The rapper Mackelmore said, “The people I live with would treat [the homeless] more like actual villains than actual citizens” in his song “City Don’t Sleep.” Unfortunately, the newly- elected mayor of Denver, Michael Hancock, apparently lacks taste in good music, proposing a law that would hurt the homeless.

 The law prohibits sleeping or camping in public places and is intended to evict the homeless citizens who sleep on 16th Street Mall every night.

It is a horrible law because it only victimizes an already disadvantaged group, shifts police resources from more important crimes and doesn’t actually solve the problem.

The homeless are one of the most marginalized groups in society. Psychological studies have revealed that often we don’t even regard them as humans.

There are countless videos on YouTube that show homeless men being paid to fight against each other, and there are frequent stories of police brutality causing the death of a homeless victim. Evicting the homeless from 16th Street Mall would only give the police another reason to harass the lowest caste of our society.

Clear human rights violations already occur between the police and the homeless, and enacting this policy would only fuel the flames.  

Banning camping from public places would also be a strain on police resources. It would require more officers to patrol the area at night – the area where the homeless camp is generally fairly low in crime and does not need many police officers.

Forcing the police to patrol these streets would mean they could not focus on crime in other areas of the city. Instead of preventing murders and rapes, the police would be ticketing homeless people and other innocent campers. It’s pretty obvious that the city’s priorities are misaligned and must be righted.

Overall, this proposal will do nothing to fix the homeless “problem.”  The homeless won’t go home, because they don’t have one. They will go to other parts of the city, where they will continue to be an “eyesore.”

If the city cares that much about the image of the homeless on the street, they should build more shelters, fund rehabilitation plans and provide free education and job search help. Prohibiting an action rarely ever ends it; it only moves it out of the public eyesight.

The city of Denver has very perverse priorities. It cares more about the discomfort expressed by affluent business owners than the human rights of the neediest people in our city.

Generally, the homeless are not hurting anyone by sleeping outdoors, and their presence points out deficiencies in our own policies regarding employment or income inequality.

Instead, the city is trying to move the problem away from public observance. Before doing anything, they should listen to Mackelmore once more and discover themselves as the problem. You’d be surprised the wisdom that a rapper can have.