The Post has reported that only one in six Denver public housing residents required to do community service is actually doing it. It’s clearly time to expand the definition.
Sure, the Denver Housing Authority has already stretched the rules further than Jabba the Hutt’s waistband. But to save the city from evictions driven by federal law, we must get our numbers up to something respectable. Say three in six.
A few modest proposals are in order, since DHA can’t convince many subsidized renters to avoid losing their homes by occasionally visiting libraries, museums or zoos. I’m thinking about transponders that electronically record each time public housing residents walk past any of these facilities.
Denver public housing tenants can already get community service credit helping the elderly play bingo. Apparently, they aren’t lining up to serve.
Not to worry. The federal public housing law, which makes certain residents work eight hours a month to “give something back,” also lets folks help themselves. So let them play their own bingo cards. If that doesn’t work, free RTD bus rides to Central City casinos and complimentary rolls of quarters should.
Housing authority director Sal Carpio said his agency is now reconsidering what constitutes community service at the request of the DHA board.
“We have no guidance from HUD (the Department of Housing and Urban Development),” Carpio said Tuesday. “We’re looking for better ways of monitoring. We will try to be more definitive.”
More demanding wouldn’t hurt either.
Carpio said sweeping sidewalks or mowing grass at public housing projects doesn’t count as community service. Neither does going to Broncos, Nuggets or Rockies games.
Nearly everything else seems to qualify because of federal language that talks about “public benefit,” “self-sufficiency,” “self-responsibility” or “enhancement of quality of life.”
In DHA’s defense, it is the first housing agency in the country to begin evicting public housing tenants for not fulfilling community service requirements.
Some advocates for the poor consider the mandate forced servitude. Long term, it may create more problems than it solves. A bigger concern should be thinking that making the downtrodden minimally accountable violates their rights.
My greatest misgiving in the whole community service controversy is an assumption of inevitable failure.
Denver housing officials obviously feel they must let almost anything qualify as community service. Yet the majority of folks covered by the law struggle to put in eight hours a month.
One advocate for the homeless called it “draconian,” which my dictionary defines as “extremely rigorous or harsh.”
As unfulfilled community service hours accrue, some public housing residents simply give up and leave. Others face forced removal from their homes.
Maybe DHA could work out an amnesty program, like the library that lets you return long-overdue books once a year for a minimal charge. But that would not get to the heart of the problem.
Community service requirements don’t cover the elderly, the disabled, the employed or children. That rules out almost 14,500 of DHA’s 15,000 residents.
For able-bodied, unemployed adults between 18 and 62, few excuses wash. Get your behind to the library, the museum or the zoo. At least you’ll keep a roof over your head.
Just don’t look for much beyond that, including empathy. If, as President Bush says, there is a “soft bigotry of low expectations,” think of the pot of prejudice brewed by no expectations.
The Denver Housing Authority needs to get real about what constitutes community service. But not as much as some of its tenants.
The taxpayers – like God – prefer to help those who help themselves. If you live in public housing but can’t find eight hours a month to truly “give something back,” you should use the time to find someone else to pay your rent.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
