If you recall several months ago here at Glendale’s Daily Planet, I wrote a column about how $63 million collected by John Hickenlooper and Michael Hancock, in the plan to end homelessness, has disappeared. When that happened almost a year ago, Denver City Auditor Dennis Gallagher said, after auditing the program, “Denver’s Road Home, they cannot determine that the $63 million had any impact in reducing homelessness.”
Au contraire, it’s had an enormous impact in bringing more and more homeless people to the Mile High City. The auditor is quoted as saying we don’t even know how many homeless there are in Denver. The only thing we know for sure is that we spent all the money. John Hickenlooper got the plan off the ground in 2005 telling the citizens of Metropolis he would end homelessness in 10 years. Now, in addition to the $46 million allocated by the city, people donated more than $17 million over the last 10 years. So all you have to do is drive around and see the results of those millions of dollars.
Now do you understand why the National Park Service won’t let you feed the bears in Yellowstone Park? Two principal things immediately start to happen. One is you get more bears, and number two, those bears become reliant on picnic baskets to eat. So now all you’ve got is more bears reliant on more people to take care of them.
It’s also called the bird feeder. You go into your back yard, take your bird feeder (or take $63 million and buy a bird feeder), and fill it up with birdseed. Next put another bird feeder on your deck, in a tree and one on the backyard fence. Then see every day that they’re chock full of nutritious bird seed. Give that about 10 days and Alfred Hitchcock could make a movie in your backyard. Give it another 10 days, you’ll have squirrels, tomcats, weasels, skunks, and if you live far enough west, that’s right, bears. So then what do you have to do? You have to call exterminators, you have to call Fish and Game, and you have to call the cops.
Here’s a wonderful Fox 31 headline, “Denver to clear homeless camps,” are you starting to get the picture? Like your backyard, the city of Denver is taking back its sidewalks, clearing areas around Park Ave., Lawrence St., and other parts of the city. Calling it an unsanitary and unhealthy situation, these homeless camps — you gotta love that — just like the ones you kids went to in the summer . . . “Mommy, Daddy, can I go to homeless camp?” Denver is now cleaning up the bird feeders.
To make things even better, the city has also introduced really, really cool mobile toilets, which I am told fully servicing costs around $16,000 apiece per month, and they’re going to park them around the city from noon until midnight. Each unit will be transported out of the neighborhood each night, cleaned and restocked. I love the picture that they used to promote them, “Hickenpooper Johns,” of a little girl in a ballet tutu climbing the stairs to use the homeless potty.
I know once these are firmly entrenched there will be no drug deals, no one’s going to get beat up, no street sex is ever going to happen inside, and, of course, every mommy is going to pull the SUV over to let little Muffy or Buffy run up and use the potty with Chester the Molester hiding around the corner.
Now after all of this insanity, here comes the beauty, Denver officials have unveiled an $8.7 million social impact contract aimed to rehabilitate 250 people. Now divide 250 into $8.7 million, I have friends working 70 hour work weeks that don’t get that kind of money, and are living their lives and paying their taxes.
Then the next one that comes on the heels of that load of bird seed, another $24 million in federal grants has been awarded to homeless projects. It’s a HUD grant, and most of the money will come to Denver as a federal grant. The Denver Post called it an award. All it really is, is another way to waste money on something that’s already been wasted.
Albert Einstein has been believed to have said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Welcome to the monkey house.
To follow up on the public toilet plan, Seattle, Washington, another homeless Mecca, wasted millions of dollars on a public toilet plan because they became ground zero for drug deals and other abuses.
Right around the corner from the Lawrence St. campground, near and dear to my heart, is Step 13, started by the late Bob Coté. The place is neat as a pin, nobody camps, everybody works, and everybody stays sober.
One of the victims of capitalism was standing there as the city workers tried to clean up Michael Hancock’s and John Hickenlooper’s mess, holding a sign that said “Where can I go?” The answer is there were seven empty beds at Step 13 that day. About a block away all he had to do was stay sober and get a job, and he had no intent.
Bob Coté used to say, “They’re killing these people on the installment plan.”
So when you hear or read about a homeless man found stabbed or frozen to death, or alcohol or drug related deaths, thank the Mayor or Governor for killing them on the installment plan.
— Peter