Petition to Mayor Johnston:
Honest Solutions for Denver's Addiction, Mental Health, and Unsheltered Homeless Crisis
On July 18, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, on his first full day of office, declared a state of emergency on homelessness, mirroring actions taken recently by the Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass. While Johnston laid out his vision for a new process, one that flows naturally from his campaign promises, he did not meaningfully acknowledge the primary role that addiction and mental health play in unsheltered homelessness. Until those factors are recognized, Denver's crisis will only grow, as it has on the West Coast where this reality has been willfully ignored and obscured.
Today's chronically unsheltered homeless populations -- those typically living in illegal encampments on Denver's sidewalks, or in public spaces while resisting or refusing city services -- are typically in the throes of addiction to fentanyl, methamphetamine, or more recently, both. These synthetic drugs are the most powerful, dangerous compounds ever created for human consumption, and crippling addiction is the inevitable consequence for those who choose them. Fentanyl, it's been noted, has 100 times the potency of heroin. Addiction leads to abandonment of everything that matters: family, friends, work, personal well-being, housing, and general societal participation.
Surrounding and supporting these encampments, or more accurately, 'open drug scenes', is a complex web of crime -- dealing, prostitution, violent assault, and organized retail theft -- in support of people's addictions.
Denver has responded to our homelessness crisis with lavishly funded and misdirected compassion. Mayor Hancock explained in an early 2023 interview that spending on homelessness increased more than thirty-fold during his tenure, from $8 million per year to $250 million. From our group's meetings with Denver Police, Denver Fire, and Dept of Public Safety, and based upon public comments from organizations like Denver Parks & Recreation and Denver Health, we believe the crisis consumes substantial percentages of longstanding city service budgets, and that the $250 million figure may vastly understate the truth. An October 2022 report by the Colorado-based, non-partisan Common Sense Institute suggests a figure of $545 million will be spent in 2023.
If money alone could dig us out of this problem, we'd have made incredible progress and not experienced a continuing decline in quality of life.
As Denver residents and small business owners, we are gravely concerned about illegal encampments, open drug scenes, and associated crime that plagues our once thriving city. If Harm Reduction and Housing First policy were the right approach, we could look to the West Coast for examples of success. We cannot idly watch Denver repeat the failures of San Francisco, Portland, or Vancouver.
Denver stands at a crossroads. We have begun a backward slide, but citizens and businesses are not yet fleeing our city. To prevent an irreversible downward spiral, it is urgent that Denver enacts these changes:
Response & enforcement
Denver Police have confirmed with us a new moratorium on large encampment cleanups for the rest of 2023. This decision will be disastrous. Word will spread among the unsheltered community, and the activists who enable them, that there is now safety in numbers. We will see camps grow to sizes never experienced before in Denver, and crime and emergencies in these hotspots will rise sharply. How can this policy be explained to the unlucky residents and business owners who end up with one of the lawless, sprawling camps next door? Please reconsider this moratorium now!
Reinvigorate our public servants -- our police officers, our firefighters, our EMTs, our park rangers, our librarians -- by showing we will not ignore the immense toll that the crisis has heaped upon their shoulders. We must not increase that toll by allowing the same set of individuals to repeatedly exhaust their professionalism and dedication.
Mandate that the Street Enforcement Team (SET) enforce the urban camping ban. SET should issue citations for urban camping and once an individual has received three tickets, there should be mandatory jail time.
Empower the Denver Police Department (DPD) to enforce our current laws. We have de facto legalized crime. We allow public abuse of drugs, auto and property thefts, public urination and defecation, trespassing, menacing, and public intoxication without any consequences. Enforcement of laws would give addicts a sober pause to reevaluate their lives and behaviors.
Remove illegal encampments and illegally parked vehicles as soon as possible when citizens report them. Illegal encampments pose a significant health and safety hazard to residents and neighboring businesses. It is imperative encampments are quickly removed and are not tolerated. Expand funding for DOTI and EHS as needed to achieve this goal.
Recovery support
Expand funding for on-demand, in-patient addiction treatment facilities.
Move low-barrier shelter & housing options for people who use drugs outside of the city core to a homeless services campus where they will be less disruptive to Denver's 700,000 law-abiding citizens.
Relocate homeless service providers, like Stout Street Clinic, Harm Reduction Action Center, etc. to the homeless services campus.
Reduce funding for Harm Reduction programs like HRAC that destigmatize, facilitate and celebrate the use of deadly, addictive drugs and reallocate funding to recovery-oriented programs, such as STEP Denver, which has a proven addiction recovery rate at nearly 2.5 times national averages.
Demand HOST stop building free apartments and Safe Outdoor Spaces for active drug users without requiring addiction treatment. Addicts die at high rates in such private spaces, as shown recently in San Francisco, and the rapid destruction of these buildings is proving unsustainable. Additionally, it is unfair to the non-criminal, non-addicted tenants to try to live in such a facility.
Criminal justice
Demand that prosecutors hold criminals accountable. Currently, violent criminals and accused drug dealers are released on personal recognizance (PR) bonds. People flock to Denver for our criminal legal leniency. Meanwhile Denver's police officers are demoralized by our revolving door justice system and blamed for these policy failures.
Work with the City Attorney to strengthen Involuntary Commitment Laws. Severely drug addicted and/or mentally ill individuals do not have the capacity to make sound decisions for themselves or to care for their own basic needs. It is Denver's responsibility to help these individuals who are suffering on our streets. We must mandate treatment when appropriate.
Legislation
Work with Governor Polis and the Colorado General Assembly to re-felonize meth and fentanyl while working to make Colorado the "Recovery State."
Demand the Colorado General Assembly pass legislation to prevent District Attorneys and judges from releasing dangerous criminals on PR bonds.
Demand the Colorado General Assembly reinstate qualified immunity for police officers and other law enforcement professionals to stanch the departures and improve recruitment and morale.
Accountability
Work with the Denver Auditor's Office to ensure proper accountability for the large sums expended on the crisis. All agencies working on this crisis must properly document and categorize expenditures.
Develop success metrics to which all non-profits receiving city funding must be held accountable. These metrics should emphasize recovery, employment, and self-sufficiency.
Work with Coalition for the Homeless, Denver Rescue Mission, Saint Francis, HOST, STAR, and other service providers receiving city, state, or federal funding to create a “By-Name Database” of each homeless person receiving services in Denver so we can track the effectiveness of outreach services and to prevent costly duplicative services.