If you build it, they will come, notes The Gazette in reporting Denver’s homeless footprint will expand with the erection of even more taxpayer-funded tent cities.
If the Denver City Council’s goal is to attract more vagrants, drifters, and drug addicts, then camps are a smashing success with a 13% increase over last year, The Gazette notes in editorial.
Of course, there are those truly in need of temporary emergency housing due to job losses or to escape domestic violence — circumstances beyond their control. And those are the ones who actually take advantage of the services offered to get off the street and back into homes.
But as the Gazette correctly notes:
The tent camps, by contrast, almost exclusively cater to habitual, hardcore itinerants. For them, life on the streets — and typically the drug and alcohol dependency that goes with it — is a choice. Most of them routinely refuse all offers of overnight shelter, jobs or rehab. After all, they don’t wish to get back on their feet. They don’t want to clean up their act.
But they are glad to take a handout if it enables their lifestyle and accommodates their addictions with no questions asked. And City Hall, for some reason, feels obliged to play along.
The new taxpayer funded, so-called “Safe Outdoor Space” of 60 tents in the parking lot of the Arie P. Taylor building on 4685 Peoria Street also offers laundry services, free internet, food donations, dental care, and food stamps.
No word on whether home tent insurance will be added, as a response to the fire that broke out Saturday night at another “Safe Outdoor Space” of tent cities at W. 8th Avenue and Elati Street.
Fire tonight at @CoVillageCo “safe” outdoor space on 8th Ave – hoping no one got hurt. This camp has been poorly managed from day one – close these down! @9NEWS @DenverChannel @CBSNewsColorado pic.twitter.com/mZ1P1ODkmJ
— Sinjin Carey (@SinjinCarey) September 18, 2022
KDVR is the only media we’ve seen report on the fire.
Thankfully, no injuries were reported.
The cause of the fire is not yet known, but one thing is certain, these taxpayer-funded homeless tent cities are not safe, rational, or practical.