Vote YES On 300
Right to Survive About Protecting The Unhoused
By Dianne Thiel, Paula Bard and Alan Gilbert
Special to the GPHN
The Denver Right to Survive Initiative asks Denver to protect the human and Constitutional rights of poor people without homes. The initiative affirms their right to use a blanket, sleeping bag, tarp or tent to shield themselves from Denver’s harsh weather.
The initiative allows unhoused folks to rest in outdoor public spaces (they cannot make a sidewalk impassable nor rest on private property).
The initiative ensures that families, college students, and people with disabilities can sleep in their legally parked motor vehicles – their last safety net.
It allows churches and nonprofit groups to provide food to hungry people wherever the City allows food to be served.
Finally, since passage of the 2012 camping ban, police routinely stop and question unhoused people in Denver. The unhoused lost their rights as our fellow citizens. This initiative protects the privacy and security of the unhoused and their property. Police can ask for ID only with reasonable suspicion of a crime.
The city and business districts deny 24/7 public restrooms, trash collection services, and access to rec centers for showers to those who are unhoused, but, hypocritically, tell us that places homeless people congregate are unsanitary. Spending millions of dollars to criminalize, sweep and move along 4,647 people in 2017 doesn’t address their sanitation needs. The proposed 2019 settlement of Denver Homeless Out Loud’s class action lawsuit, protecting property of this vulnerable population, is a step toward providing these critical sanitation services.
Why do the police make unhoused people move along day and night? This initiative allows people be in one place so outreach workers can find them, and they have stability in their lives. Allowing unhoused folks to get real sleep is a big benefit of this initia-tive. Adequate sleep improves the functioning of the brain and every organ system of the body.
Shelters are not viable, healthy, safe or even possible options for many. Some shelters can’t accommodate persons with disabilities. Couples are separated. People with jobs can’t comply with shelter hours and rules. People can’t sleep in big rooms with tens or hundreds snoring, coughing, calling out in nightmares.
Sixty percent of unhoused folks work – often 10 hours a day – but can’t afford housing. Instead of shelters, “Housing First” is a well-known approach to help people get back on their feet. In the 1960s, the federal government spent $60 billion a year nationally on housing, and there was no “problem” of homelessness. But for years, Denver has not dedicated resources to provide housing our poorest residents can afford.
Contradictory to stereotypes, 32 percent of people without housing are women, many with children. Over 2,000 students in Denver Public Schools are homeless. Six to ten percent of students at the Auraria Campus are homeless. Many of these people sleep in their cars.
Some have claimed that Initiative 300 would result in unhoused people moving to mountain parks. There’s a difference between camping and surviving. Homeless people don’t have the means to get to mountain parks. There are no grocery stores, post offices, buses, or showers near these isolated parks.
Vote yes for Denver Right to Survive – Initiative 300 by May 7.
Dianne Thiel, Paula Bard and Alan Gilbert are proponents of Denver’s Initiative 300, the Right To Survive.