Housing for Denver’s homeless with AIDS
Re: “NIMBY! But why not in yours?” Jan. 11 David Harsanyi column.
David Harsanyi wrote a column about the proposed Juan Diego housing facility in Denver’s Highland neighborhood, but he failed to mention one key point: This is a joint venture between Del Norte, the City of Denver, and Colorado AIDS Project (CAP), designed to give homes to people living with HIV/AIDS.
This is not, as Harsanyi puts it, randomly placing 20 people together who have no stake in the community as a social experiment. Juan Diego will provide vital housing to people living with a devastating disease, so they and their families can get back on their feet.
The average monthly medical cost for a person living with HIV is $2,100. Could you afford $2,100 out of your monthly budget, on top of countless doctor visits, while trying to keep your job and fighting a disease that has already claimed 30 million lives?
The simple truth is: housing is health care.
I encourage you to learn the truth about Juan Diego by visiting www.supportjuandiego.org.
Bob Nogueira, Chair, Colorado AIDS Project Board of Directors, Denver
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I’m with David Harsanyi on this one. Having served for four years on Loveland’s Affordable Housing Commission, I have an idea of just how tough it is for people of modest income to find a place to live along the Front Range, both individually and collectively. Jason Broken Leg and his neighbors deserve better treatment from the city. Beyond that, the projected costs, forgiven loans, and cozy board-member relationships provide the unmistakable aroma of, well, sun-warmed dead carp.
Indeed, I heartily endorse the concept of locating facilities like this in a variety of city neighborhoods, many of which display enough economic bigotry to supply the entire region, which already has plenty of that mindset. Why not put low-income housing, or no-income housing, in Cherry Creek or the Washington Park areas? It might help the people already living there to maintain their tenuous hold on reality.
Ray Schoch, Lakewood
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Despite David Harsanyi’s attempt to defend the interests of the respectable homeowners of the Highland neighborhood against the incursion of homeless people, his column overlooks some of the less than-generous-reasons why people seem to oppose the construction of Juan Diego, a proposed housing facility for the chronically homeless in our neighborhood.
When questions have been raised about our children’s potential risk of getting HIV from homeless people by swimming in the same pool, I worry that opposition to this project is based on fears and prejudice and not on reliable information. As a Highland resident who is both a homeowner and a parent of two young children, I believe we have room in our neighborhood for all people. It is our civic responsibility to build a neighborhood that is reflective of all of our city’s population and work collectively to solve social issues – like homelessness – that impact us all.
Rather than “protecting” our children, shouldn’t we be teaching them more important moral lessons?
Geoffrey Bateman, Denver
Are golfers athletes?
Somebody needs to give editors who vote in The Associated Press poll some testosterone – or a dictionary. How else would one explain their choices for male and female 2006 “athletes of the year”? Golfers? What a joke. Foisting such accolades upon golfers is the biggest lie in American sports since baseball started playing the “World Series” without any foreign teams involved.
I recognize it takes manual dexterity to play golf, but in a metrosexual kind of way. It requires a supple-wristed touch to putt the ball just right. It’s not easy to gauge such a tender effort, but to award such delicate manipulations of stroke the highest honor in athletics is to ridicule physically superior athletes everywhere.
If the sports editors could pull their heads out of the sandtraps, they might realize that real athleticism doesn’t require a caddie.
They might discover sports where competition necessitates athletes to push themselves to the limits of human capacity, or at the very least break a sweat. Is golf worthy of the highest praise in athleticism? Never.
Bernie Boettcher, Silt
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