The distance between Shirley Widom’s pawn and jewelry shop on East Colfax Avenue and the nearest post office is only 410 feet.
But what prevents her from walking over there is a cluster of men who regularly stand on the 1500 block of Dayton Street waiting for prospective employers to drive by and offer them a day’s work.
Widom, who owns Pacific Jewelry & Loan, said the group of mostly Spanish-speaking men soliciting day jobs makes her feel uncomfortable.
“There’s just a lot of people loitering around,” she said.
The issue has caused rifts between day laborers, city officials and business owners for about six years.
Aurora officials agreed at an April 11 Aurora City Council committee meeting to form a group that will include residents, business owners and laborers in hopes of trying to address the problem without infringing on workers’ rights.
Nearby business owners like Widom say the gathering of day laborers poses problems for customers walking by or looking for parking.
But day laborers, and organizations that protect them, say business owners who describe the men as “loiterers” are misguided.
All they’re doing is looking for work, said Marco Nuñez, executive director of El Centro Humanitario, a day laborers’ rights organization based in Denver with an office in Aurora.
“It’s natural for day laborers, many of whom are the sole breadwinners for their families, to put themselves in the best locations where they have the best chance of getting employment,” he said.
For the past six years, dozens of day laborers have gathered on the 1500 block of Dayton Street in the mornings and early afternoons to wait for work.
The men will flock to any vehicle that slows down in the area, assuming there’s an employer inside willing to offer them a job for the day.
The assembly of workers on that stretch of street has been a point of contention for years.
In 2006, city officials proposed a law that would ban employers from soliciting workers in certain areas.
The safety of drivers and day laborers has often come into question, as the men will dart from one side of the street to the other to catch a potential employer as they drive by.
Critics of the day laborer trade have also condemned employers for hiring illegal immigrants.
In 2008, members of the Colorado Minuteman Civil Defense Corps chapter protested against employers who give jobs to undocumented residents. Complications have also arisen from employers not compensating workers.
But the real problem is that the group of men is often intimidating to customers of businesses in the area, said Aurora police Division Chief Ken Murphy at the April 11 Public Safety Committee meeting.
At the meeting, he showed footage from a 17-minute long video of day laborers taken by surveillance cameras in the area.
“We haven’t had crimes with citizens being harassed or assaulted by these individuals, but the mere fact that there’s a large amount of primarily men lingering around sidewalks is causing a huge issue with some of the surrounding business owners,” he said. “Some of the citizens are upset about the appearance of it.”
But city officials have to exercise tact in dealing with the situation, so as not to infringe on their constitutional right to occupy a public space.
It’s illegal for cities to ban people from soliciting work on the streets. Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Redondo Beach, Calif. violated the Constitution with a law that banned day laborers from congregating on the streets, according to the New York Times.
Aurora is looking for a way to improve the situation by moving the day laborers to another location where it has less impact on residents and business owners.
“The law is very clear, and courts are clear on what they will and will not support,” said Councilwoman Melissa Miller at the committee meeting. “We need to get community support to move this to a better location.”
Members of the Public Safety Committee are slated to get an update on any proposed strategies in June.
Officials from El Centro Humanitario and day laborers themselves say they’re willing to work with police and city officials to help find another, more appropriate location for them to convene. But it won’t be easy. In fact, organizations have already tried to do just that.
Last August. the Aurora Human Rights Center at 1400 Dayton Street tried to shepherd the workers and employers over to their side of the street, away from the businesses. It didn’t work.
“It underscores and highlights how entrenched that location is,” Nuñez said.
For any change to be made in the locale, an “ambitious” educational campaign would have to take place, he said.
But ultimately, people will do whatever they have to in order to score even a few hours worth of work a week, even if that means staying in the Dayton Street location.
“Employers should follow workers wherever they congregate,” said Josafat Herrera, a day laborer who lost his landscaping job in Utah about three years ago and has been soliciting work from the 1500 block of Dayton street every day for more than a year.
These days, it’s getting harder to find work from that area as it is, he said. Sometimes, he’s only able to find two days of work per week.
He knows that location is less than ideal, but he’s frustrated when people call into question his character.
“I’ve always enjoyed being responsible in the jobs that I do,” he said.
That’s no consolation for the owner of a nearby Colfax pawn shop who said he’s lost about 25 percent of his business because customers don’t want to be “harassed” as they’re walking past the day laborers.
“I’m at the end of my rope with them,” said the owner, who refused to be named. His comments were punctuated with profanities as he said he’s called the police on the workers about 20 times over the past few years for various reasons including littering and urinating on the sidewalk. He said he feels helpless.
“We’ve gotten to the point that we’ve done all we can do,” he said.
Reach reporter Sara Castellanos at 720-449-9036 or sara@aurorasentinel.com.