Right-wing radio host Dan Caplis got to the heart of the matter last week when he asked Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman what happens if homeless people ignore Coffman’s proposed camping ban and don’t relocate to Coffman’s “designated area.”
“Where does that end,” asked Caplis on his KHOW show May 19.
After a brief pause Coffman replied, “Well, that’s problematic because, you know–you know–what they’ll do is displace and go somewhere else in the city, and we’ll have to clean up that area.”
What a brilliant way for Aurora to spend its tax money!
“Clean up that area” and then “Clean up that area” and then “Clean up that area” and so on and so on and so on.
Yet, Coffman belittles “so-called homeless advocates” for asking about the cost of the camping ban and for saying it’s not the solution.
On the radio, Coffman flat-out dismisses experts who say homeless people need housing first. It doesn’t matter that there’s study after study backing this up.
And homeless people, whose backgrounds and needs vary widely, also need a web of other support to stabilize and get off the streets.
As the interview continues, it becomes clear that it’s not just the encampments that bother Coffman but the homeless people themselves.
He wants to deny them services and hope they are “going to discover” that “Aurora, Colorado, is not the best place for them to be,” said Coffman on air, without citing evidence.
“They will find,” Coffman said, broke into a laugh, and restarted his sentence.
“They will find another community that will greet them with open arms and says, ‘Hey, listen, we’ll provide all these services, and we’ll require nothing of you. And you can, you know, live off the taxpayers.'”
Talking to Caplis, Coffman sounds like the right-wing congressman he’s still best known for being. The one who wanted to stop low-income women from getting cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood in Aurora. The one who called Obamacare “very radical.” The one who endorsed Tom Tancredo for governor of Colorado.
The one you’d expect not to care much about people in Aurora who are homeless.
Coffman is clearly unconcerned about a cooperative Denver Metro solution to homelessness, but he’s working with Bandimere Speedway, well-known for its conservative alliances, to address another front range problem.
“I’ll be working with Bandimere Speedway to come up with a plan that would involve all cities in the metro area” to attract “street racing enthusiasts to race their vehicles at Bandimere Speedway instead of city streets,” wrote Coffman in a recent Facebook post.
Listen to Coffman on KHOW’s Dan Caplis Show May 19.
