Elevated Denver's Community Resource Connection Hub Evaluation
Project Objectives
- Document how the Hub connects community members to resources by tracking client needs, referrals, and follow-up outcomes across a year of pilot operations at the Westwood Community Center.
- Capture the client experience of seeking help through anonymous feedback surveys and follow-up interviews with clients who returned weeks after their first visit.
- Show what distinguishes the Hub's approach from a standard referral list by examining how staff with lived expertise build trust and tailor connections to each person's full situation.
- Surface the barriers clients face after leaving the Hub by tracking how often referrals led to a meaningful connection and where gaps in outside service capacity remained.
- Inform decisions about the Hub's future growth by assessing what worked during the pilot year and what conditions would support expansion to new neighborhoods.
Project Description
Elevated Denver partnered with Omni to evaluate the first year of its Community Resource Connection Hub, a pilot program based at the Westwood Community Center that connects Denver residents facing economic insecurity to housing, food, employment, and other support. The Hub grew out of Elevated Denver's earlier work interviewing more than 80 unhoused neighbors and convening a co-designed Collaboratory process, which identified a specific gap in the city's response to homelessness: people often struggle to find and connect with the right resources before a housing crisis becomes a housing loss. The Hub was built to close that gap, pairing staff with lived expertise in the systems and challenges their clients face with a continuously updated database of vetted local resources.
Omni conducted a process evaluation covering June 2025 through March 2026, drawing on five sources: routine staff audio summaries after each interaction, anonymous client feedback surveys, 17 semi-structured follow-up interviews with returning clients, a survey of four community partners, and a review of the Hub's resource database and logic model. Omni analyzed this combination of program data, client feedback and experience, and partner perspective to describe how the Hub functions in practice, from a person's first contact through staff follow-up weeks later.
The findings point to a Hub that operates differently from a conventional referral service. Staff found at least one resource connection in all but 9 of 223 total interactions, and many clients described a level of follow-through they had not experienced with other organizations, several noted receiving repeat outreach weeks after their first visit. Community members most often sought help with rental assistance, housing, and food, and many had already tried and failed to get help elsewhere before finding the Hub.
For Elevated Denver and its funders, the evaluation offers evidence that a preventative, community-based model, staffed by people who understand both homelessness and the systems clients need to navigate, can meaningfully change how people experience their search for help. For the broader field of homelessness prevention, the pilot adds to a small but growing body of evidence on lived-expertise-staffed resource hubs as an early intervention point, one that may reduce reliance on shelters and emergency systems if the model is replicated and adequately funded.
When someone walks in worried about rent, they don't need another list of phone numbers. They need someone who cares and stays connected with them until it actually works out.
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