Go to: Denver Post Voter Guide • Candidate Q&A home page
The Denver Post sent a questionnaire to candidates in the April 4 Denver municipal election. Answers are lightly edited and ordered alphabetically by candidate’s last name. Following are mayoral candidates’ answers to the question:
Should the city’s policy of sweeping homeless encampments continue unchanged? Why or why not?
Renate Behrens
Never sweep and take away private belongings never, ever, (constitutional rights) from the most vulnerable population. They are just like you and me — after a catastrophic life’s experience. They have to get a chance to recover. They are not mentally ill.
The working homeless have to get housing by their employers.
Kelly Brough
No. It is a tremendous waste of resources to move people down the block or around the corner. We need real solutions to ending homeless encampments. I will expand and evolve our shelter capacity and build more housing. While doing that, I’ll temporarily expand the use of sanctioned, supported camping. We must provide more humane and safer alternatives. If people refuse services and supports, I will use the legal authority to intervene to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the individual and the broader community. Unsheltered living in public spaces is not an acceptable option.
RELATED: What can Denver’s next mayor do about homelessness? Here’s what 5 other cities are doing.
Lisa Calderón
Our homeless crisis is solvable when we invest in solutions that approach the root cause. I will end the costly, ineffective sweeps and replace them with 24/7 crisis intervention responders. As mayor, I will:
– Support data-proven solutions of a housing-first approach to providing services to our unhoused neighbors, shifting away from a shelter-first approach
– Prioritize the creation of social housing at deeply affordable rates at or below 30% of the average monthly income
– Address barriers to housing beyond affordability, including credit checks, background checks, income multiplier requirements, and lack of ADA-compliant units
– Address core issues that contribute to homelessness, including access to education, workforce training, transportation, and others
Al Gardner
I don’t believe that the sweeps should continue in their current form because it is not accomplishing its intended goal. We are not achieving the intended goals and we are simply re-shuffling the unhoused with this method. Removing or shifting the issue out of sight every couple weeks is not solving the issue. What we need is a new strategy that is based on the housing first, case management, and enforcement elements that help identify where we need to meet each impacted individual.
Chris Hansen
The status quo is not working. It is clear that Denver needs a new leader to make real progress on addressing homelessness and ensuring our streets, sidewalks and public areas are open for all Denverites to utilize. As mayor, I will reevaluate Denver’s failing approach to homelessness, reimagine systems to disrupt the cycles perpetuating the problem, and reinforce the existing laws and regulations to ensure that everyone in Denver, housed or unhoused, stays safe. A key part of my homelessness plan is to audit existing programs because we are spending enormous amounts of money without getting results we all deserve.
Leslie Herod
It’s time to rethink how we address living space for our unhoused neighbors — the current situation is not working for them or for the city. Helping people get back on their feet requires stable housing, but the first step is getting people inside to safe places — ones where they feel comfortable and secure. We’ll expand street outreach, substance use disorder treatment, and harm reduction to ensure that people facing a crisis are aware of new solutions. I will create the progressive change this city needs, and make Denver into a city that works for everyone.
Mike Johnston
We know the current policy of sweeping is not working because people who are experiencing homelessness have no place to go. I would solve this problem by building 10-20 micro-communities that would include permanent supportive housing for 1,400 individuals. Then we can move communities of encampments together to safe, satable, dignified housing where they can get the addiction, mental health, and workforce services they need. Once we meet that obligation to make sure everyone has a place to sleep, we must also ensure all Denver residents can enjoy our public spaces, businesses, and sidewalks. Once dignified housing is available people should not need or have the right to sleep outside someone’s home or business.
Aurelio Martinez
We have to stop hasty remedies and work on solutions! If we analyze the problems that lead to homelessness, then we’ll find solutions. We need to focus on restructuring current programs and facilities or bring in new “state of the art” programs and facilities to include career education for better paying jobs and doctors and psychiatrists specializing in mental health issues and drug addiction. Our administration will focus on assisted living for people and families experiencing homelessness.
Deborah “Debbie” Ortega
It is inhumane to let people suffer and die on our streets. With 15 shelters in our city, Denver is not lacking for temporary housing.
It is critical that we address the public health hazard of encampments, but this is only the first step in solving homelessness. The process, which requires advanced notice, must connect our diverse unhoused population to local and regional resources, including mental health services, treatment beds, training, a pathway to employment, which supports the rebuilding of self-worth and purpose.”
Terrance Roberts
No they should not. Not having money is not a crime. With more availability for housing by growing our public housing stock and implementing rent controls, and adding city-sponsored safe encampment spaces with showers, trash receptacles, outdoor restroom facilities, mental health services, safe lighting, etc., will really elevate the need for our unhoused neighbors to encamp in various spaces that they feel are a safe haven if these services are not available.
Trinidad Rodriguez
My administration will continue sweeping unauthorized homeless encampments in order to maintain health and safety for all people living in them and in surrounding neighborhoods. Denver has extensively documented the hazardous and unsanitary conditions that exist in encampments. It is also my expectation that unauthorized encampments will diminish significantly as we implement my plan which will create substance use and/or mental health disorder treatment pathways to be accessed voluntarily or involuntarily for those who are of danger to themselves or others, and other emerging programs.
Andy Rougeot
I will aggressively enforce the camping ban to get the homeless into the mental health and drug addiction services they need. Mayor Hancock has failed to enforce our camping ban, which has led to a doubling of unsheltered homeless over the past four years.
Kwame Spearman
Yes, we need to enforce the current laws.
Ean Thomas Tafoya
I’ve always opposed the sweeps. After years of wasting taxpayer money cruelly forcing people from one block to another and back again, the unhoused population has tripled. The policy is a pointless, inhumane failure. I founded an organization to provide water and trash pickup to encampments because the sweeps don’t address these public health issues at all. Lots of research shows the fastest, cheapest way to get people off the streets is to get them into housing with wraparound services. In 2020, I presented a regional plan to rapidly get folks off the streets, and as mayor I would implement it while expanding programs that have actually been proven to work in Denver. We also have to address our housing crisis so nobody becomes homeless in the first place.
Robert Treta
We need somewhere for them to camp legally until I build the cubicles. I will provide a legal camping area within city limits out by the airport. This will be done in 60 days. After 60 days I will sweep the streets. Enforcement will be its fullest. It’s hard to comprehend how big of a problem we have until you pool them all together. Right now they are dispersed. They keep moving them around. It’s simply inhumane and unsanitary right now. They need bathrooms, electricity for heat, and a legal camping area until we can get them into cost effective permanent housing. I will do this at a fraction of cost.
James Walsh
I would end sweeps and end the urban camping ban. All of my energies as mayor would go toward moving people into permanent, dignified housing. All public health and safety issues should be channeled through the practices and philosophy of harm reduction.
Thomas Wolf
Should our laws be enforced and should we deliver shelter to our neediest? YES!
Are we confronting this crisis in the proper way? NO!
This crisis requires the proper allocation of resources to divide and conquer. Since this population has been measured as chemically dependent, mentally ill and criminal, the appropriate corresponding resources are clinicians, social workers, and police officers respectively. This triage is the remedy to this crisis. We must acknowledge this as a humanitarian crisis and get this population sheltered.
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