Boulder’s homeless need advocates, not enablers
This past June, Tom Wolf spoke to Denver Mayor Johnston about homeless policies. Unlike many homeless “advocates,” Mr. Wolf has lived the experience, making him particularly credible. Mr. Wolf was driven into homelessness by a painkiller addiction, which, as he says “… eventually spiraled into heroin, homelessness, fentanyl, and near death.”
What does he say saved him and helped him get his life back? Blankets, a tent, a daycare center? No. He was arrested. Otherwise, he says, he would be dead. Today he works with the Salvation Army, spreading his story and helping others get back on their feet.
Mr. Wolf sees Denver heading towards another San Francisco whose “downfall is the result of good-intentioned policies that have failed the people they’re meant to save.”
In The Atlantic, former
San Francisco resident, Nellie Bowles, a self-proclaimed Progressive, echoes Mr. Wolf’s sentiment, writing that San Francisco has become “so dogmatically progressive that maintaining the purity of the politics required accepting — or at least ignoring — devastating results.”
Boulder seems to be on a similar path … homeless day centers, pop-up encampments, seeing any kind of intervention as heartless and a violation of their rights. This approach may help those advocating for it to feel better about themselves but does little to help those get the help they really need.
Of the Tenderloin Center for drug addicts, San Francisco’s version of a day center for the homeless, Ms. Bowles says, “There’s a free mobile shower, laundry, and bathroom station emblazoned with the words dignity on wheels. … It’s basically a safe space to shoot up. The city government says it’s trying to help … what it looks like is young people being eased into death on the sidewalk, surrounded by halfeaten boxed lunches.”
Has San Francisco’s “humane” policies and billion-dollar budgets abated the number of homeless in San Francisco? On the contrary, it continues to grow.
Burglaries have exploded since 2017 and remain elevated. Car break-ins run rampant. In September, right here in Boulder, a man was beaten and suffered serious head injuries allegedly at the hands of a man the Camera reported as “unhoused in Boulder.” The alleged assailant has an extensive criminal record dating back to when he was 18. He was released back into the streets on $5,000 bond.
Boulder is a liberal city, and most who are elected to run it are liberal. But as Ms. Bowles states of San Francisco, “This fight is about leftists versus liberals. It’s about idealists who think a perfect world is within reach — it’ll only take a little more time, a little more commitment, a little more funding, forever — and those who are fed up.”
She calls this approach,
“progressive-libertarian nihilism, of the belief that any intervention that has to be imposed on a vulnerable person is so fundamentally flawed and problematic that the best thing to do is nothing at all. … (A)nd any liberal who argues that the state can and should take control of someone in the throes of drugs and psychosis is basically a Republican.”
Are more non-interventionist services for the homeless the answer?
Bowels mentions no less than eight non-profit organizations in San Francisco dedicated to fighting overdoses and to generally making life more pleasant for the people on the street. The city also funds thousands of shelter beds and many walk-in clinics, but no relief is in sight.
Can Boulder address the needs of the homeless, help those capable of getting back on their feet and get those who are incapable the help they need? Of course. Is that going to happen by providing more and more non-interventionist services, perversely “caring” for some, but prolonging the misery of the homeless and making our city less and less livable for everyone else? Of course not. Will our leadership do what is necessary to actually help this vulnerable population, or will some put their own misguided, failed and minoritybacked ideologies ahead of the those suffering and citizens of Boulder? I hope so. The livability of our city is at stake.
Daniel Schreiber lives in Boulder.