Five Park Hill residents filed a lawsuit Friday to block a proposed homeless encampment at the Park Hill United Methodist Church, mere blocks from the home of Colorado’s U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper.
The plaintiffs appear to be mostly registered Democrats, including Park Hill resident Blair Taylor, who ran unsuccessfully for Denver City Council against Chris Herndon in 2019.
Ironically, Taylor argued then that Denver’s camping ban amounted to “criminalizing the homeless” and was “unjust.”
Will you vote to end or to keep the “urban camping” ban? Why?
The current policy of criminalizing the homeless is unjust. More than 60 percent of the homeless population work and cannot afford housing. These workers are trying to work within a market that has increased without wages that correlate. The city has the responsibility to build public housing and land bank for current and future needs.
Taylor’s liberal NIMBY hypocrisy is rich.
So when she was campaigning two years ago, Taylor decried laws designed to protect minors and the general public from drug addicts that frequent urban campsites as “unjust.”
But now that it affects her, Taylor’s lawsuit argues a temporary managed shelter (TMC) in Park Hill threatens to bring drugs and crime in close proximity to children in a largely wealthy Democrat neighborhood.
Current plans for the shelter place it directly adjacent to a pre-school at Park Hill United Methodist Church, and other schools nearby.
The lawsuit is another profound indignity for Hickenlooper, who pledged to “end homelessness” as mayor through an initiative known as Denver’s Road Home.
Confronted with a city audit that sharply criticized the program’s failure in 2015, Hickenlooper tried to play his pledge off as a “marketing effort.”
That characterization is famously at odds with prior comments from his own mayoral administration, including the individuals who ran the program.
With Democrats now hypocritically suing to block a homeless encampment mere blocks away from Hick’s $2.5 million home, it is more apparent than ever his failure to end homelessness lives on in ways he could never have imagined.