They arrived by the dozens, layered in donated clothes and recruited by outreach workers. Hundreds of Denver’s homeless got a free meal, medical treatment, legal advice, counseling about housing and jobs and even a massage Thursday.
But when the city’s first Project Connect ended at the convention center, it was tough to measure progress. For all the good work, almost all of those who arrived homeless left homeless.
“I saw a flier,” said 39-year-old Craig, who didn’t give his last name.
He wasn’t sure he could get what he needed most – a new ID to replace one he lost a couple of days ago. But he meant to get his life together. “For me personally,” he said, “I don’t expect the city to do much. I shouldn’t be in this position. Ultimately, it’s up to me.”
Craig was articulate, intelligent, reasonable. He said he did temp work until a couple of weeks ago, when he landed a job conducting telephone surveys. It was not, he added, “a career move.”
Craig is the enigma of homelessness for guys like me. He spent Wednesday night at the St. Francis Center. He figured he’d be at the shelter Thursday, too.
Guys like me look for miracles in events like Project Connect. What we find are what Urban Peak outreach coordinator Victor Hernandez calls “baby steps.” As he walked through Civic Center on Thursday, passing out free pop and socks to street dwellers, Hernandez hoped only to get people to go to Project Connect, one of 25 such efforts held across the country.
Helping the homeless, explained Hernandez, can be frustratingly incremental.
“I worked three months with a kid,” said Hernandez. “He said, ‘I’m fine. I’m fine.’ Then one day he came to me and said, ‘I want to see the shelter.”‘
There is no fairy tale ending to Hernandez’s story. It is the reality of how homelessness will be brought under control in Denver. If it is. It won’t be without a reassessment by most of us about how long, hard and costly this process will be.
Near Stout and 21st streets, a guy named Bobby Ray rode up on a bicycle. He begged Urban Peak public affairs director Jamie Van Leeuwen for cash to help him escape eviction.
Instead, Van Leeuwen called Bobby Ray a cab to take him to Project Connect.
“I don’t want to go if isn’t going to work,” said Bobby Ray, near tears. “If it’s not going to work, I can go out and panhandle.”
Denver’s new panhandling ordinances take effect soon. They make it illegal to sit or lie on the 16th Street Mall from 7 a.m. until 9 p.m. They make it illegal to beg within 20 feet of outdoor diners or to step into the street to collect donations. But if money that too many beggars turn into drugs and alcohol isn’t diverted into donations to agencies that help the homeless, we’re back where we started.
“We can get halfway there with public dollars,” said Denver Human Services manager Roxane White, who is in charge of the 10-year plan to end homelessness.
White and other advocates now ask businesses, foundations and everyone who ever paid a panhandler for the private money it will take for the housing and services that do something more than keep the homeless out of sight.
For that solicitation to succeed, it must come with perspective.
“Are we going to do miracles today?” White asked, giving voice to my thoughts as she surveyed Project Connect. “No.
“But these are the first steps.”
Baby steps.
It is not indifference that this community must fight as Denver battles homelessness. It is impatience. Impatience born of a rush to judgment.
That is not an easy thing.
As Hernandez canvassed in behalf of Project Connect, he came upon a guy who had already been to the convention center. The guy had two free meals on the pavement beside him and a big smile on his face.
“I got a job interview in the morning; they hooked me up,” the man said.
Then he looked at the half-empty liquor bottle in his hand.
“But I got to get my drink on.”
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
