Critics of the city’s plan to end homelessness say it is bloated, expensive and unrealistic because it coddles the homeless without demanding accountability.
“The city doesn’t even require them to sober up or to work,” said Bob Cote, who founded the Step 13 rehab program on upper Larimer Street. “Believe me, these guys are not angels.”
Step 13 houses about 100 men, mostly alcoholics and drug addicts. Cote, a former alcoholic, demands sobriety and tests the men frequently. They must work every day, pay rent and take care of themselves for up to two years. Step 13 accepts no government money, relying totally on rent and private donations.
City officials defend their plan.
To eliminate homelessness, the city has proposed a massive program to expand transitional housing and emergency shelters.
Roxane White, the city’s manager of Human Services and chairwoman of the homeless commission, said the city spends about $70 million a year on the homeless. Denver Health Medical Center, she said, spent roughly $42 million caring for transients last year.
Small clinics established under the city’s new plan are much cheaper and more efficient, she said.
Denver Cares, the city’s detox center, said it costs the city $450 to house one drunk for one night – an expense the new plan would reduce significantly, White said.
She says the new plan will save the city between $12,000 and $16,000 per homeless person.
“Even at this level of spending, we know we are not currently fulfilling all of the needs of the homeless,” White said. “With this new plan, we should have substantial savings.”
The Mayor’s Commission to End Homelessness in 10 Years recently presented a plan that calls for developing more than 3,200 units of transitional housing and another 1,500 units of emergency shelter.
The plan calls for getting the homeless into housing first, then giving them support services such as health care, substance-abuse treatment, job training, and parenting and coping skills.
The price tag is equally grand, calling for $8 million the first year and $12.7 million each of the following nine years, for a total of roughly $122 million.
Mike Meyrick, board chairman of Newgenesis, a rehabilitation program for the homeless, said the city’s plan just moves the homeless out of sight and into what amounts to “government-subsidized housing” without addressing the root causes of homelessness.
“Other than making voice mailboxes available for those seeking work, there is no part of the city’s approach that adequately addresses the problem of integrating homeless people back into the workforce or society in general,” he said.
The two sides don’t even agree on how many people are homeless. The city counts the homeless at more than 4,700, half of them families and one-third children 18 and younger. But a 24-hour “point-in-time” census conducted in January by United Way volunteers found about 400 who didn’t have shelter, mainly men sleeping on the streets. Critics of the city’s plan say the number of actual homeless is less than 500. Of those, between 60 percent and 90 percent suffer from addictions or substance abuse. Ten percent to 15 percent of that population suffers mental illnesses, critics say.
“There is no great homeless problem in Denver,” said Page Peary, executive director of Newgenesis. “We have people without homes. The way to get them back into their own homes is to work them back, not to isolate them in housing projects.”
But the Rev. John Lager, who runs the Catholic Charities’ Samaritan House, one of the city’s three large emergency shelters, challenges Peary and Meyrick on their definition of homelessness. “People may have a place to stay but they don’t have a place to live. I call them homeless,” said Lager, a member of the mayor’s commission. “Everyone has a right to have a place to live.”
Staff writer Mike McPhee can be reached at 303-820-1409 or mmcphee@denverpost.com.
