08/07/2026
Many leaders inspect reports. One mayor decided to inspect a mattress.
71-year-old Mike Coffman, the mayor of Aurora, Colorado, has been spending every Friday night sleeping on a basic cot inside the Aurora Regional Navigation Center. The 600-bed transitional housing campus was created to help people experiencing homelessness, and Coffman wanted to see how it was really working after the lights went out. Instead of dropping in for a photo or a quick tour, he stays overnight in the same Tier One shelter, sleeps in his everyday clothes, and wakes up early to help serve breakfast on Saturday mornings.
His goal wasn't to make headlines. He wanted an unfiltered look at how millions of dollars in public funding were being used and whether the people staying there were receiving the support they needed. But somewhere along the way, the weekly routine changed more than his understanding of the shelter. It changed how he saw the people inside it.
This wasn't his first attempt to understand homelessness. In 2021, Coffman spent a week undercover as a homeless veteran, an experiment that drew criticism after he described homelessness as a "lifestyle choice." Years later, he says these overnight stays have given him a far more personal and nuanced perspective.
Whether people agree with his politics or not, it's a reminder that some lessons are harder to learn from behind a desk than from a simple cot.
