It’s time to ring down the curtain on the exasperating political theater at Aurora City Hall, still performing favorite homeless myths as summer stock.
For the third time — and what needs to be the final time — the Aurora City Council this week defeated an ill-conceived proposal by Mayor Mike Coffman touted to eradicate homeless camping across the city.
Without doubt, the measure would only shuffle homeless campers in Aurora from one place to another. It would do nothing to end it.
Coffman’s camping ban was borne from his equally ill-conceived idea to pose as a homeless veteran for a week earlier this year and then claim it provided him unique expertise in one of humankind’s most pernicious and perplexing problems.
Inviting a Channel 4 TV reporter to take part in his dubious ruse, his televised takeaway from sleeping for a week on the street and in a shelter is that most of those he encountered choose homelessness as a lifestyle. Those who refuse shelter do so to accommodate their drug and alcohol addictions.
The conclusion — common among “tough-love” conservatives and people who just don’t know — is that people living on the streets are hopeless, unwilling to get addiction treatment, a job or make an effort to meet anything but their addiction needs. Thousands of people living in tents and RVs in streets and parks are seen just as a nuisance and a menace.
From there, Coffman proposed a law allowing the city to sweep homeless camps without cause. Criticism over the obvious impracticality and cruelty of his scheme prompted a revision. The measure then required some kind of shelter space be available for every person chased from their tent or sleeping bag. City lawmakers able to see that the proposal mirrored the same laws in neighboring communities that have unequivocally and repeatedly failed, said no, Aurora can and must do better.
Better starts with honesty and integrity.
Beginning with Coffman’s televised charade in January, he has repeatedly thrown shade at and subverted a virtual army of researchers, providers and front-line troops involved in the region’s homelessness debacle. He refers to them as “so-called experts.”
He discounts years of research and diligent work by compassionate and dedicated scientists and providers, determined to shed light on one of the nation’s most complicated social problems.
Coffman has worked to undercut and refute the sound advice of Aurora’s chief of police, who steadfastly has advised that chasing homeless people from their tents is not a matter for police, and that it damages the department and endangers the community. Chief Vanessa Wilson joins police administrators in the region and across the country in insisting that sweeping homeless camps is not a criminal matter. It sabotages the police ability to ensure all citizens — even homeless people living in tents — have trust in the department to protect them from and address real crimes.
Councilperson Angela Lawson this week during a city council meeting, despite repeated attempts, could not compel Coffman to answer the simple and direct question that emphasizes his failed proposal: “Where is it that you think these people are going to go?”
For decades, the region has learned that sweeping people living on the streets only puts them at even greater risk for crime and misery, and pushes them to someone else’s park, median, bike trail or alley. Solid research reveals that local and federal governments already ineffectively spend massive sums of tax dollars on this population as they crowd emergency rooms, clinics, jails and other programs that simply move the problems along.
Camping bans like the one pushed aside this week are part of the problem, not a way forward.
Rather than work with dozens of city and regional officials entrenched in finding ways to effectively and permanently address the myriad aspects of homelessness, Coffman has built a political wedge issue on the city council and probably for the next election. His failed bill is the work of misinformation, lawyers and political writers, not real addiction and homeless experts paid by taxpayers and others to address the crisis.
Coffman and other city lawmakers need to swear off the partisan and toxic personal politics that have only complicated the issue.
It doesn’t mean that we must or even should allow for people to dangerously squat on public property. These camps endanger the health and safety of campers and other residents.
It does mean that Aurora must simultaneously work to address the reasons why so many people resort to living in tents on streets or in their cars and find practical solutions that don’t just push people from place to place like unwanted animals.
Rampant drug addiction, among people with and without homes, is a cruel reality the community and the region must deal with. A solution right now must allow for people with drug and alcohol addictions to receive shelter and other services regardless of whether they address their addiction. That’s the reality of addiction and the problem. Anything else is built on a delusion that tough love kicks the habit and mitigates the problem of drug use among people living on the streets. Substance abuse is solved by treatment. People living in tents and refused services don’t get into treatment.
Coffman is right in saying that Aurora must immediately develop more ways to find homes for those without them. But until more than a few dozen shelter beds are created, his failed bill is nothing more than political showmanship.
Rather than leading a partisan brawl in Aurora, the mayor should lead an immediate effort in the region to immediately and permanently address this regional problem. The state, too, must intervene to ensure local governments don’t exacerbate homelessness by creating laws and programs that work to just shoo homeless people across a city border, overwhelming and undermining communities working to solve the crisis, rather than just herd unwanted people somewhere else.
That begins with appreciating the facts about homelessness.
The problem is so much more vast than just the people begging on highway off-ramps or sleeping in tents in parks and parking lots. The majority of homeless people are invisibly living in cars, RVs, the couches of friends and families, on job sites and being gouged into permanent homelessness at dubious motels.
The spiraling cost of housing and living in the metro area, compounded by low and stagnant wages for so many people, create homeless traps, which often feeds the rate of addiction and mental illness.
What creates the growing problem of widespread homelessness and what can really work to reduce it is far too complicated and critical for mere soundbites and platitudes. And it’s far too tortuous to solve by simply creating bans that hustle the community’s most vulnerable and downtrodden residents from one camping site to another.
We can certainly do more than one thing to address the homeless population of Aurora, and not put the burden on law enforcement. While we finally heard from CM Marcano in an opinion piece, most of council is busy finger-wagging at the opposition. The Sentinel, could do an immense service to the community by doing a deep dive on each element of government and NGO efforts to address the issue, but so far, in my perspective, your journalists and editors are skimming the surface. I believe the metro mayor’s were going to work on the topic jointly. Have they met? What’s the plan? What’s going on with the still undeveloped empty lots in metro Aurora, while the McMansions go up to the south and east? Is there any ongoing public-private partnership in the region that’s putting actual plans in place? What do the rest of council propose to city staff to address the issues? There’s a national shortage of mental health workers and beds, so what’s the magical answer by Marcano, Coombs, et al to bolster staff and actual beds in Aurora? If they are putting forth policy and budget proposals, the Sentinel hasn’t covered it. Apprenticeships and career path jobs are available, but connecting them to the unemployed and underemployed takes time and money.
And what have you heard from the conservatives on the council to help?
Well said. I really don’t know if there is an answer to homelessness. I’ve been looking at solutions myself for years now. Volunteering building little houses, meeting with city council people, attending outreach programs and weighing solutions. Such a huge undertaking with little to show. But, we must continue to try both for us and for them. There is no other choice.
The homeless population is not a monolith. Some are more receptive to help than others and, dare I say, more deserving since their circumstances are not mostly self-imposed. A ban will not make them go away. Nor will the problem be solved by stashing them out of sight in free, non-conditional apartments with the option to avail themselves of counseling help. Finally, even at Aurora’s relatively low homeless levels, it will not be solved overnight.
So here are a few ideas: Enact Coffman’s conditional ban (which will simply sit on a shelf until housing options are available.) Get going on expanding programs–with conditions–like that of Ready-to-Work. Triage the generic homeless population, moving the real victims who deserve help to the front. And finally, apply metrics that define success as something more than accepting a free place to live. Those who refuse to play by the rules have made their choice.
I’m a old white guy, citizen of Aurora for 40 of my 76 years, and fought off homelessness twice in my youth. I do not believe any government should have the responsibility to end homelessness. Homeless individuals should assume responsibility for their own existence, whatever their circumstances.
I believe everything that the Mayor learned on his week of investigation on homelessness even though this paper makes fun of his stances. I don’t believe he is trying to end homelessness in Aurora as this is impossible. You can only move it down the road. I won’t speak for him but it’s simple to me as a citizen of Aurora. Five other cities in metro Denver has outlawed camping in their city: I want to make it six. Or more and more homeless will be coming to those cities that don’t have a law against it, including Aurora.
I further believe and hope that homelessness will be strongly discussed in the coming November elections. If The Mayor and myself are correct, the far left progressive socialists will be eliminated from Council and we can reclaim our City from their free spending and imposing ways.
Why does the Sentinel lean so heavy towards what is good for the “homeless?” The hard-working citizens of Aurora need to be considered as well. Homeowners that wade through the city’s building permit process in order to add a new deck should not have to tolerate homeless tents popping up willy-nilly with no sanitation or trash collection or permit or anything! Renters who work two jobs and share an apartment with other unrelated adults in order to make ends meet should not have to deal with increased crime and drug use emanating from the homeless camps in their neighborhood. Business owners deserve to have a clear sidewalk to their front door. Aurora’s children deserve clean parks free of syringes and free of people who abuse park curfews and littering laws.
I agree with all your comments, D. M., until your last sentence. A lot of the pushback to the mayor came from homeless advocates that are not socialists. They are well intentioned, but, just don’t see that there really does exist a segment of the population that is entrenched in antisocial behavior and/or addiction and/or mental illness that need intense intervention. Intervention begins by clearly saying, “Camping is not allowed in our city.”