Denver Resident

I live in the Old San Rafael neighborhood, which is part of Five Points. It was about three years ago when the first homeless camp set up near our home. It was a small camp. Despite its small size, it generated a huge pile of trash and stolen items in the street adjacent to the camp. Campers would spend time sifting through the pile as cars would drive by and drop off more stolen goods. Later, more cars would come by and pick up any goods that could be sold. It was a stolen property ring operating in the street, visible to everyone, right next to our neighborhood grocery store. Neighbors to the camp tried to pick up some of their trash but were verbally assaulted. We resorted to the only recourse we had, calling the city and the police. We called daily and no help came. As the camp became more established, crime and other disturbances increased. Eventually, the trash/stolen goods pile was cleared from the street and then, weeks later, the camp was cleared. Over the next few months, we had a few more small camps, all with the same issues, but had no idea what was in store for us.

In the fall of 2021, the first of the large camps set up near our home. Tents and motor homes lined the street. They set up in the "hell" strip behind our neighborhood grocery store and took over the bike lane in the street. This camp was so close that you could see it from my front door. We never knew what we were going to see when we looked out the window. We saw people having sex, men masturbating, naked people changing, people urinating on the loading dock of our grocery store, people openly doing and selling drugs, women being hit, dogs being hit, people stealing power from neighboring houses and, once again, trash. The trash would blow down the street and litter people's yards. It would blow up to the loading dock of the market, where our food was delivered. We were constantly picking up trash from our yard. The other thing we were constantly picking up - human feces. We had to designate a "poop shovel" so that we could keep it segregated from our clean tools. They didn't just poop near their camp. They pooped in the alleys, in the street and on our house. They would lean against a building and poop. One day, I saw someone walking between our house and the condo next door. My husband went outside, and the camper was having explosive diarrhea next to our neighbor’s condo, on their property. Fearful of an altercation, we waited for him to leave and then hosed it off. No one deserves to have their home defecated on. No one deserves to spend an afternoon cleaning it off their garage or neighbor’s property, as I have.

Theft in the neighborhood also skyrocketed. Trash, recycle and compost bins were stolen from the alleys and taken to the camps for storage. People's mail was being stolen. Campers would hop alley fences to steal anything they could out of backyards. One morning, there was a shirtless, shoeless man in our backyard. He had hopped the fence from the alley and was looking for items to steal. When we told him to leave, he said he was “looking for a smoke.” Luckily, he left without incident when we told him we didn’t have one. Our doorbell camera also caught people coming from our backyard out into the front yard in the middle of the night. One man, at 3am, came from our backyard, crossed the street, and went into the backyard of the house across the street. We saw it on the camera the next day.

At night, we would hear women's screams from the camp. We would also hear men yelling and fighting at all hours. We couldn't walk by the camp without the risk of being verbally assaulted. It got to the point where the police were being called almost nightly as violence escalated. We had gunfire several times a week. Scared of the campers, we called the city and the police repeatedly. No one helped us. If the reported crime was serious enough, the police would investigate and then leave us alone with the campers again. When the holidays came, we didn't decorate our house for Christmas because we were afraid to draw attention to it. We didn't want to leave the house unattended to visit family out of fear of a burglary. We upgraded our security system and made sure every accessible entrance to our home had an alarm sensor on it. We stopped reporting some of it because we knew nothing would be done. It was complete madness and the city had abandoned us. That really was the worst part of all of this. The city abandoned its citizens, both the housed and the homeless. It was inhumane to both parties.

I loved this city and my neighborhood. I no longer feel safe walking in either and now carry mace. I have stopped walking to work because there is no route downtown where I don't run into a high, possibly dangerous camper. I have been yelled at and told "I hope you get raped." I have considered leaving Denver. I am not the only one seeing the crime, drugs, defecation, nudity, and sex work that happens in these camps. KIDS see this. TOURSISTS see this. NO ONE should have to see this.

Our neighborhood lives in fear of a camp returning. It has been forever changed. Five Points has always had high crime statistics, but what these campers did went far beyond the normal crime that occurs here. Leaving a camp in one spot causes the residents of the neighborhood to be subjected to various crimes daily with no recourse. All of this has left me frustrated, scared and angry at both the campers destroying our city and the city government for allowing them to do it. This is not "normal city life" as camping proponents say. Nothing about this is normal, nor should it ever be.