A Denver mayoral forum on Monday allowed homeless who are at risk of dying from hypothermia, drug addiction, and crime, to cheer for candidates promising to enable their misery and jeer those who refuse to embrace tent living.
Homelessness is officially its own political special interest group.
What a disgrace.
Wow, so the Denver homeless are educated enough on Mayoral candidates to know who to boo and cheer for right off the bat, huh. That’s amazing.
…unless this crowd isn’t a random sample of the Denver homeless population. 🤔#copolitics #HeyNext https://t.co/6ycGhCTNA1
— Daniel Williams (@CODaniel_W) February 21, 2023
But state Sen. Chris Hanson wasn’t the only candidate who was booed.
The Denver Post reports the most impactful moment of the event came when Andy Rougeot, the sole Republican in the race, defended the need for drug and mental health treatment while getting folks off the streets and cleaning up homeless camps.
For his humanity, Rougeot was booed.
“It is not humane to step over someone sleeping in a tent,” he said, the jeering intensifying as his answer went on. He said that if one of his own daughters were to grow up to be unhoused with a drug addiction he would want her to be forced to get help instead of allowed to live that way.
But Rougeot didn’t back down and remained steadfast in his pledge to enforce the camping ban and hire 400 police officers.
Denver deserves a mayor who has the courage to enforce the camping ban to get the homeless into services and isn’t afraid to tell it like it is #COPolitics #Denver https://t.co/6cYIJ5fJYq
— Andy Rougeot (@AndyforDenver) February 21, 2023
The homeless in the crowd applauded those who were in favor of legalizing drug injection sites, refused to enforce the tent ban, and promised free housing for all.
It was as fascinating as it was heartbreaking to watch political candidates catering to the most vulnerable among us with promises to encourage their desperate and dangerous lifestyle.
It was like an Al-Anon meeting if attendees were encouraged to give their alcoholic family members cases of booze and hand them the car keys.
Candidates in favor of the booze and keys approach to homelessness included Leslie Herod, who wants to end camp cleanups while talking about more housing. But as the Denver Post reported, she doesn’t actually have a real plan for all that free housing.
Lisa Calderón, who also embraces tent city living pledged to add public sanitation stations across the city.
Herod and Calderón both promised the vague and undefined rallying cry of “more resources,” which in leftist political terms always means hiring more bureaucrats to push more paper, check more boxes, and declare problems need more and more money.
Meanwhile, liberal Kelly Brough didn’t even bother to attend and sent Denise Maes — the ACLU’s public policy director for Colorado — in her steed.
Clearly an indication of what could be an expected in the unlikely case of a Brough administration.
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Point-In-Time count, there were nearly 7,000 homeless people in the Denver metro on a single January night this year, a 14-year record. Advocates say these counts understate the case and there may be as many as 30,000 unhoused people in the metro area.
The take-away from Denver’s first political candidate forum for the homeless, held outside, is that most candidates running for mayor pledged to wave their magic wands and solve the problem of homelessness by letting people live in tents without getting hassled by the cops, and build free housing for the rest.
It’s just that simple.