Nightmare that unfolded after homeless families were given free apartments in chic Denver complex next to hardworking families
Residents in a trendy apartment building in Denver, Colorado say their peaceful lives turned into a nightmare when homeless families were given free apartments next door.
Owen Johnson, a 25-year-old from Missouri, says he moved into the White Swan apartment building near the city's Congress Park in May with his wife.
But Johnson says their honeymoon period after tying the knot was quickly ruined when a homeless man was given a state housing voucher to move into the apartment next to theirs, and he says it dawned on them the tenant 'was crazy.'
'The one (tenant) was sharing a wall with us,' he told BusinessDen. 'Because all the time we would hear banging on the walls and smell smoke coming from the walls, and we would hear fighting and shouting and slamming.'
He added that his wife 'never felt safe to walk downstairs by herself' - despite the couple forking out over $1,700 per month for their two-bedroom apartment.
Johnson said not only was his next-door neighbor homeless, but also the person living in the unit below, and at least three others throughout the building - who he says trashed the complex and openly dealt drugs.
'There were a couple of times where there was so much junk piled up in our courtyard that I just took a pair of gloves and threw it all away,' he said.
The owner of the building, Christina Eisenstein, says her property was soon filled with homeless families using tokens to pay rent, who she blamed for 'destroying' her building and 'terrifying' other tenants.
Residents in a trendy neighborhood in Denver, Colorado say their peaceful lives turned into a nightmare when homeless families were given free apartments, and landlord Christina Eisenstein (pictured) says the homeless tenants have 'destroyed' her building
Tenants in the White Swan apartment building near Denver's Congress Park (pictured) saw the homeless neighbors openly deal drugs and have left trash strewn throughout the property
'They need a place with wraparound services, where they have drug rehab support or mental health support,' Eisenstein said.
'Because they’re completely out of their mind. I mean, imagine living next to something like that. They’re smoking nonstop, and the fumes are going through, and there’s all this domestic fighting and screaming and broken glass.'
In Eisenstein's building, she said there are at least five units being paid for by state housing vouchers, and at least three have tested positive for methamphetamines.
The vouchers pay the entire monthly rent - up to $15,525 - and are intended to house homeless people with 'disabling' conditions including drug addiction and mental illness, or any 'condition that limits an individual’s ability to perform one or more activities of daily living.'
According to BusinessDen, homeless people that use the vouchers in Denver are not subjected to a background or criminal history check, yet many in Eisenstein's building own long rap sheets with violent offenses.
The program also does not require users to pass sobriety tests or meet work requirements.
The landlord said she regretted her willingness to go along with the state housing voucher scheme, and in September she posted notices saying she would take back control due to complaints from her longtime tenants.
'I was getting phone calls and emails from tenants basically waving the white flag saying, ‘Please help us,'' she said.
The issue stems from Denver's rampant vagrancy, and the city has reached record levels of homelessness in 2025, with the number of homeless people doubling since 2019 to over 10,000 people, per Common Sense Institute of Colorado.
Denver is one of the homelessness capitals of the US, and in 2025 the city reached record levels of homelessness at over 10,000 people
Homelessness in Denver (pictured in 2022) has almost doubled since 2019, as city officials have struggled to contain the growing issue
One tenant, Tiffany Freccero, said she and her husband and infant child lived below a homeless voucher-using tenant.
'They were letting their two dogs poop and pee on the balcony above us,' she recalled.
'They started washing the balcony every now and then, and the water, full of all the feces and everything, came down onto our balcony.'
Both the Johnsons and Frecceros said they moved out of the building in September, but Eisenstein said she has been left handling paperwork and complicated processes in hopes of ridding her property of the voucher-using tenants.
'I’ve had to become a caseworker. You don’t invest in a property to manage people with mental health issues,' she said.
The voucher program was created by the Community Economic Defense Project (CEDP), a non-profit created during the pandemic to help people from getting evicted in the early days of the pandemic.
But some say the program has evolved far beyond its original intention, and in 2023 it received $66 million in government grants in Colorado.
Eisenstein said she believed the non-profit would remove tenants if they caused issues in her building, but instead alleges it has hassled with her anytime she tries to evict one.
Eisenstein says she has struggled to evict homeless tenants after they smoked and dealt drugs in her building, and said her life has become 'managing people with mental health issues'
In a response to BusinessDen, CEDP co-CEO Zach Neumann said: 'Eisenstein repeatedly demanded that we do things that only she — the property manager — could do.
'Worse, she shared security videos and drug tests with the media weeks before she gave them to CEDP, publicly faulting us while withholding the documentation required to escalate the situation to the state.'
'As this was going on, she routinely taunted our staff, at one point texting my personal cell phone to let me know she was ‘going viral,'' he added.
In response, Eisenstein said the company 'haven't been easy to work with from the beginning'.
Eisenstein said her nightmare tenancy issue may finally be coming to a close, however, and by next month she expects them all to be out - even paying two $1,500 to leave.
