The Open Forum Seek out the right solutions for our homeless citizens
The dispute over camping on Denver’s public property by homeless persons lacks vision. Instead, Denver needs a homeless assistance center (HAC), a place where homeless persons can live, not camp, while they are preparing to move back into a self-sufficient life. The HAC located in Miami is a temporary home, not a shelter. In addition to a home with meals, it provides many services to residents: health services (physical and mental), job training, job placement, child care, legal and financial services, and others through existing community and governmental organizations.
Miami has two HAC’s, with 800 beds available for adults and children. It has a success rate of 64 percent, meaning 64 percent of its residents have relocated into permanent or transitional housing after their stay.
The person behind the drive for the first HAC in the 1990s was Alvah Chapman Jr., former publisher of the Miami Herald and a civic and philanthropic leader. He personally convinced other wealthy Miami leaders to donate monies, often seven figures, to build the first HAC. It was his vision and commitment to providing life-changing assistance to the homeless that pushed this project forward. It was so successful that a second HAC was later built.
Denver leaders with deep pockets, where are you? Who will be our Alvah Chapman, our visionary and champion for the homeless? Your city needs you. tunately not justified by the actual language of the initiative. It’s of course true that no one knows what will happen, but the bad things that might or could happen are actual outcomes that are clearly allowed by the language of the initiative being voted on now, not something that would have to evolve. The flaw with the seemingly democratic initiative process is that we vote on general concepts or feelings, but actual policy depends on complicated but important facts and processes. Brexit provides the best world example. Imagine a partial or full safe solution and we can vote on that.