Denver Mayor Michael Hancock has good reasons to be pleased with the way his city is performing. Popular nationally, the Mile High City has become one of the cool spots for newcomers, its economy is booming, and unemployment is minimal.
But in his annual State of the City address Monday, during a wonderful summer morning outside Denver International Airportap Westin hotel, the mayor chose not to focus simply on big-picture projects — like the new rail line that took many attendees to the speech — but on building up those who struggle economically.
Setting the tone early, Hancock channeled President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, saying, “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”
The timing for such a focus struck us as appropriate and refreshing. Itap been a violent spring and summer in America; and here at home, conflicts between residents and the homeless downtown, the city’s in May, and attacks by so-called urban travelers on office workers have caused unease.
Meanwhile, itap getting increasingly difficult for many to be able to handle the city’s soaring rents and housing costs, and certainly there remain large pockets of disparity. Hancock made clear his administration wishes to help communities of color, who he rightly argues “are on the losing end of every type of equity gap you can think of: wages, education and housing.”
The mayor set as a top goal creating a new office that would seek to centralize and thereby make more efficient and effective the many ways in which Denver works with the homeless. He wishes to tackle high rents and housing costs with a . He looks forward to instituting potentially powerful new reforms in the city’s jail system we find encouraging.
Hancock tells us his new Office of HOPE — Housing and Opportunities for People Everywhere — would be kept small and focused. The idea would be to streamline and prevent wasteful overlap of services among the various agencies already dealing with homeless issues or related aspects of it. We await further details.
We’re also interested in learning more about how the mayor intends to raise the capital needed to fund his affordable housing ambitions. On the drawing board now are increased fees for developers and higher property taxes for existing homeowners.
Recently, we heaped praise on a meant to replace traditional use-of-force practices with de-escalation techniques that put human communication first.
Hancock concluded with a nod to his longtime commitment to summer and after-school programs for children and struggling families.
It was a heartening call to action, and we wish the mayor godspeed in making it so.
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