by PJ D'Amico
Dear Fellow Denver Citizens,
I am so disheartened by the conversation being framed about the ‘problem’ of the homeless. To be clear, I am the Executive Director of the Buck Family Foundation, which provides funding to a number of homeless provider agencies in Denver, and I was recently the executive director of RedLine, a $3 million contemporary arts organization that is physically located directly next to the St. Francis Center and the Denver Rescue Mission. I would like to share with you a few observations as a business leader, philanthropist neighbor and friend to people who happen to be homeless.
1) Businesses can be and are successful in immediate proximity to homelessness. Be it the Chelsea District in NY, the Mission in San Francisco or RedLine in Denver, businesses in cosmopolitan cities across the nation thrive in places where there are concentrations of homeless neighbors. I offer no panacea but suggest that businesses can find creative ways to work in concert with our homeless neighbors. At RedLine we have homeless people who come into our space every day, our building is tagged consistently, I have had to remove the enclosure around our dumpster so as to not provide convenient shelter to the homeless and on more than one occasion I have had to personally clean up human excrement from one of my homeless neighbors. Still in the four years I directed RedLine, we did not have a single incident of theft or assault between the homeless and our 20,000 annual patrons. I have called the police on a handful of occasions, but never has an arrest been necessary. Hundreds of high net worth patrons visit RedLine every day without incident.
2) The homeless are not a ‘problem’ but in fact the most vulnerable neighbors in our city deserving of our compassion and protection. We cannot arrest our way out of this problem because it is ultimately not a problem but a benefit of living in a world class cosmopolitan city. I teach my three year old twin daughters every day how to be in relationship with all people, rich and homeless. I am so grateful they have opportunities to witness abject poverty up close and personal (within reason) and I am grateful that my daughters do not have to witness police arresting citizens for no good reason (yet). I will share with them as they grow older, that the homeless are someone’s mother, father, brother or son. They are folks who struggle and we should have empathy for them just as we count our own grace and blessings. Once we begin referring to them as ‘problems’ it is we who are the real problem.
3) Until now Denver has been a world class city. You cannot have a world class city without world class civility. I spent the better part of my adult life in Atlanta where they passed a similar ordinance in advance of the 1996 Olympics. The city has been reeling ever since. Note that in Toronto in 1992 activists, at the time known as Food Not Bombs, blocked the Olympics from coming to Canada because of similar antics. Please do not give Occupy a good reason to make Denver the poster-child for protest and direct action. A world class city is measured by the way it treats its most indigent residents. Denver and The Road Home have been a national model until now. It is time we put the "neighbor" back in the hood and the "citizen" back in our city.
4) Please offer solutions not band aids. The problem with the logic emerging out of City Council and by proximity the downtown business leadership is that it simply and literally just kicks the homeless further down the road to nowhere. So if the homeless are not to be jailed or housed in a 24 hour shelter (whose funding is ambiguous), where do they go. They have to go somewhere. Police Chief White told me personally that the best the police can do is displace the homeless problem not eliminate it. And so, where in Denver would you have the homeless concentrate once they are removed from the 16th Street Mall? Which community will inherit their new neighbors with open arms?
5) Have the conversation with the public. City Council is presently having a monologue that is being driven by narrow business interests and not the public/voters at large. The overwhelming majority of the citizens I meet are profoundly upset by the Urban Camping Ban and the arbitrary closing of Triangle Park and Sonny Lawson Park, and yet the voices of dissent are squelched and certainly overlooked by mainstream media. How terribly poetic that, during the hearings on the Urban Camping Ban, when a voice of dissent could be heard in the chambers, two additional police showed up in the room to provide additional ‘security.' What a terrible precursor to the new reality being ushered in by City leadership.
Let me share in closing that I am neither overly idealistic nor naive but fiercely practical. I once served as the night manager for a women’s shelter in Five Points and recently directed RedLine, a thriving contemporary art space in the heart of that same community. But my lived experience is my greatest teacher. Just over twenty five years ago, I coached a baseball team where one of the ten year old boys, James, had a learning disability. A few years ago, I met James at the ripe age of 28 literally on that same exact baseball field in Atlanta. He struggled with chronic homelessness and faced a pattern of serial arrests. And so my wife took him into our home to live one night a week so that he might get a warm meal and a shower. Now that I have twin daughters, taking a homeless man into my home is out of the question. And yet the question remains, where is it safe for James to be in our community? Who will look out for his human dignity while we go about our business? If we claim to be a moral community this is a question we must answer. I pray, God watch us as we watch out for James.
In closing, I implore you as both elected officials and neighbors not to fix the problem of homelessness but instead to create solutions that realize that these are men and women whose humanity is worth fighting for not against. Let us address this issue at its roots not be reacting to the symptoms.
I appreciate the opportunity to share my concerns.
Dear Fellow Denver Citizens,
I am so disheartened by the conversation being framed about the ‘problem’ of the homeless. To be clear, I am the Executive Director of the Buck Family Foundation, which provides funding to a number of homeless provider agencies in Denver, and I was recently the executive director of RedLine, a $3 million contemporary arts organization that is physically located directly next to the St. Francis Center and the Denver Rescue Mission. I would like to share with you a few observations as a business leader, philanthropist neighbor and friend to people who happen to be homeless.
1) Businesses can be and are successful in immediate proximity to homelessness. Be it the Chelsea District in NY, the Mission in San Francisco or RedLine in Denver, businesses in cosmopolitan cities across the nation thrive in places where there are concentrations of homeless neighbors. I offer no panacea but suggest that businesses can find creative ways to work in concert with our homeless neighbors. At RedLine we have homeless people who come into our space every day, our building is tagged consistently, I have had to remove the enclosure around our dumpster so as to not provide convenient shelter to the homeless and on more than one occasion I have had to personally clean up human excrement from one of my homeless neighbors. Still in the four years I directed RedLine, we did not have a single incident of theft or assault between the homeless and our 20,000 annual patrons. I have called the police on a handful of occasions, but never has an arrest been necessary. Hundreds of high net worth patrons visit RedLine every day without incident.
2) The homeless are not a ‘problem’ but in fact the most vulnerable neighbors in our city deserving of our compassion and protection. We cannot arrest our way out of this problem because it is ultimately not a problem but a benefit of living in a world class cosmopolitan city. I teach my three year old twin daughters every day how to be in relationship with all people, rich and homeless. I am so grateful they have opportunities to witness abject poverty up close and personal (within reason) and I am grateful that my daughters do not have to witness police arresting citizens for no good reason (yet). I will share with them as they grow older, that the homeless are someone’s mother, father, brother or son. They are folks who struggle and we should have empathy for them just as we count our own grace and blessings. Once we begin referring to them as ‘problems’ it is we who are the real problem.
3) Until now Denver has been a world class city. You cannot have a world class city without world class civility. I spent the better part of my adult life in Atlanta where they passed a similar ordinance in advance of the 1996 Olympics. The city has been reeling ever since. Note that in Toronto in 1992 activists, at the time known as Food Not Bombs, blocked the Olympics from coming to Canada because of similar antics. Please do not give Occupy a good reason to make Denver the poster-child for protest and direct action. A world class city is measured by the way it treats its most indigent residents. Denver and The Road Home have been a national model until now. It is time we put the "neighbor" back in the hood and the "citizen" back in our city.
4) Please offer solutions not band aids. The problem with the logic emerging out of City Council and by proximity the downtown business leadership is that it simply and literally just kicks the homeless further down the road to nowhere. So if the homeless are not to be jailed or housed in a 24 hour shelter (whose funding is ambiguous), where do they go. They have to go somewhere. Police Chief White told me personally that the best the police can do is displace the homeless problem not eliminate it. And so, where in Denver would you have the homeless concentrate once they are removed from the 16th Street Mall? Which community will inherit their new neighbors with open arms?
5) Have the conversation with the public. City Council is presently having a monologue that is being driven by narrow business interests and not the public/voters at large. The overwhelming majority of the citizens I meet are profoundly upset by the Urban Camping Ban and the arbitrary closing of Triangle Park and Sonny Lawson Park, and yet the voices of dissent are squelched and certainly overlooked by mainstream media. How terribly poetic that, during the hearings on the Urban Camping Ban, when a voice of dissent could be heard in the chambers, two additional police showed up in the room to provide additional ‘security.' What a terrible precursor to the new reality being ushered in by City leadership.
Let me share in closing that I am neither overly idealistic nor naive but fiercely practical. I once served as the night manager for a women’s shelter in Five Points and recently directed RedLine, a thriving contemporary art space in the heart of that same community. But my lived experience is my greatest teacher. Just over twenty five years ago, I coached a baseball team where one of the ten year old boys, James, had a learning disability. A few years ago, I met James at the ripe age of 28 literally on that same exact baseball field in Atlanta. He struggled with chronic homelessness and faced a pattern of serial arrests. And so my wife took him into our home to live one night a week so that he might get a warm meal and a shower. Now that I have twin daughters, taking a homeless man into my home is out of the question. And yet the question remains, where is it safe for James to be in our community? Who will look out for his human dignity while we go about our business? If we claim to be a moral community this is a question we must answer. I pray, God watch us as we watch out for James.
In closing, I implore you as both elected officials and neighbors not to fix the problem of homelessness but instead to create solutions that realize that these are men and women whose humanity is worth fighting for not against. Let us address this issue at its roots not be reacting to the symptoms.
I appreciate the opportunity to share my concerns.
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