WASHINGTON — The federal government’s signature homelessness strategy has presided over a 40 percent increase in homelessness nationwide and a near-doubling of chronic homelessness since 2016, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s own data, and Denver’s experience illustrates why.

Michele Steeb, CEO of Free Up Foundation and a guest on The Kim Monson Show on February 23, described the Housing First approach as a catastrophic failure. The federal numbers bear her out. HUD’s 2024 Annual Homeless Assessment Report counted 771,480 people experiencing homelessness, up from 549,928 in 2016. Chronic homelessness nearly doubled in that same period, rising from 77,486 to 152,585.

“Homelessness is up almost 35 percent across the country,” Steeb told the show’s guest hosts, Marshall Dawson and Cathy Russell. The actual figure from HUD is closer to 40 percent, and the chronic homelessness increase she placed at “almost 60 percent” is closer to 97 percent. The real numbers are worse than what she described.

Housing First, which provides permanent housing with no preconditions for sobriety or treatment, became the dominant federal approach through a series of policy changes beginning in 2009. The HEARTH Act restructured McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance funding, and the Obama administration’s 2010 Opening Doors strategic plan declared that federal tools “should be informed by a Housing First approach.”

By 2013, HUD’s Continuum of Care funding competitions awarded bonus points to programs using the Housing First model, creating powerful financial incentives. Programs that required sobriety or treatment participation were at a severe competitive disadvantage. HUD directed approximately 74 percent of competitive grants to permanent supportive housing, according to the Heritage Foundation, while transitional housing beds fell from 211,000 in 2007 to 101,000 by 2018.

Steeb cited a Boston study in which “nearly half of the cohort was dead” and “only 30 percent were left in that housing.” The study she referenced, published in Medical Care in 2021, tracked 73 chronically homeless individuals placed in permanent supportive housing from Boston’s streets between 2005 and 2019.

The findings are stark. Over the 14-year study period, 45 percent of participants died, a mortality rate the study’s authors called “higher than expected,” with a probability of survival below 50 percent at five years. Housing retention stood at just 36 to 42.5 percent at the five-year mark, depending on the statistical method used. The cohort suffered from extreme rates of co-occurring medical, psychiatric, and substance use disorders.

The study’s authors did not conclude that Housing First had failed. They called for “more robust and flexible and long-term medical and social supports.” But the data point Steeb highlighted, that permanent housing without treatment yielded devastating mortality and retention rates, is supported by the study’s own numbers.

Denver offers a real-time case study. The city spent

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday that President Trump cannot use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs, striking down the legal foundation for the bulk of his trade agenda in a decision that Chief Justice John Roberts said implicates Congress’s core constitutional taxing authority.

The ruling in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump eliminates tariffs that had generated over $160 billion in revenue and were projected to bring in $1.4 trillion over the next decade, according to the Tax Foundation. Trump responded within 24 hours by imposing replacement tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, a statute that has never previously been invoked and is capped at 15% for 150 days.

Marshall Dawson, guest hosting The Kim Monson Show on February 23, called the decision constitutionally significant while noting its practical limits. “I think it is very important that the Supreme Court ensures that we are getting things right and proper,” Dawson said on the broadcast. “This is not the only avenue that the president has for setting tariffs.”

Roberts, writing for a majority that included Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Jackson, held that IEEPA’s text does not support the power the president claimed.

“Based on two words separated by 16 others in IEEPA, ‘regulate’ and ‘importation,’ the President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time. Those words cannot bear such weight,” Roberts wrote.

The chief justice emphasized that IEEPA “contains no reference to tariffs or duties” and that “until now no President has read IEEPA to confer such power.” The government conceded that “the president has no inherent peacetime power to impose tariffs,” according to legal analysis from Perkins Coie.

Roberts grounded the decision in the Constitution’s assignment of taxing power to Congress under Article I, Section 8. In a portion of the opinion joined only by Justices Gorsuch and Barrett, Roberts applied the major questions doctrine, writing that delegating “the core congressional power of the purse” requires clear statutory language, especially when, as the government’s own brief argued, whether “we are a rich nation” or a “poor” one hangs in the balance.

Justice Kavanaugh dissented in a 63-page opinion joined by Justices Thomas and Alito. “The tariffs have generated vigorous policy debates” that “are not for the Federal Judiciary to resolve,” Kavanaugh wrote. Thomas filed a separate 18-page dissent emphasizing historical practice.

The decision voids all tariffs imposed under IEEPA authority. These include tariffs on Canada (up to 35%), Mexico (up to 25%), and China (up to 20%) issued in early 2025, the “Liberation Day” tariffs of April 2, 2025, targeting most trading partners at rates of 10% to 50%, and subsequent country-specific tariffs on Brazil and India, according to Perkins Coie.

The Tax Foundation estimated that the ruling “shields US taxpayers from that major tax increase and erases nearly three-fourths of the new tax revenue” the administration had projected. Importers have already paid an estimated $130 billion to $200 billion in IEEPA duties,

DENVER — Protect Kids Colorado delivered approximately 170,000 signatures to the Colorado Secretary of State’s office in support of Initiative 108, a ballot measure that would reclassify child sex trafficking from a class 2 felony to a class 1 felony carrying a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Kevin Lundberg, a former state senator and board chairman of Protect Kids Colorado, said on The Kim Monson Show that more than 3,200 volunteers returned notarized petitions as part of the effort. Lundberg described the volunteer mobilization as the largest citizen-driven petition effort in Colorado history. Fewer than 10% of total signatures came from paid petition circulators, he said. Yvonne Paez guest hosted the Feb. 17 broadcast.

Under current Colorado law, human trafficking of a minor for sexual servitude is classified as a class 2 felony under CRS 18-3-504. Because the offense is designated as a crime of violence, the sentencing range extends to 16 to 48 years in prison with five years of mandatory parole. Offenders are eligible for parole and eventual release.

Initiative 108, titled the “Children Are Not For Sale Act,” would elevate the offense to a class 1 felony, the most serious classification in Colorado. Since Colorado abolished the death penalty in 2020, the maximum sentence for a class 1 felony is life in prison without the possibility of parole or release.

The measure would also expand the legal definition of human trafficking to include any person who “knowingly trades anything of monetary value to buy or sell sexual activity with a minor,” according to the initiative’s filing with the Secretary of State.

Protect Kids Colorado launched its signature-gathering effort on Sept. 5, 2025, giving petitioners roughly six months to collect the required signatures. Lundberg said on The Kim Monson Show that the organization collected “almost a half million signatures” across three related initiatives, with approximately 170,000 submitted for Initiative 108 specifically.

The campaign relied overwhelmingly on volunteer labor, Lundberg said, with fewer than 10% of total signatures coming from paid circulators. The Rocky Mountain Voice reported in December 2025 that professional signature gatherers were hired to supplement the volunteer effort as the deadline approached.

Dr. Travis Morrell, a spokesperson for Protect Kids Colorado, described the trafficking initiative as the least disputed of the three measures the organization advanced, according to the Rocky Mountain Voice.

Colorado ranked 10th nationally for the highest number of human trafficking reports as of 2023, according to the Common Sense Institute. The state’s position along two major interstate highways, I-70 and I-25, has been cited by the Colorado Catholic Conference as a factor contributing to trafficking activity.

At the state Capitol, a separate bipartisan effort is also targeting child sex trafficking penalties. Senate Bill...