5

LOCAL NEWS In 2019, the No on 300 campaign solicited over $2 million in donations from businesses like The National Association of Realtors, The Downtown Denver Partnership, and Denver’s tourism agency—Visit Denver—to defeat Initiative 300, also known as the Right to Survive. Initiative 300 (I300) would have given unhoused persons basic rights such as eating and sleeping in public and allow them to sleep in their cars if they are legally parked. Those who opposed I300 said the initiative didn’t go far enough to address the health and safety concerns of unhoused communities or of the communities that would share space with unhoused persons. “We love Denver and want our city to be a safe and supportive place for everyone. Allowing people to sleep outside in public places is not safe, healthy, or helpful for the people experiencing homelessness or our community,” Together Denver wrote on their website. CHRISTOPHER SAID HE PREFERS TO SLEEP IN A TENT TO A SHELTER BECAUSE HE HAS PRIVACY AND FEELS SAFER IN A TENT. HE SAID YOU ARE MORE LIKELY TO GET SICK OR ATTACKED IN A SHELTER. HE ALSO SAID HE WOULD BE WILLING TO MOVE TO A CAMP SITE DESIGNATED BY THE CITY OF DENVER IF THEY SET IT UP CORRECTLY. HE DID NOT WANT TO MOVE TO A PLACE THAT FELT LIKE A PRISON. CREDIT: GILES CLASEN protections for those performing “life functions” on public property or occupying a legally parked car to sleep. H.B. 20-1233 defines life functions as eating, sleeping, sitting, standing, lying down, or sheltering in a nonobstructive manner. It would also require a peace officer or municipality to prove there is adequate shelter for its homeless population before either can remove a homeless person from public property. The bill never made it out of committee. ■ MAYOR HANCOCK ANNOUNCES SUPPORT FOR SAFE OUTDOOR SPACES BY ROBERT DAVIS HOMELESS PEOPLE IN DENVER breathed a sigh of relief when Mayor Michael Hancock announced his administration is working with the Colorado Village Collaborative to create a long-awaited temporary, safe outdoor space. And the Mayor seems eager to complete the project relatively soon. In July, he asked City Council to come up with a list of potential sites for the safe outdoor space. The Denver Coliseum has been shortlisted. “I’m hopeful we can provide a new pathway that leads to more stable housing options for people experiencing homelessness,” Mayor Hancock said in a press release. “At the same time, we can also address the public health and safety risks that the growing number of encampments in our city are posing to our neighborhoods.” The outdoor space will not include any permanent structures. Instead, it will be a neutral site where homeless people can rest and use the resources and services provided by the City and Colorado Village Collaborative. Some of the resources include mobile restrooms, hand washing stations, laundry services, and places to get clean water. Residents will receive daily wellness screens while mental health professionals and service workers provide hotel and housing referrals. “In moments of great crisis, great societies respond by centering the needs of their most vulnerable citizens,” said Cole Chandler, director of the Colorado Village Collaborative. “Our peer cities across the country have demonstrated that safe outdoor spaces provide a resource-rich environment for unhoused neighbors to safely survive the global pandemic while creating longer-term links to health care and housing.” Homeless service providers had initially pitched the safe outdoor space idea to Mayor Hancock’s team in April. But the administration dragged its feet until statewide COVID cases began to increase just before the 4th of July weekend. A LONG TIME COMIN’ While the safe outdoor spaces are not currently being considered as permanent solutions to the city’s homeless problem, they do represent a step that’s taken Denver over 16 years to make. “Safe outdoor sites, while vital in our immediate need, are not the final answer,” Denver Homeless Out Loud said in a press release. “Everyone deserves housing. As we create immediate options for people to survive in tents now, the City must be creating attainable housing for all.” In 2004, activists submitted the first tent city proposal to the Commission to End Homelessness. The 39-page report outlined several ways in which tent cities could benefit Denver’s unhoused population, including centralizing service delivery, providing sanitation and privacy, and allowing for self-help peer governance. “Tent cities are no alternative to expanding permanent low-cost housing or providing quality emergency support and shelter that might transition homeless people into independent housing. But the choice is not between a tent city and adequate permanent housing. The choice is between allowing a tent city and forcing people into inhumane living conditions without any kind of shelter at all,” the report reads. However, the tent city initiative was met with fierce criticism from The Denver Post, The Rocky Mountain News, and the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, who said the plan “fails to address health, safety, sanitary issues and [the] causes of homelessness such as mental illness, substance abuse, job loss, and the lack of affordable housing.” Then, during the Occupy Denver protests in 2011, former John Hickenlooper, Denver Mayor Michael SUCCESS STORIES Meanwhile, other cities in Colorado have figured out how to put together successful safe outdoor spaces for their unhoused communities. In September 2019, Durango opened the Purple Cliffs camp, a 200-acre plot of county land allocated for the city’s unhoused community. The camp is located in an area where coronavirus has not spread very far and currently houses several unhoused persons living in La Plata County. County officials are working on moving the camp closer to town so residents can be nearer to essential services. And then about six hours north of that area, Pitkin County opened a camp in Aspen at Brush Creek after a local shelter shut down. Even though the county doesn’t see the camp as a permanent solution to homelessness, it provides residents with a place to abide by the state’s Shelter in Place and Safer in Place orders, according to Nan Sundeen, director of Pitkin County Human Services. “Given our extreme weather conditions up here, we knew we needed to act to get our homeless the help they need,” Sundeen told the Denver VOICE in an interview. She says Pitkin County has learned a lot from Durango’s camp, including the importance of being flexible as the camp evolves, and setting enforceable guidelines for campers. Residents at Brush Creek must adhere to quiet hours between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m., are not allowed to bring guests to the camp, and will be immediately evicted for violent acts of any kind. Campers are allowed to leave the camp at any time. Since the camp’s founding, county workers have had to turn away some unhoused individuals who travel up the I-70 corridor and recreational campers who want to visit the camp. Doing so helps save room and resources for Pitkin County’s unhoused residents, Sundeen said. The camp is managed by a trusted camp member and is regularly visited by volunteers for food delivery, mental health workers, and caseworkers who help those some members cope with living in a communal setting. County employees campers to discuss living conditions and whether also hold regular meetings with there is anything else the county can do to support the campers. Some volunteers from Aspen even built a small solar module for Governor Hancock, and former Attorney General John Struthers teamed up to disperse a tent city of protesters from the downtown area. Mayor Hancock said during a press conference at the time that the policy was about protecting the health and safety of the protesters. Health and safety are now synonyms for justification as Denver continues its practice of sweeping unhoused communities away from resources and voting down policies that seek to aid its most vulnerable residents. campers to be able to charge their phones and electronics. “We obviously don’t want to evict anyone from the camp because they don’t have another place to go. However, we define safe behavior very clearly because we want all of our campers to feel safe,” Sundeen said. Even though Sundeen describes the camp as being in the midst of a “What happens next?” phase, she says there is plenty that Denver can glean from Pitkin County’s experience. “If there is any advice I’d offer Denver, it’s this: be flexible and communicate with your residents. That’s the only way these campsites will work,” she said. ■ August 2020 DENVER VOICE 5

6 Publizr Home