May 14 marks the ten-year anniversary of Denver City Council passing the camping ban. Opponents are planning a week of action.
With encampments becoming more visible in Denver, Councilman Albus Brooks, whose district included downtown, officially proposed the unauthorized camping ordinance in early 2012. Brooks was less than a year into his tenure on Denver City Council, and was still building connections with the movers and shakers of Denver — many of whom encouraged him to go forward with a camping ban proposal.
Rather than work with homeless-service providers to craft the proposal, Brooks decided to simply have them respond to the finished product. And they did, with a vengeance. The proposal drew strong opposition not only from Occupy Denver, but also the“It would force those without shelter further into our neighborhoods and further out of sight,” John Parvensky, the longtime president of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, wrote in an op-ed published in the Denver Post in April 2012.
Over the past decade, camping bans have become even more common in cities across America. But many policymakers recognize that such laws don’t do much to solve the issue of homelessness. Supporters of the Right to Survive — which became Initiative 300 on the ballot — contributed $106,363 to the campaign. Opponents poured $2,446,550 — more than twenty times that much — into Together Denver, which led the campaign opposing I-300. The Downtown Denver Partnership, the National Association of Realtors and Visit Denver were some of the top donors to Together Denver, which used the campaign line “We Can Do Better.” Voters were persuaded, and 81.19 percent of them said no to I-300.
During the early months of the pandemic, service providers pitched a new idea to the Hancock administration: Establish sanctioned camping sites with centralized access to sanitation facilities and services as a way to reduce harm and disease spread during the pandemic. Such sites would offer a safer alternative to living on the streets for people who were averse to going into shelters. But in April 2020, Hancock balked at the idea, saying he was opposed to it.
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