The Denver City Council voted to make pandemic campsites for the homeless a permanent policy as a zoning option along city streets.
They’re not even pretending anymore the billions spent on the homeless is a safety net to get families fallen on hard times into permanent housing.
Campsites are now officially public housing, some complete with porta potties, social workers, food service, access to welfare benefits, advocates and probably dental.
City camping has become a cheap lifestyle choice for some, as well as a refuge for the mentally ill, drug addicts, and criminals.
The city is set to spend $254 million on homelessness this year, and the price tag for governments and nonprofits in the metro area over the next few years is expected to reach $2 billion.
Legalizing campsites will not solve homelessness, because we all know if you build it, they will come.
It will be just like San Francisco, but with Polis instead of Pelosi.
“You can’t beat the natural sunlight coming through the holes in the rain fly.” https://t.co/3TgqZ6pd9C pic.twitter.com/69GsGiroD9
— The Onion (@TheOnion) June 5, 2023
If Denver’s policy of enabling homelessness was actually solving the problem, we would be seeing fewer homeless on the streets, not watching it grow by leaps and bounds.
From the Denver Gazette:
Under the new code, Safe Outdoor Spaces can receive a zoning permit for up to four years. After using a location, the camps cannot return for the same amount of time that they had operated there. The bill eliminated a 30-unit maximum and instead bases capacity on the lot size and fire code.
The bill also added to the types of places the camps can move into, no longer restricting them to civic or public institutions, but also allowing them to be used on vacant corner lots of at least 5,000 square feet in size that abut a major road. They must be working in collaboration with a willing landowner to get a zoning permit.
Councilmember Amanda Sawyer worried that poorer communities don’t have the financial resources to challenge sites near them, and she fears that means the campsites will be more heavily concentrated in those areas.
The truth is, these homeless campsites should not be inflicted on anyone in the city be they poor or middle class, wealthy or a small business owner.
Progressives are only making the homeless situation progressively worse.