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AURORA, Colo. (CBS4)– Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman added a new title to his resume last week — Homeless Mike. The Marine Corps veteran ... went undercover for a week to live among the homeless in Aurora and Denver.His goal, he says, was to find out why the problem of homelessness was growing and what he, as a mayor, could do to address it. He wanted answers, not from advocates who may have agendas, but from the homeless themselves. ......“I think this is a really hard problem,” he told (CBS reporter) Boyd before he left. “And I don’t think a lot of policymakers like myself understand it. … I think there’s so many questions — Where’s their income? How do they exist? And what is the profile of people in homeless encampments?”The answers would surprise him.The encampments, he says, are made-up of hardcore drug users who’ve formed communities with even unofficial leaders.“These encampments are not product of the economy or COVID. They’re not a product of rental rates or housing. They are part of a drug culture.”...“This is not about a lack of shelter?” Boyd asked him.“It really isn’t,” he responded. “It is a lifestyle choice and it is a very dangerous lifestyle choice.”While the shelters he stayed at don’t allow drug use, Coffman says, most of them don’t search residents either. He sent CBS4 a picture of hypodermic needles on the floor of a bunk beneath him. Those in the shelter, he says, tend to be older, receive disability checks, and have no plan to become self-sufficient.“The broadest category are drug and alcohol problems where people are settled into this sort of lifestyle and decades go by and they’re not moving on.”In some ways, he says, dependency becomes easier for those who rely on the Aurora shelters than self-sufficiency....Coffman says many of those he met are from out of state and some of them have mental health issues that make it impossible for them to hold a steady job. Most of them, he says, can work but don’t.
What he saw in the encampments was far more troubling. He says young people are openly using meth, heroin and cocaine, and their addictions, he says, are being facilitated by those who think they’re helping.“It’s kind of this dropout mentality drug culture that is sustained by a lot of well-meaning individuals who give money to them, who bring food to them, other necessities to them.”Boyd asked him what he would say to those well-meaning people. He replied, “I would say you’re hurting these people. You’re really prolonging what is really a negative lifestyle that is going to eventually kill these people.”“But, they won’t go to the shelters,” Boyd said. “That’s the thing,” he responded. “We can’t keep subsidizing a lifestyle that is so harmful to them and I think represents a public safety and health problem to the community at large … there are no redeeming qualities about the encampments, none whatsoever. ......Coffman says the shelters he visited are also enabling a life of dependency. While he says some people there have mental health issues that make it impossible for them to hold a steady job, most, he says, can work.“You ought to do something. You ought to sweep the floor or mop the floor or you ought to help in the kitchen, but there was no responsibility whatsoever.”Those who stay in publicly funded shelters, he says, should be required to get drug treatment or job training.“You have to commit to do something affirmative in exchange for taxpayer benefits.”
