What can we do about homelessness? Some cities do better than others, but none have managed to end homelessness as it is now — a continuous tragedy unfolding in many neighborhoods.
Westside residents are particularly affected. Nothing much changes, despite the valiant efforts of nonprofits such as Westside CARES and Springs Rescue Mission, not to mention the city’s many-faceted efforts to reduce the number and perceived menace of homeless individuals.
Homeless encampments get swept away one evening, only to reappear somewhere else in a day or two.
The sad truth is that, for every visibly unhoused individual, there are dozens who are effectively unhoused — sleeping in their cars, on a friend’s couch, “temporarily” living with parents or grandparents or parking beat-up campers on residential streets (and moving every couple of days so they won’t be ticketed).
Westside residents are particularly affected.
The basic problem is simple: Thanks to a toxic stew of local, state and national governmental actions and regulations, abetted by suburban developments that ban rooming houses, boarding houses and multifamily buildings, the supply of affordable dwelling places has dwindled every year for decades.
Colorado Springs was intended to be exclusive. Gen. William Jackson Palmer and his cohorts were building a genteel, safe and beautiful city, one intended for the upper class. We were, as historian Marshall Sprague put it, “Newport in the Rockies.”
Servants and the working class would have to fend for themselves, unless their employers had servant’s quarters or a basement room.
So here we are, with a booming economy and lots of available jobs. Why can’t people find a place to live?
There are lots of answers, but let’s consider the long history of a two-and-half story house on the Westside. The house’s evolution, from single family to rooming house to duplex and back to single family, may offer clues about solutions.
Located on a side street a few blocks from OCC, the house was built on a large corner lot. Judge Louis Cunningham, a prominent citizen of Colorado City, had it built in 1899. The judge and his family lived there for decades. He was deeply involved in politics, as an ardent prohibitionist, and lived in the house until his death in 1939.
In subsequent years, the building became a rooming house with half a dozen tenants as well as the woman who then owned it, then a duplex, and, after an extensive renovation in the 1970s, again a spacious single-family dwelling.
The one-time rooming house is now zoned R2, two-family residential. In practice, you can get away with running a group house, but not a rooming house that bills tenants daily. Efforts to reintroduce such uses have had mixed results nationwide.
Homelessness is just the most visible manifestation of a decades-long nationwide failure to build enough housing. It seems absurd that the federal government is spending tens of billions on climate change, automobile electrification and exploring outer space, while neglecting the basic needs of millions of Americans.
The answer’s simple: Send Elon Musk on a one-way trip to the planet of his choice, loosen restrictive zoning and build, build, build (and tell the Federal Reserve Board to reduce interest rates).
Sure, it’s a complex and difficult problem — but many of us would be happy to give up electric cars and trips to Mars in exchange for universal affordable housing.
