Early in John Hickenlooper’s first term as Denver mayor, protesters demanded the city authorize a “tent city” for the homeless. Although a terrible idea, it got an unexpected lift when a panel of the mayor’s Commission on the Homeless took it seriously.
Fortunately, the administration pushed back and the proposal died. But maybe the activists were just biding their time.
If you haven’t been near downtown Denver in recent weeks, you probably think the Occupy Denver encampment was dispersed by police on Dec. 19, when some of its charming protesters set fires to mark their retreat. The media was all over this confrontation.
And while it’s true that you will no longer see tents at Civic Center or on state land on the opposite side of Broadway, the Occupiers have not in fact all vanished from the scene. Some of them — as well as homeless surrogates — have regrouped along the wide sidewalk on the west side of Broadway, settling down in what looks like a sprawling tarp city.
On several occasions last week when I walked by Tarp City, the sleeping quarters took up half or more — and sometimes much more — of the sidewalk for much of the distance between Colfax Avenue and 14th Avenue. In two or three spots it would have been difficult for more than two people to walk comfortably side by side, given the profusion of sleeping gear.
Why is the Hancock administration tolerating this encampment?
It’s not a question of deferring to the campers’ constitutional rights. Although courts have frowned on ordinances banning all sleeping on public property, including sidewalks, judges nonetheless have regularly upheld ordinances barring camping on public grounds.
Denver already has an ordinance outlawing nighttime camping in parks, and another “sit/lie” ordinance banning either of those activities from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. in downtown’s Business Improvement District.
Alas, Civic Center is outside the business district, and a sidewalk is not a park. But then why not invoke the ordinance that allows the city “to order the removal of any article, vehicle or thing whatsoever encumbering any street, alley, sidewalk, parkway or other public way or place”?
If Tarp City had been erected at almost any other well-traveled location, the outcry from nearby commercial establishments, to say nothing of residents, would have been deafening. But Denverites should be no less protective of Civic Center, on which they just lavished $9.5 million in overdue repairs to such landmarks as the Voorhies Memorial and Greek Theater. Ironically, the final upgrades focused on the Broadway Terrace along the park’s east side, where new benches, bricks, grass and widened sidewalks were installed.
“People are going to notice the Broadway Terrace,” a city official predicted last spring, little realizing they would notice primarily because Occupy protesters would deface nearby improvements and Tarp City would make the area even more of an eyesore than ever.
If Denver officials believe they need more explicit legal authority to act, then they should model a law on Boulder’s Camping Without Consent ordinance, which simply bans camping without a permit on any public property.
Just last year, District Court Judge Ingrid Bakke upheld the ordinance against a legal challenge, saying that “this court is persuaded by the City of Boulder’s argument that turning public spaces in Boulder into campgrounds would present problems concerning sanitation, public health, safety and environmental damage.”
This isn’t a question of treating the homeless with dignity. Denver’s Road Home already does that. It’s a matter of liberating a just-refurbished civic treasure from a squatters camp.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com. Follow him on Twitter @vcarrollDP
