Homeless camps one solution - but still fails
Re: “The crisis at our door,” April 25 commentary
My neighbors slept outdoors the night of April 15, retiring early but waking often to shake the heavy snow and the fallen tree branches off of soaked tent walls.
Perhaps the indoor emergency shelter, a quarter-mile distant, was too far to walk.
Perhaps they feared abandoning their shopping carts, dismantled bicycles, and fast food containers. Many ordered restaurant delivery to their tent camp during the worst weather conditions. Many food delivery drivers stood in the cold shouting names among the tents.
Some nomadic people have lived on my neighborhood streets for years. Suddenly last summer tents flourished like dandelions on every vacant patch of soil. Graffiti exploded and trash piles multiplied like rabbits.
When the All-Star Game comes this summer, will the world see Denver slums equal to those in Rio de Janeiro and Calcutta?
It is time to wash down sidewalks, reopen businesses, and display the 16th Street Mall without boarded storefronts with every eatery open for business aided by low-cost and short-term leases to retailers, restaurants, street vendors and food trucks.
A few months of full occupancy downtown would do wonders for Denver’s image and pride. A few months boom in short-term jobs would be a foot in the door for those who struggle to regain employment. A few months of employment could benefit nomadic city street citizens with an influx of earned money and expansion of pride in the streets on which they live.
Warren T. Johnson, Denver
In response to Doug Friednash’s column and the shantytowns appearing all across our country, I wonder why our leaders, especially Democrats, are so adamant about allowing thousands of more homeless, unemployed people into our country.
We obviously can’t take care of the homeless we have now, so why allow many more across our borders. Confused.
Johan Bemelen, Aurora
●●●
It’s hard to argue with Friednash on the putrid nature of Denver’s shantytowns. But he’s long on idealism and short on realism. By his own admission, resources are scarce, and history is not encouraging, as little progress has been made in this area since the days of the Hoovervilles. He says we can do better.
No. We can’t.
It’s not our culture. This isn’t Canada or Europe, where intelligent governments fully fund programs that address the root social problems that create homelessness.
The new camping proposal is not a sister to the profoundly ludicrous free camping idea, Initiative 300.
It simply provides for the better of two evils. Instead of relegating people to horrendous improvised camps — as we wait around fantasizing about how things should be in a perfect world — we begin by replacing the makeshift camps with designated camping areas that would at least be under public control. And couldn’t there be more rules and regulations imposed on these camps as time goes on?
To acquiesce to legal shantytowns “would be admitting failure,” says Friednash. I think we should have admitted failure long ago. Scott Newell, Denver (LoDo)