To the Editor:
Re “Urban Disorder Is Not Inevitable,” by German Lopez (Opinion, Oct. 18):
Mr. Lopez has written a wonderfully positive essay about dealing with street encampments in Denver. But he shouldn’t confuse that with fixing homelessness. People who are relocated from the streets to shelters are still homeless. Their living environment may be better and safer, but they are no less homeless.
Ending homelessness is about getting people back into their own housing and reintegrating them into the community. I have spent the last 50 years working on this latter task, and it remains the problem that no one really wants to solve. My guess is that people don’t want to solve it because they don’t see it. What they see is a public nuisance, people living on sidewalks and in parks. Shelters relieve them of the need to do anything else.
The Trump administration, in declaring affordable and supportive housing “woke,” is only making homelessness worse. But expanding publicly funded institutional encampments or shelters is not the answer. Building affordable housing and providing integrated services are. If communities want to attach shelters to the front end of that undertaking, that is a strategy that truly addresses the problem.
Paul Selden Evanston, Ill.
To the Editor:
The discussion of homelessness in German Lopez’s article does not address an essential part of the solution: preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place.
As the executive director of Family Promise of Philadelphia, a nonprofit specializing in homelessness prevention, I hear every day from families facing eviction. A parent working a minimum-wage job may be one unexpected medical bill or missed shift away from falling behind on rent. A late fee can deepen that shortfall and put the family at risk of losing its home.
With timely support, including emergency rental assistance and help navigating available resources, many families can overcome a temporary crisis without experiencing homelessness. Our communities need to address the needs of people already experiencing homelessness while also investing in prevention to help families remain safely housed.
Success should mean not only helping people exit homelessness, but also preventing the trauma of homelessness whenever possible.
Robert Byrne Philadelphia
To the Editor:
Were Denver not named in this article, I would have assumed it described another city. I live in the Park Hill neighborhood of Denver, in the same part of town as Mayor Mike Johnston, and my daily experience could not be more different.
I can’t walk, drive or bike in Denver without seeing homeless people at nearly every intersection and underpass, and on bike paths that no longer feel safe to use. I travel constantly on Quebec Street, where many of the city’s shelters are located. It is lined with trash, drug paraphernalia and people in crisis. In fact, in the months after one of these shelters opened, calls to the police went up 2,900 percent.
I voted for Mayor Johnston, and I believe that his heart is in the right place. But a visit and a set of statistics cannot capture what living here is like.
Sara Peters Denver
To the Editor:
Denver’s success in addressing homelessness is encouraging and should be celebrated. However, German Lopez’s suggestion that other cities can replicate Denver’s results is oversimplified and somewhat counterproductive.
As a New York City resident, born and raised in San Francisco, I desperately want to believe that there is a straightforward solution to urban homelessness. But housing affordability, the scale of each city’s unhoused population, available shelter capacity and the disparate needs of people experiencing homelessness all complicate the prospect of a universal fix.
Denver’s specific policies deserve scrutiny, and Mayor Mike Johnston deserves ample credit. But this isn’t a helpful lens to view the issue through if the goal is truly to catalyze change in other cities.
If specific policies Denver employs offer a replicable solution, other cities must learn from them. But their effectiveness cannot be assumed independent of local circumstances.
Josh Davis Brooklyn
A.I. Monster?
To the Editor:
Re “Solving Riddle A.I. Couldn’t: Cars and Cats” (front page, Oct. 28):
In developing artificial intelligence, we have created our own Frankenstein creature. We are not sure how it behaves or what it is capable of. But, for sure, it will not go off into the dark and burn itself up.
Ronald E. Hellman New York
The post Using Denver as a Model to Help the Homeless appeared first on New York Times.
