A regular column on health

by Ray Lyall

To many people, much like myself (homeless), trying to get not just food, but the kinds of foods that are good for you, can certainly be a daunting task. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts every homeless person reading this article right now, knows at least one person with diabetes, if you don’t suffer from it yourself.

Taking control of your diet is the single most important thing that you can do to fight and control diabetes, and many other health conditions that haunt the people experiencing homelessness. Now, the reality is if you’re one of the...let’s just say thousands of people experiencing homelessness, we really don’t have much choice over what we eat for breakfast, lunch and/or dinner.

When you’re homeless, all too often your meals tend to come from a soup line or shelter that is not able to offer a whole lot of fresh fruits and vegetables or whole grain cereals and breads. So let’s not even get started on meats or fish.

Let’s face it--pastry, bleached breads and junk foods seem to be our mainstay diet. If by chance you are lucky enough to go to a food bank, lugging around 10 to 15 pounds of well selected items is, at best, inconvenient, if not downright a royal pain in the assets.

Okay, so what’s the point?

The only one who can help you start to eat right...is you. And in not calling on everyone to become a health nut, just find one place that offers at least one healthy meal a day, and your body will thank you for it. So eat a banana, have an apple, go for the oatmeal instead of the double chocolate chip muffin. Start looking for things that are green (no not frosting) vegetables.

In future issues we’ll be covering more. So, if there’s anything you feel you want to know, email us or heck, write your own article and drop it in one of our boxes [--or bring it to a Get Loud meeting].

                                                                                                                                    Terese
1.8 million additional city dollars have been proposed to spend policing downtown. A top priority is policing people for the “criminal acts” of being homeless - including but not limited to, not having an indoor place to sleep or urinate, and asking for money when you have none - instead of using this 1.8 million for housing, bathrooms, or jobs.

On Wednesday June 4th, 2014 Denver City Council Government and Finance Committee passed a budget request for “1.8 million Supplemental Appropriation for Denver Police and Sheriff Department for Increased Security Presence.” This budget request will now be moving toward approval from the whole City Council (the date for this hearing is still unknown).

If this proposal passes, 900,000 would be spent on an increase of 10 police on duty, and 900,000 would be spent on estimated increased “arrest and detention costs.” Along side this 1.8 million of city budget the Downtown Denver Partnership has already spent 100,000 of their own money to hire one additional officer per clock along the 16th st Mall. The “hot spots” these increased officers are being hired to police are Ball Park neighborhood, LoDo, and 16th St Mall.

This proposal for increased policing came as an agreement from Mayor Hancock to try to accommodate the complaints of the Ball Park Neighborhood Association about the recently passed Lawrence St Community Center addition to Denver Rescue Mission.

Of course it would be unconstitutional discrimination for city officials to direct the police force specifically to people who are homeless because of their housing status, so instead they explain that it is not about homelessness itself but about criminal activity. What sort of criminal activity? Panhandling, Smoking Weed, and Public Urination were three top crimes mentioned by Chief White. Plus of course the crime of sleeping in public. There are also laws against sitting/lying down along 16th St Mall, and “loitering” in various areas to be enforced.

Now lets step back for a second and ask “what is the appropriate solution matched to the problems at hand?” For, as Council Women Kenish so aptly put “We won't solve what this area is upset about if we don't spend the money on [solutions] and as quickly and aggressively as we spent this supplemental.”

If panhandling is a problem would not the solution be for people who are panhandling because they lack money to be offered employment or a disability check that actually meets their needs?

-64(??) people could be hired full time at $15 hr for a year for the 1.8 million the City is proposing to spend on police. (For example, people could be hired to clean the streets if that is a real issue)

If public urination is a problem would not the solution be to have accessible public bathrooms for people to urinate in?

-In Seattle it costs 600,000 to maintain three “Urban Rest Stops” which have bathrooms, showers, washing machines, and basic toiletries (source ??) Denver could maintain nine “Urban Rest Stops” with the 1.8 million proposed to spend on policing.

-In Portland it costs ?? for one PortaLoo (solar powered toilet and sink) and ?? to maintain it for a year. Denver could buy and maintain ?? PortaLoos for the 1.8 million.

-Right here in Denver's own Wash Park the city is spending 160,000 for bathrooms (source http://www.westword.com/2014-05-15/news/rangers-in-denver-parks/ ) Why can the city afford to upkeep and clean the bathrooms in Wash Park and not downtown where people who are homeless have no place to use a restroom?

If sleeping in public places is a problem would not the solution be to offer people housing they can afford?

-180 people could be given ?? housing for a year for the 1.8 million to be spent policing people sleeping outside (source ??)

 Our sisters’ daily struggle to find a safe place to sleep
 
 Rat-a-tat-tat! It’s 3 am Monday (or Thursday) morning, sisters. No rest 
 for the weary...up n’ at ‘em! It’s time to play the newest reality show: 
 Who Gets to Sleep Inside Tonight?/ You’re gonna love it!

 Before (April), if you were a woman (or transgendered individual) who 
 needed a warm, safe place to sleep at night, you could pretty much count 
 on getting into the Women’s Emergency Shelter (WES) at 13th and Elati. 
 the floor, you share a single toilet with 59 shelter mates, and you have 
 to be out by (7?)--it sure beats dealing with the elements and the 
 dangers that lurk outside--including the so-called “protection” offered 
 by some men. If you had nowhere else to go--maybe you’d lost your job 
 and your apartment, or your spouse died leaving you out in the cold, or 
 you’d finally left an abusive relationship--and maybe you’d tried to get 
 into the CHUM church shelter program and the Delores Project overflow 
 but you didn’t win their lotteries--well, you could line up outside the 
 WES building, and starting at 6pm you’d probably get to enter and spend 
 the night. (And once the shelter was full, women who still needed a 
 place to stay would be sent to another shelter or given a motel voucher.)
 
 But then the rules got more complicated. Now, there’s no lining up 
 outside the building each night. (Apparently the neighbors in the Golden 
 Triangle didn’t like the way that looked.) Instead, you now get to play 
 “the game” for a WES mat every Monday and Thursday morning, and if you 
 win you get to keep your mat until the next game day. And here’s the 
 really fun part: there are several paths you can take, and you have no 
 way of knowing which path, if any, will work for you. Will you win or 
 lose? Ready, get set...grab your worldly belongings, and let the game begin!
 
 Should you follow the St Francis path? Their doors open at 6am, but if 
 you want to maximize your chances of getting one of the 10 “first come 
 first served” WES mats they control, you’d better be in line by 4 or 
4:30 am. That’s the strategy two women I spoke to employed on a Monday 
morning recently. No matter that it was bitterly cold, both were sick, 
and one walked with a cane. Getting in line in the middle of the night 
was better than spending the whole next night outside, which could 
happen if they didn’t secure a mat. Fortunately, one of them has a car 
(so far) which made the trip over from the shelter at 13th and Elati a 
 bit easier. (Others aren’t so lucky, and have to walk the (two miles?) 
 at that hour.) At around 8:30 they found out they’d made the list. 
 They’re home free...for three nights...
 
 (I’ve actually oversimplified things. In fact, while at St Francis, you 
 can also elect to enter the daily lottery for one of 20 cots available 
 through the Women’s Homeless Initiative/CHUM program, which shelters 
 women at a different church each night. Hmmm, a cot, not a mat, and less 
 crowded, and dinner and breakfast besides, and nice bathrooms, but it’s 
 only for one night, and what if you don’t win again tomorrow...And if 
 you get a CHUM cot on Sunday or Wednesday night, you’ll be dropped off 
 at St Francis too late the next morning to get in line for a WES mat... 
 What to do??)
 
 
 Or should you make your way over to the Denver Human Services building 
 at 12th and Federal, where the General Assistance department there 
 controls access to some of the mats? (I’m not sure how many.) A woman I 
 spoke with used that strategy this Monday. She took a bus there, 
 arriving at 5:30 am, and waited outside in line until the doors opened 
 at 7. Then she put her name on a list (she was third) and was seen at 
 around 9am. Her diligence paid off--she got a mat! (If she’d come later, 
 she may have lost out to women who’d come for Food Stamps or AND 
 appointments and such.) Then she headed downstairs and got in another 
 line to ask for a bus ticket to get back downtown, where she could get a 
 free meal somewhere, use a computer at the library, and (at 6pm) walk 
 over to her mat at 13th and Elati. 
 
 If, on the other hand, you like to gamble, and don’t want to get up 
 quite so early and risk pneumonia waiting outside, you might choose the 
 Gathering Place path. They control 15 WES mats via a lottery, which you 
 can sign up for when they open at the civilized hour of 8:30 am. And on 
 Monday, you can also play the lottery there (but not at St Francis) for 
 an overflow bed (cot?) at the Delores Project FOR A WHOLE WEEK. But at 
 TGP you can’t play the CHUM lottery...Help! This is really getting 
 crazy! You need a computer program to figure out your odds!

 Now what if, despite your best effort to choose the right path, all has 
 failed...it’s 6 pm and you’ve nowhere to sleep! Easy peasy, just head 
 over to the Samaritan House (right near St Francis). The staff there 
 will try to get you in somewhere...maybe at WES, if there are still 
 vacancies, because some women didn’t show up...or maybe a motel 
 voucher--if you aren’t on the “Do not re-voucher” list for one reason or 
 another...in which case it’s the great outdoors for you.
 
 Unfortunately, when one woman went to the Samaritan House at 6 pm 
 recently, after not making it into CHUM or WES, the staff person wasn’t 
 there, so she walked all the way to WES, but they sent her to the 
 Sheriff’s Department, where at 9pm her name was taken, and at 10pm she 
 was given a motel voucher and a bus ticket. She arrived around 11:30, 
 was in bed at midnight, but had to wake up early to start playing the 
 game again.