NOREEN: Sweep of the camps makes city seem uglier

As October's first cold breath approached the Pikes Peak region Saturday, Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful conducted another of its sweeps in and near sites occupied by street people.

Many citizens can scarcely stand to look at disheveled transients. A sweep of a transient camp isn't too pretty, either.

Homeless sweeps are conducted in many cities in every season. No city can condone the buildup of trash at transient camps, but the sweeps (see a photo and video on my blog) typically go beyond picking up trash.

Blankets, tarps, toiletries, identification documents - sometimes even sleeping bags - are hauled off.

It's strange but true that the same necessities provided by nonprofit agencies are sometimes carted off to a landfill by another nonprofit. Catholic Charities giveth, and Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful taketh away.

On Saturday, Joe Richard, manager of client services for Catholic Charities, was monitoring the sweep to "help people preserve their documents and backpacks and things."

Richard and Robert Moran, founder of The Street Church, have heard many stories from street people about how Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful has trashed valuables over the years, especially in the fall, just before the cold weather arrives.

Among Catholic Charities' programs is one that helps transients acquire their birth certificates and Colorado identification cards, which enable them to get jobs.

"It's the old ‘teach-them-to-fish' thing," Richard said.

He explained that Catholic Charities spends about $400 a month on documents, and it can be frustrating if that kind of thing is lost in the sweeps.

Dee Cunningham, executive director of Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful, acknowledged that anything belonging to transients is fair game in the sweeps. She wrote in an e-mail that "KCSB removes tons of rotting food, human waste, drugs, weapons and debris from our natural areas every year. This work may or may not include removing abandoned property."

Cunningham also said Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful supports "the vision of Homeward Pikes Peak and other local partners in the ‘hand-up not hand-out' philosophy."

It's true the homeless make a mess and it has to be cleaned up. It's true they make a mess of themselves; many have mental health issues made worse by substance abuse.

Yet they are human beings.

On Saturday, a transient named Richard was rousted from a lean-to along South Wahsatch Street, two blocks east of the Police Operations Center. A policeman told Richard he would have to carry what he could and that the rest of his stuff would be carted off.

"I'll pick up and move," Richard said, "but I'm still going to live here on Earth."

Indeed, by Tuesday, Richard's lean-to was back in the same spot. Other than to make Richard's desolation a bit worse for a day or so, the sweep had little effect. Incredibly, we've devised a way to make our poorest citizens even poorer.

By morning's end Saturday, when it began to rain and the cleanup crew quit for the day, Colorado Springs seemed not a bit cleaner. The spots picked up by the crew are invisible to most citizens, so few would notice.

The city was not a bit more beautiful.

In fact, Colorado Springs appeared to be uglier; its streets a bit meaner.

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Contact Noreen at 636-0363 or noreen@gazette.com. He appears Fridays on KOAA channels 5/30 at noon and KRDO radio channel 1240 at 6:40 a.m.