Mark Montes Is Right at Home at a Denver Safe-Camping Site westword.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from westword.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A group of Park Hill residents are suing the nonprofit Colorado Village Collaborative, Park Hill United Methodist Church and the City of Denver to stop a safe-camping site for people experiencing homelessness proposed for South Park Hill. The proposed [site] has not met the requirements set out by the city, pose[s] a real danger to minors and school-aged children, does not address the impact it will have on the neighborhood and displaces people from an area with available resources to an area not equipped to handle the purpose of the [safe-camping site], reads a motion for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction filed in Denver District Court on May 6 by local attorneys Heather Anderson Thomas and Douglas W. Baier on behalf of five plaintiffs. Nathan Adams, the church s lead pastor, is the one person named as a defendant; he declined to comment on the suit. The lawyers for the plaintiffs have not responded to interview requests.
Come mid-June, Regis University will be hosting Denver s fourth-ever safe-camping site for people experiencing homelessness. We re going to be sleeping 100 people a night in a model that didn t exist a year ago at this time, says Cole Chandler, director of the Colorado Village Collaborative, which will be setting up the site at Regis University s campus in northwest Denver at the same time his group is establishing a new facility in a parking lot of Park Hill United Methodist Church in South Park Hill. The two sites will have 89 tents combined, with room for 100 people experiencing homelessness which represents around one-tenth of the estimated unsheltered homeless population in Denver. Approximately $900,000 of city money will fund the two sites for seven months of operation.
South Park Hill, one of the wealthiest sections of Denver, could soon have a safe-camping site located within its boundaries. And advocates are hopeful that having affluent Denverites see homelessness up close could help build more citywide empathy for those living on the streets. I actually believe that putting this project in Park Hill is good for the entire city of Denver, because it forces us to have a conversation that we’ve only been having in certain parts of town and identify this as a citywide issue that requires action on all of our parts, says Cole Chandler, director of the Colorado Village Collaborative, which already runs an existing safe-camping site at the Denver Community Church in Uptown.
The Christian Science Monitor Daily for March 25, 2021 csmonitor.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from csmonitor.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.