Here’s a novel idea.
Instead of judging their success of handling homelessness by how many millions of taxpayer dollars they spend each year, the Aurora City Council is moving towards a work-first requirement to help folks achieve self-reliance and get off the streets.
The jobs and recovery plan by Mayor Mike Coffman was devised after he and council members visited Houston and San Antonio, Texas, to examine how those cities handle homelessness.
Judging by the direction Denver is going with their homeless issues, we imagine they’ve made similar trips to San Francisco, but that’s just a hunch.
The key lessons Aurora returned with was to require those seeking city services for homelessness to enroll in job training programs and substance abuse treatment.
Coffman said emergency shelter will still be offered to citizens with minimal restrictions. A nonprofit organization will be expected to operate a central facility where the city would co-locate services as much as possible.
This seems like an entirely reasonable program, and a necessary component to getting folks back on stable feet and moving them off the streets and on with productive lives.
And yet the usual far-left progressive council members — Alison Coombs, Juan Marcano and Crystal Murillo — objected to the new direction and voted against it.
The problem with the issue of homelessness is that it’s become its own cottage industry with local, state, and federal funding to support tens of thousands of workers who just happen to vote Democrat.
So if the homeless get jobs and find homes, then the Homeless Industrial Complex made up of over-educated and moderately-paid advocates and social workers would shrink, forcing progressives to find new victims whose problems they can perpetuate rather than solve.
But that’s just a hunch.
The jobs and drug treatment program will be put into action anyway because the Aurora City Council rightly voted 7-3 to pass Coffman’s proposal.