The City Council adopted a tough new crackdown on panhandlers Monday night, siding with downtown business leaders over homeless advocates who turned out in force for a three-hour public hearing on the controversial measures.
By a vote of 11-1, with Councilwoman Kathleen MacKenzie opposed, the council passed a new ordinance banning anyone from sitting or lying on sidewalks or any public right of way from 7 a.m to 9 p.m. in the 120-block downtown business district.
The council also amended two ordinances to prohibit panhandling on roadways and solicitation of donations within 20 feet of tables outside restaurants and other licensed establishments.
The amendments and new ordinances go to Mayor John Hickenlooper today for his signature, which he is expected to give. Once they are published in the Daily Journal, expected Thursday or Friday, they automatically become law, according to assistant city attorney David Broadwell.
“We are not outlawing panhandling,” said councilman Doug Link hart at the conclusion of the highly charged discussion. “We are trying to balance individual rights against the broader public interests of safety, businesses and the quality of life.”
Councilman Charlie Brown quoted a portion of a Chinese proverb that stated change comes only when direction is changed. “We are changing the direction of Denver,” he said in the most succinct speech of the long night.
Some 33 speakers signed up for a one-hour public hearing, which the council extended to accommodate everyone. Homeless advocates complained that the laws would criminalize people for being poor and that selective enforcement would be conducted only on the “disheveled, the poor and the shivering.”
But representatives from the business community persuasively argued that Denver’s core business district had become filthy, unsafe and unattractive for businesses and their customers.
John Desmond, vice president for planning for the Downtown Denver Partnership, said 218 businesses responded to a survey last spring, with 89 percent stating panhandling was a problem, 88 percent saying panhandling was affecting their businesses and that 87 percent indicating support for the anti-panhandling ordinances. When he asked for supporters of the new laws to stand, roughly half of the packed council chambers stood.
William Mitchell, representing the 900 members of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, urged the council to approve the laws. “Denver needs to project the image of a healthy, happy and clean city,” he said.
“I resent people telling me we lack compassion,” said Don Musselman of Musselman Jewelry above the McDonald’s at Champa Street and the 16th Street Mall. “We too are entitled to make a living as businesspeople.”
But CU political science instructor Thad Tecza rocked the crowd with an impassioned plea: “It’s a strange community that lets Santas and Broncos’ wives beg for money but not the poor. Our wealth and prosperity is built on the poor.”
Susan Gomez, who has lived in the Five Points area for 27 years, said, “Two of the three new laws are meant to hide, not help, the poor. This is an intrusion on the rights of both the givers and the receivers.”
Robert Espinoza, one of the few homeless advocates dressed in a business suit, boomed out, “Most of all, these will make it illegal for someone to say, ‘Brother, can you spare me a dime?”‘
Attorney Broadwell explained that the “sit and lie” ordinance does not prohibit the public from sitting during a licensed parade or demonstration.
A few supporters, including the Athmar Park Neighborhood Association, asked that the “sit and lie” ordinance be extended to include the entire city.
The proposals are the city’s first attempt at restricting the homeless with enforceable laws since Hickenlooper’s 10-year plan to end homelessness was endorsed by the council in October.
The ordinance requires police first to give oral, then written, warnings to offenders, or to request an outreach worker for assistance before arresting the offender. It is the city’s first ordinance dictating how police must enforce the law.
Staff writer Mike McPhee can be reached at 303-820-1409 or mmcphee@denverpost.com.
