I took the above photograph last night after attending the Untitled Final Friday event at the Denver Art Museum (the DAM). On the left are the two buildings that make up the art museum, and on the right is the main branch of the Denver Public Library. Across Civic Center Park to the north is downtown Denver, and to the south is the Golden Triangle Neighborhood, still another one of Denver's trendy neighborhoods. All very impressive, until you realize that Civic Center Park is filled with the homeless, and a major problem for the library is dealing with overdoses in the bathrooms and other problems with the homeless who congregate there. Homelessness is complicated, and is a problem faced across the country. It involves drug addiction, alcoholism, the elimination of most government funded mental institutions, the changing economy and elimination of good paying manufacturing jobs because of globalization, and the affordability of housing in cities like Denver. And the solution? It would involve lots of tax money. And is it going to happen? No.
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