LOCAL FEATURE in Denver’s frigid winter temperatures. Dehydration and heat stroke arrive with the blazing summer heat. At least 222 people died on Denver’s streets during 2020. Daily life for them is laced with drug overdoses, rapes, assaults, and increasingly now, shootings. Street life can take 30 years off an individual’s life span, according to the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. Officially, CDC guidelines require that unless housing options are available, encampments should be left in place and provided with sanitation resources, including bathrooms, hand washing stations, and hand sanitizer. Denver does not provide adequate services or trash collection. The inevitable accumulation of trash and human waste causes ongoing, acrimonious friction with neighborhoods surrounding the growing tent encampments. There are only eight public restrooms in central Denver and only one of them is available at night, according to Denverite. DENVER, WHY? This ugly cat and mouse game has only intensified over the last year as more and more people have lost jobs and apartments and are tumbling onto the street. Denver has conducted more sweeps in response to the growing numbers. This creates even more trauma and more suffering for a vulnerable population. Many of Denver’s citizens have witnessed this escalating, repetitive abuse of the unhoused. They have responded by offering support and speaking out. Volunteers with mutual aid groups feed the unhoused and march for them. They help move their belongings during sweeps, pour them hot coffee at 5:30 a.m., provide clothing, solace, and compassion. The community is increasingly vocal in asking about the CREDIT: PAULA BARD DENVER, ARE YOU LISTENING? BY PAULA BARD THE UNHOUSED SCATTER in front of the large mobilized police force – there to perform a sweep of the encampment. At 4:30 a.m., chain link fences are thrown up while dump trucks and Bobcats begin to munch up tents, survival gear, and precious family photos. Despite this show of force, over the next few days, many of the unhoused migrate back. They have run out of options. There is nowhere else to go. In 2020 the City of Denver conducted 34 of these socalled “sweeps.” In 2021, Denver had already conducted 56 sweeps by the end of June. The City generally conducts three or four sweeps per week, often returning repeatedly to the same blocks because the unhoused inevitably drift back. The advocacy not accomplishing anything, much less connecting people to services or getting people into housing. Many respondents of “Swept to Nowhere” stated that they “just wanted to know where they could be.” People staying at encampments and on the streets are desperate to know where they can stay without being swept or treated as criminals. The report showed that the concerns of the unhoused, the housed, and businesses are very much aligned. Respondents elaborated, “Everyone wants an answer to the question of where we can be. Everyone knows human beings cannot just disappear, but there is no honesty about this reality.” Sweeping human beings is an ugly and grueling process. group, Allies To Abolitionists, researched the economics of the city’s sweeps, or “violent displacements,” as they call them. They found that Denver spends $21,000 in city resources for each one. Over the course of a year, this adds up to a substantial expenditure for the city. Denver Homeless Out Loud, another local advocacy group, recently conducted a survey and released the subsequent report, “Swept to Nowhere: Experiences and Recommendations from Unhoused People During the Covid-19 Pandemic.” They found that 70.4% of respondents eventually returned to the same location from which they had been swept. Therefore, they point out that sweeps are It terrorizes the already fragile poor, adding trauma and more loss to marginal lives steeped in suffering. “Swept to Nowhere” reports that 72.6% of respondents reported having property taken in a sweep. Property seizure puts the unhoused in further danger by forcing them to sleep with no protection from the elements or to stay in a friend’s tent, which can leave them vulnerable to assault, rape, or abuse. They then have to spend days trying to replace basic necessities, like clothes or blankets, and months trying to replace food stamp cards or IDs. Even without the threat of constant sweeps, living on the streets in Denver involves a constant struggle to survive. Frostbite, including the loss of fingers and toes, is normal CREDIT: PAULA BARD purpose of these sweeps. The advocates, the mutual aid groups, and the unhoused all ask, “Why?” Social service organizations ask for a solution: housing. Denver’s Department of Housing Stability (HOST), highlights the importance of affordable housing. Why then, Denver, are these repetitive, cruel sweeps not leading to the goal of housing? Tess Dougherty, a local activist, spoke at the August Denver City Council hearing. She closed her commentary by repeating the phrase, “Denver tortures its poor,” a full 60 times. “I am among many other residents of the City of Denver, who have been coming to City Council week after week, for over a year, calling on them to stop the traumatic displacement of people experiencing homelessness. Each sweep is a serious human rights violation, according to the UN’s definition.” 8 DENVER VOICE September 2021
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