EDITORIAL: Mayor Johnston’s learning curve on homelessness

Mike Johnston’s first State of the City address as Denver mayor on Monday touted the inevitable list of debatable accomplishments. And The Gazette’s news coverage did a solid job fact-checking his claims. Some held up better than others.

It’s worth noting that at least one of his claims is unassailable: “…our work is not done.” He was talking about homelessness — his signature issue and top priority during his first year in office — and he’s right, of course.

It’s not clear, though, if he grasps even now, a year in, how fundamentally that work remains unfinished.

There’s no doubt he has made laudable strides cracking down on the blight of illegal encampments in the city’s inner core. His administration claims to have swept some 1,700 chronically homeless people off the streets and into temporary housing since Johnston took office a year ago.

But a lasting solution is about much more than getting people off the streets. It’s about keeping people off the streets and not just in one of the Johnston administration’s homeless hotels. The maladies that bedevil the hardcore homeless — and that landed them on the streets and in camps in the first place — don’t go away simply because they get keys to a room.

Johnston did display inklings of that understanding in a meeting last week with The Gazette editorial board previewing his speech, and his administration has indeed shifted tack a bit in recent weeks, appearing to place greater emphasis on some of the underlying causes of homelessness.

Yet, the mayor still seemed to resist the pivotal role that pathologies — particularly addiction — play in driving homelessness. He sees addiction as an after-effect rather than a root cause.

"If that stress is living on the streets or in a tent, where you're in danger of being shanked or robbed or shot in the middle of the night, the people that have baseline either mental health needs or substance use issues, those get amplified dramatically," Johnston told our board.

That’s a premise of the “housing first” philosophy that has informed the mayor’s approach to homelessness throughout the past year. It’s the belief housing must be offered without preconditions, that key considerations like rehab and job seeking must come later — and that they cannot be mandatory.

It’s a big mistake, and it contrasts starkly with the approach to homelessness being launched next door in Aurora. Colorado’s third-largest city, which shares a long boundary with Denver, faces a lot of the same urban challenges including a chronic street population. But the elected leadership at Aurora City Hall has resolved to confront it with “tough love.” That means measures like homeless courts, rigorous and expanded enforcement of camping bans and requiring homeless people who get shelter to seek work.

Assuming Aurora follows through on that agenda, it’s encouraging to see the city leadership’s embrace a policy on homelessness that is a lot more realistic — and a lot fairer to the rest of the community. Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman made a good case for it in his own State of the City address last December.

"Success is not getting the unsheltered homeless off the streets only to make them permanent wards of the state at taxpayers' expense," Coffman said. "The taxpayers of our city, who are asked to foot the bill, who get up every morning to go to work, and who share in the adult responsibilities of life, deserve better."

For all the aspirational rhetoric in Johnston’s speech this week, it could have used a little more of Coffman’s common sense.