By a vote of 8-1, the Colorado Springs City Council, yielding to pressure from local merchants and homeowners' associations, passed on first reading a new ordinance banning camping on public property. The lone dissenter, Councilman Tom Gallagher (who was once homeless), had this to say, "“This is a personal issue for me. Jesus Christ came into the world homeless; he left homeless.” The Colorado Springs Gazette and several local TV stations provided news coverage.
Cracking down on homeless people in the dead of winter creates a quandary not only for them, but for those committed to lend them a hand up. Here's the situation as interpreted by this blogger:
Reality Check #1 - There is just not enough room to absorb several hundred people in need of housing on short notice.
Reality Check #2 - Here is another example of why we cannot count on government to deal with pressing problems. Bowing to political pressure, they have forced many citizens to either move away, shifting the problem to another community, or resort to desperate measures to survive.
Reality Check #3 - In case nobody noticed, we are in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Unemployment is higher than government sources are willing to admit, and it appears that our local daily paper publishes more foreclosure notices than job listings.
Reality Check #4 - I have dealt with enough homeless people to know that few of them fit the stereotype that's perpetuated by the dinosaur media. Not all the camps along Fountain Creek are covered with litter - some have enough self-discipline to be neat and orderly. On the other hand, at any public event attended by "respectable" people, one can expect a major clean-up job, even when trash receptacles are made available.
Reality Check #5 - The vast majority of the homeless population are citizens like ourselves, and entitled to the same rights as the rest of us. And I have compassion for those who, like myself, served in the military.
Reality Check #6 - We need more time to adopt a new mindset, that of making Colorado Springs a great place to escape from homelessness rather than a good place to be homeless.
Reality Check #7 - This is my personal belief, but I am convinced that it is our responsibility to lend a helping hand to those less fortunate than ourselves, and that we will be accountable to God if we shirk our duty or do what Denver did prior to the Democratic National Convention: dump many of their homeless people on other communities, including this one.
3 comments:
I live in Colorado Springs and are preparing to move out post haste.
They hate the homeless here. The food bank rations for a family of four adults is a box of ceral, a loaf of bread, a commodity can of pork, a box of macaroni and cheese, and some powedered milk. You can only go once a month for three months in a row. GOOGLE care and share food bank and see how much food they really have but really don't give it out.
Secondly our city officials spent 35 million of our tax payer money to buy 5 floors of a building to lease out to the US olympic committe. Yet they could care less when HP computers outsources thousands of jobs two years ago. Then the city had the nerve to say they needed to spend 5 million more to buy another building for the olympic committe.
Yet the have turned off every other street light, no longer watering our parks or providing trash service to them, sold our police helicopters, cut the police force in half etc..
Just the first few months of this year murders and crime has tripled.
The car registeration fees increased 200 percent. What cost me 30 dollars turned into 160 to register a 13 year old honda.
If you can't afford registration, and get stopped, you will spend 4 days in jail. THEY DO NOT CARE because they will get money from the state by incarerating you.
They arrest the homeless that are camping out, Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful regulary goes into the camps and removes their private property. which has resulted in MANY homeless people being stuck now because their identification documents were disposed of.
Now they are about to ban outdoor camping, throw the homeless in jail and buss out as many as they can. (they started bussing people 2weeks ago)
Two nights ago on the nightly news they were lauding this poor person found dead, and when they showed a picture of him on the tv he was kneeling, and had his gang colored bandanna proudly displayed over his shoulder. But to listen to the news people you would have thought he was a saint.
All the people care about here is their pretty view, and screw the rest.
If you make less than 50,000 a year you can't afford to live here. Period end of story.
You will end up in the ghetto and bullets flying in your windows.
Seems like the Wild West lives again because the only people running this place are criminals.
I too live in Colorado Springs and are preparing to leave asap.
This place is a third world slum with a pretty view.
I, for one, am determined not to leave this city without a fight. What's so ironic about proposing alternatives is that my friends who are eminently qualified to help us throw the rascals out are convinced that no one in his right mind would ever run for public office, and the media are in the habit of raking anyone with a history of mental illness, but currently able to hold a position of responsibility, over the coals. When people are offered a choice, they tend to elect the government they deserve.
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