Housing the homeless: Too many say, “Not in my neighborhood”

Re: “Hotel proposed as homeless shelter serving families,” Nov. 24 news story

I continue to be amazed and appalled by how some members of a neighborhood — just about any neighborhood where the City of Denver is trying to house homeless adults and children — are vehemently opposed to the idea. It’s a prime example of vilifying the “other” — similar to the way Trump said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of America.”

The latest instance of this was in the Hampden neighborhood, in City Council District 4, where a hotel will house families with children. It brought out people’s fears of the formerly homeless bringing down property values, harming businesses, downgrading the performance of students in public schools, rampant drug and alcohol abuse — was raping and pillaging the village included?

We cringe and turn away when encountering homeless encampments, but now we are cringing and turning away when our newly elected mayor is actually carrying out some of his campaign promises. Perhaps you feel that there hasn’t been enough done to ensure that your community would be safe with “these people” in your midst. But no community, no neighborhood is ever totally safe for all, regardless of who does or doesn’t live there.

Each of us must look into our hearts, overcome our fears, and be ready to give those in the most desperate of situations an opportunity to better their situation. Or maybe we should just put them all on a bus and send them to some other city.

Christine Soto, Denver

The progress not made

In reading Ken Follett’s new “The Armor of Light,” which vividly describes the difficult life and economy for working people in eighteenth-century England, I was constantly struck with the similarities we are still living through today: a powerful, influential minority controlling politics and passing laws to their advantage, incessant war with staggering human and monetary costs funded at the expense of social programs.

The likes of William Pitt and Napoleon are being accurately channeled today by Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and their like. With a beholden superior judicial system and overbearing religious involvement, the déjà vu feeling is inescapable. True, we have made substantial scientific and engineering advances and even landed men on the moon since then, but those achievements were made despite most policymakers, not because of them. The poor are still poor, the 1% are still obscenely wealthy, women’s rights and racial equality are unrealized, and trickle-down has never worked. Welcome to 1802 all over again.

William Orth, Parker

To the anonymous letter writers

Re: “Bullying through anonymous mail,” Dec. 17 letter to the editor