Aurora just keeps begging for trouble when it comes to how it handles the poor, the homeless and the annoying panhandlers.
Just in time for the holidays, city lawmakers have set their sights on the few and lonely panhandlers that haunt the scary median at the bottom of the off-ramp of northbound I-225 at Parker Road. The little island of asphalt is also an island out of the city’s reach. It’s a no-man’s land of federal Army Corps of Engineers and Arapahoe County turf nestled among Aurora and Denver borders.
Amidst the never-ending rapids of traffic and concrete and not much else, are a handful of panhandlers who work the corner for around $100 a day on a good day.
These beggars are ubiquitous along Denver highway off-ramps. Sometimes I give them the change in my cupholder. Usually I don’t. Like most motorists, I try not to make eye contact unless I’m going to hand out the coins. Over the years, I’ve seen their cardboard placards change from outrageous claims and pleas for help to humorous taunts that sometimes make me laugh out loud. Not long after the 2008 presidential election, a guy in my neighborhood advertised that “Sarah Palin dumped me for a guy in Washington. Please help.” Another man claimed that “Lost it all to Madoff, help me stalk him.”
But like most conscious and alert Coloradans, I know who they are and where my money goes. They’re not looking for Madoff, they’re looking for booze or drugs or something to eat, often in that order. I’m OK with that.
Don’t get me wrong. If I had a magic wand, I would whack these beggars over the head and they would magically be cured of whatever psychological demons haunt them, walk straight to the nearest unemployment center, get a life and happily vote liberal forever.
But I don’t believe in magic any more than I believe that these people will stop drinking and doing drugs if everyone in the whole stinking world were to quit pitching them coins and dollars.
Councilwoman Molly Markert is in good company in believing that panhandlers on off-ramps make for dangerous conditions. The facts don’t support that, but whatever. I’d take my chances as a panhandler on any off-ramp of I-225 than I would as a law-abiding pedestrian trying to get across Parker Road or, God forbid, Alameda Avenue near the Town Center of Aurora. Shudder.
And despite what some well-meaning but terribly misguided do-gooders think, panhandling is not the problem, mental illness and addiction are. The addictions and psychological problems are so vicious, that they will prevail at any and all costs. If these people can’t buy booze, they’ll steal it, or steal to get it.
City officials are quick to scold those who give to panhandlers for contributing to the problem, but they’re slow to realize that by outlawing panhandlers, they just move the problem someplace else. Out of sight, out of mind, out of my hair.
They’re even more naive in thinking that if we set up some more shelters or job-training centers, the problem will be solved. It won’t. I don’t mean to sink to the deepest depths of Reaganism here, but as long as there has been people, there have been lots of them who just can’t make it playing by the rules. Whether an addiction led to mental illness or the other way around, the troubles are so pervasive, that anything short of comprehensive intervention is just a joke. And as a society, we balk at spending a pittance on shelters to keep street-drunks from freezing to death. We’re not about to pony up to really try and “cure” millions of vagabonds across the country.
We shouldn’t just shrug off the problem. We need to make a concerted effort to right the millions of people who really don’t want to live the life of the exit-ramp beggar, and there are plenty of those.
But by trying to find new ways to chase the poor, the homeless and the addicted out of our busy intersections and stressful lives, we don’t do much of anything.
Reach editor Dave Perry at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com