Progressives love all sorts of social justice initiatives. They love wind turbines and solar panels, as long as they are far away. They love the defund the police movement, as long as they have police protection in their own neighborhoods. They love helping the homeless, as long as they are far away
Homeless camp in church parking lot? Denver neighbors say, ‘No way’
A plan to help homeless people during the pandemic by letting them set up camp in a church parking lot has forced residents in an affluent neighborhood to question their progressive values and commitment to helping ease social ills.
Advocates said unsheltered people were being left behind in Covid-19 mitigation efforts, so they devised a plan to provide safe outdoor spaces where homeless people could access meals, medical care and other services.
But when Pastor Nathan Adams of Park Hill United Methodist Church announced on Easter Sunday that it would put faith into action and create a camp on site for about 40 unsheltered people for six months, many residents in the community were unsettled.
“When I bought in Park Hill, it wasn’t because there was a homeless encampment one block from my front door,†said Jon Kinning, who lives a block away from the church. “If I wanted to live in downtown Denver and near homelessness in my face every day, having people sleep on my patio or go to the bathroom on my garage, I would live downtown.â€
About 4 1/2 miles from downtown, Park Hill is full of flowering trees, stately brick homes and cozy bungalows. Black Lives Matter signs adorn front lawns in the largely white neighborhood surrounding the church, and in the 2020 election, about 67 percent of voters in Park Hill cast ballots for Joe Biden.
So, an upper middle class/rich Democrat neighborhood, who want to help the homeless, just elsewhere.
When members of the church approached the Colorado Village Collaborative about transforming the lot into a safe outdoor space, Adams and many of the 400 people on an informational call were supportive. Two such camps had already opened in December near the state Capitol downtown without any major problems.
Were they supportive because they didn’t think it would actually happen, or because they didn’t want to appear to be bigots and haters on the call, wanting to express their Virtue Signaling cred?
Despite the call to action, five Park Hill residents filed a lawsuit earlier this month in Denver District Court to stop the encampment and sought a temporary restraining order to prevent the project from moving forward.
They said in the lawsuit that the proposal “pose[s] a real danger to minors and school-aged children,” does not address the impact on the neighborhood and displaces people from one part of the city “with available resources to an area not equipped to handle” the safe-camping site.
The lawsuit was dismissed. Might residents, and more of them, try again once the encampment actually starts, and they seen the homeless wandering around, many drug and alcohol addled, peeing in the bushes, pooping on their driveways, hassling their kids, reducing their property values, committing crimes, and so forth?
Yet Booth-Nadav’s daughter, Ariella Nadav, 18, said she will fear for her safety when she gets home from work late at night and has to park on the street.
“I don’t want to walk into my house every night over the summer and be scared for my life, and not just my life, but my well-being,” she said. “I don’t want to have to deal with getting sexually harassed every day.”
This is not a discussion on trying to help the homeless. We can have that, if you like. This is about Progressives Virtue Signaling about the huge numbers of homeless in their Progressive cities, wanting to Do Something, as long as it is Somewhere Else. Just wait till they see all the illegal aliens Joe is shipping to their towns.
Read: Denver Progressives Were Happy To Support The Homeless Till The Camps Interfered With Their Lives »
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