ACLU of Colorado Blasts Durango for Keeping Homeless From Sleeping

As cities across Colorado grapple with how to manage their ever-growing homeless populations, the policies they enact are coming under increased scrutiny. Consider the Right to Survive initiative, which could overturn Denver's controversial policy that bans people from sleeping outside if local voters approve it in May.

And today, December 12, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty and the ACLU of Colorado released a report that scrutinizes Durango's camping ban, with both legal watchdogs concluding that the local police have overused the ordinance to prevent anyone from sleeping outside, even if they're not covered by a blanket, tarp or tent (protective items which, under the Durango ordinance, constitute “camping”).

The ten-page report, A Year Without Sleep, takes the City of Durango to task for not allowing homeless residents to sleep anywhere outside while at the same time not offering adequate shelter options. “Citations clearly show that Durango police officers enforce the 'no camping' ordinance as a 'no sleeping' ordinance, making criminal the involuntary and harmless act that unhoused people cannot help but do: sleep,” write the report's authors, Rebecca Wallace and Helen Griffiths of the ACLU of Colorado.

The report includes testimonies from a number of Durango residents experiencing homelessness who describe being roused from sleep — even if it's laying their head down in a park during the middle of the day — by police. “I feel like I can't go anywhere,” says Chris Zeller. “After they tell me to move, I just pack up and move a quarter-mile away. They'll keep giving us notices, telling us that we have to leave.”

Read more: https://www.westword.com/news/aclu-of-colorado-blasts-durango-for-keeping-homeless-from-sleeping-11058661