, until he was arrested (in October of 2024).  The city then used this as a basis for filing a nuisance claim against the property, then told Mr. Ankeney that he had to surrender his residential rental license and apply for a lodging license.  They told him that I could keep operating, and it would only take a few days.  This all happened in October of 2024, almost a year ago.

Shortly thereafter, they claim a "confidential informant" overheard someone saying they were getting kicked out because they paid  Mr. Ankeney cash to let him sell drugs, but he was kicking them out anyway didn't apply it towards their rent.  This is so outrageous and Mr. Ankeney categorically denied the allegation.  He was never given a meaningful opportunity to rebut this claim.

After these allegations, everything changed in their position regarding Mr. Ankeney's lodging license application.  They denied him a license, so he asked for a hearing, won at the hearing (which apparently is non binding), and after a year of delays, and three months after the hearing officer's recommended decision IN HIS FAVOR, the Director of Licensing sent a final decision on Monday, September 15th denying the license application anyway, and ordering all residents be kicked out of the Shepherd's in less than a week, on Friday, Sept. 19th, 2025.  

During the application process, the building has passed an inspection by an independent inspector (required for residential rental licensing) three times, has passed three city inspections (fire department, department of health, and the building department), and has absolutely no health or safety issues that would warrant such extreme measures.

Keep in mind also, the Shepherd's has had no criminal activity since Mr. Elliott was arrested, and is clean, safe housing for 30 families.  Many of the residents are on some type of governmental assistance.  But because the city won't give Mr. Ankeney, personally, a license, they want to shut the complex down and they are threatening to put these families on the street. 

Mr. Ankeney has offered to sell or lease the complex to a third party to operate it while he resolves this, if the issue is just him as a licensee.  They won't negotiate.  It's super strange.

There are lots of crazy additional facts - the city made sure Officer Nelson, the District 2 liaison with whom Mr. Ankeney was working closely for over a year, would not testify, since he could verify Mr. Ankeney's extensive cooperation, and the fact that the only person ever arrested at the complex was the one person they asked Mr. Ankeney NOT to remove. The city opposed the subpoena of Officer Nelson (saying he was on "vacation" even though his text messages to Mr. Ankeney said he was attending and that it was on his calendar), and then told Officer Nelson to not cooperate (see the last text message, attached).  

One added wrinkle - During this process, Mr. Ankeney asked the Assessors office for a review of the property's classification.   The documents from the Assessor's office show they definitely consider the building residential, and an apartment complex.  That means  Mr. Ankeney never needed a lodging license, and the residential rental license should be the proper license.

Here are the relevant documents, facts, text messages, etc.  If there's anything else we can provide, please tell me.  A link to the record of the hearing is:  https://ccd.box.com/s/i1c90plwoctafmu3vor5kmw9xtjprauz

although I've had a hard time opening it.

HERE'S HOW YOU CAN HELP:

1.  Please put a call to action to your readers to contact the Mayor of Denver, urging him to stop trying to close an inspected, safe, crime-free apartment building that helps difficult populations (especially those with criminal records) with their housing needs.  The more calls and emails he gets, the more likely he is to do something to help.

2.  Please also ask the Mayor to review the license denial, and the pretextual grounds for denying a license to Mr. Ankeney, someone who has been providing housing to difficult populations in Aurora and Denver for over 20 years, and who has never had a problem with any city or government agency until this denial.  Tell the Mayor to follow state law, and to allow people with criminal convictions to obtain business licenses.

Mayor Johnson

720-865-9000

mayors...@denvergov.org

-Randy Ankeney

720-338-9149

P.S.  I tried sending all of the file, but it bounced back.  Here's what I could send.

[dia...@coloradocure.org]

FYI  Dianne    MAYOR JOHNSTON!

--
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "Colorado-CURE" Google group.
 
To post to this group, send email to Colora...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to Colorado-CUR...@googlegroups.com
To contact Colorado-CURE you can email in...@coloradocure.org
 
Colorado-CURE meets the 4th Wed of each month, except for November and no meeting in December.
 
Meetings are held using Zoom, and begin at 7 pm Mountain Time. The link will be posted in advance of meeting.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado-CURE" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to colorado-cur...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/colorado-cure/680967474.4857852.1758398873153%40mail.yahoo.com.