People walk through a parking lot filled with tents at First Baptist Church in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood on Friday, Dec. 4, 2020. The tents, part of Denver’s first Safe Outdoor Space, will house up to 30 women and trans-identifying individuals in response to the growing number of people sheltering outdoors because of the coronavirus pandemic. (Michael Ciaglo/Special to The Denver Gazette)
People walk through a parking lot filled with tents at First Baptist Church in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood on Friday, Dec. 4, 2020. The tents, part of Denver’s first Safe Outdoor Space, will house up to 30 women and trans-identifying individuals in response to the growing number of people sheltering outdoors because of the coronavirus pandemic. (Michael Ciaglo/Special to The Denver Gazette)
The most telling takeaway from the Denver City Council’s decision Monday to set up yet another tent camp for street drifters? It was the revelation, as noted in The Gazette’s report on the council vote, that homelessness in the city rose again last year. It grew by 13% over a year earlier — just as the city’s camps were rolling out the red carpet.
You don’t suppose there’s a connection?
If the council’s objective is to attract more vagrants, the camps are a smashing success.
To be fair, the street dwellers who overtake Denver’s parks, sidewalks and highway off-ramps with their alcohol and drug abuse, petty crime and panhandling, are only one small segment of the homeless population. But the point that escapes the council is if you build it, they’ll come.
Keep in mind these aren’t the many homeless men, women and children you never see on the streets — the real victims of circumstance. The ones who have lost housing temporarily due to layoffs, domestic violence or other factors largely beyond their control. They turn to homeless shelters and make good use of opportunities to get back on their feet, including offers of work.
The tent camps, by contrast, almost exclusively cater to habitual, hardcore itinerants. For them, life on the streets — and typically the drug and alcohol dependency that goes with it — is a choice. Most of them routinely refuse all offers of overnight shelter, jobs or rehab. After all, they don’t wish to get back on their feet. They don’t want to clean up their act.
But they are glad to take a handout if it enables their lifestyle and accommodates their addictions with no questions asked. And City Hall, for some reason, feels obliged to play along.
Hence, another "Safe Outdoor Space,” as City Hall has dubbed the program, this time in the Arie P. Taylor building's parking lot at 4685 Peoria Street, north of Interstate 70. It’ll be another city-funded-and-maintained camp run by a subcontractor, providing “campers” with heated tents, bathrooms, laundry services, internet access, food donations, dental care, food stamps, COVID-19 testing, community service opportunities and services for finding permanent housing. The site will support up to 60 tents.
The city has spent millions of dollars in American Rescue Plan Act funding so far on the effort and will spend millions more.
For all the expense and trouble, the people who stay in the camps, by and large, will remain just as addicted; just as unemployable; just as incapable of ever renting their own place to live. They’ll continue to get in regular scrapes with the law; to party in city parks and to use the bushes next to your kids’ favorite playground as a latrine. Don’t mind their discarded syringes.
The only dissenter in Monday’s 11-1 council vote was District 5 Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer. She weighed in as she has in the past on the issue with a call for “long-term solutions” like treatment for substance abuse and mental health.
That might actually address the underlying problem.
Then again, it might offend the campers — who have no intention of straightening out their lives on their own. They might even decline to spend the night in the tent cities. They’d as soon pitch their tents elsewhere in the “illegal” campsites that dot the city.
And then, City Hall might have to buckle down — and actually enforce the city’s camping ban. Well, we just can’t have any of that.
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