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Recently I read that pool halls are cleaning up their act so that they will attract a better class of people.
America may improve if our bankers and lawyers can play snooker in upscale billiard parlors without the distractions of cigars, spittoons and girlie calendars, but there's a problem.
Where will the pool-hall idlers go when they're no longer welcome at the pool hall? The laundromat? The library? The convenience store?
Nobody important ever thinks about this. In the summer of 1969, I lived in a cheap apartment on Capitol Hill, where the long-time residents were alarmed.
They weren't exactly pleased about hippies as neighbors, but they were steaming about the hordes of bums and winos who appeared there that summer.
That was the era of urban renewal when old Larimer Street got bulldozed. The government apparently believed that if you just tore down the flop houses and gin mills, then the panhandlers and drunks would vanish. But they didn't disappear; they staggered up to Capitol Hill, and the once-respectable neighborhood got a vile reputation which it still struggles against.
Urban renewal is no longer fashionable, but old warehouse districts and decayed neighborhoods get gentrified. Cheap SRO hotels are torn down. Railroad yards get replaced by sanitized stadiums.
And the urban planners always seem to think that the
former inhabitants of these areas -- now known as the
homeless
rather than the hoboes
-- will
evaporate. No provision is made to replace the old skid row
with a new one. The derelicts are left on their own to find
another habitat. To the aggravation of all concerned, they
usually pop up where they aren't wanted.
This is a perfect time for Denver to lead the way with some creative but realistic municipal planning. There's a new mayor. The last traditional haunt of drifters and mendicants -- the railroad yards -- will soon be the sparkling new home of Elitch's and Coors Stadium. And the federal government is abandoning Lowry Air Force Base.
With minor remodeling, Lowry barracks can be $2-a-night rooming houses, and no changes are necessary to convert mess halls into soup kitchens. There aren't many bridges to sleep under, but there are liquor stores in the neighborhood.
Wellington Webb can announce that Denver no longer
ignores the homeless and the unemployable. Instead, the
city realizes that a certain percentage of population will
always be unemployable (For ye have the poor always with
you
-- Matthew 26:11). Whenever the police find someone
bumming elsewhere in the city, the offender is immediately
hauled off to the Denver Preserve for the Economically
Disadvantaged.
With proper promotion, the Preserve could be a self-supporting tourist attraction with guided tours of Low-Life Land, along with theme-park adventures like raiding Dumpsters, hopping freights and dining in a mission house.
What's the alternative? We know, even if the Denver Planning Office doesn't, that when the railroad yards are gone, the bums will go somewhere. I hope they start hanging out at City Hall if Denver refuses to face reality.
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