PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Death of homeless man rouses Libertarian suspicions
by Ray Thomas Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2003 at 3:48 PM
editor@sierratimes.com (775) 751-3375 Sierra Times, 1970 N. Leslie Suite 204, Pahrump, NV 89060

Aren't we in a "budget crunch?" Why do we have to pay extra so (the homeless) can have a regular cold-weather shelter?

This is a verbatim commentary from a well regarded Libertarian/Conservative website...

Sierra Times

AS PREDICTED (SEE, I TOLDYA SO!): "[New] Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, reacting to what he called an "emergency," decided Monday to open a temporary homeless shelter in the lobby of a city building in a west side neighborhood. Hickenlooper's decision came just five days after a 54-year-old homeless man died in Civic Center on a frigid night."

As predicted a few days ago, the mayor has succumbed to pressure to open up the lobby of a city-owned building to homeless vagrants on nights when the temperature falls below a certain level. I'm not against this. I'm just pointing out how conveniently times the death of a homeless man on the street contributed to hizzhonor's decision.

No, I'm not saying someone killed this man to promote the idea. I'm just mentioning how often this sort of thing happens: promoters of an idea taking advantage of an event to promote their wishes.

We don't even know yet whether this man died of a heart attack (which his friend thinks killed him, since at 2 AM that night he was having chest pains) or from the cold. And if he did die from the cold, why didn't his friend die, too? And why, when he woke up with chest pains, why didn't his friend do something about it -- right away?

There are enough questions there to make very suspicious as to just how and why this man actually died.

I think shelters should be opened on such nights, and I fully realize that some of these people routinely refuse to go to a shelter, no matter how cold it gets. That means we will continue to have homeless people die on our streets -- not because of cruelty on the part of the city administration, but because of their own bad decisions.

People go around hunting up homeless people on such nights, and extraordinary measures are taken to get these people under cover. I drive by the main Denver shelter almost every night about 11 PM and on regular nights I see 10 or 20 people sleeping on the street when they can't get in the shelter. But on extremely cold nights, they're gone. That's because special arrangements have been made to accommodate them when it's that cold.

I hope they've hired security guards to make sure the homeless don't go in and rifle through files and steal things. (They've also hired buses to transport them from downtown to the new shelter, which is three miles west of downtown to alleviate the concerns of local residents about the possibility of their preying on local businesses and homes)

But then that's an extra expense, isn't it? Aren't we in a "budget crunch?" Why do we have to pay extra so they can have a regular cold-weather shelter?

Oh well, that's how the socialists work.

(Rocky Mountain News, 12/16/2003 - http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_2509024,00.html)

sierratimes.com/03/12/17/nuggets.htm

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