Sean Duffy
Real, lasting answers to Colorado’s toughest problems aren’t found in bigger government programs. In fact, government — particularly when run by incompetent leaders — is making these problems far worse.
It won’t shock anyone who lives or works along the Front Range national numbers on homelessness are skyrocketing — and metropolitan Denver remains among the areas with the highest growth rates in the country.
Nationally, homelessness grew 18%, increasing from the previous year’s 12% growth. Scholars such as Kevin Corinth at the American Enterprise Institute have gone back 17 years and shown this growth rate is unprecedented. The largest previous increase was just 3%.
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The massive nationwide influx of migrants, which Denver loudly and proudly welcomed, has mushroomed the massive challenge of homelessness.
Migrants have overwhelmed the shelter system. This in turn made available shelter space in Denver and other American cities more scarce. As a result, Denver is also a national leader in the growth of “unsheltered homelessness” which means people living on the streets.
Thanks to the shambolic Biden administration’s belief that controlled borders are optional, government took a serious problem besetting American society and made it dramatically, tragically, worse.
Despite this example of galactic incompetence, energetic, visionary and highly effective nonprofits are addressing homelessness, addiction, developmental disabilities and other challenges that government doesn’t tackle well — if at all.
If you want to see lives changed, people finding recovery and a chance to rise from dependency, you won’t find it in a government building among bureaucrats. Go visit — and maybe volunteer at — a nonprofit and you will see grindingly hard work in very challenging settings where miracles are on tap daily.
Stop by Christ’s Body Ministries in downtown Denver, where friends of mine are helping hundreds of homeless and addicted people by focusing on the entire person — body, mind and spirit.
Christ’s Body opens its doors to offer a hot meal, coffee and a chapel service. I’ve been present for breakfasts when literally hundreds of needy, homeless and addicted people come through their doors. I’ve also met people whose lives have been changed there — and now work for Christ’s Body to help lift up others.
Or Step Denver — now expanding into Colorado Springs — that takes not a cent of government funding and has built a sterling record of success in helping men rise from homelessness and addiction. They have a firm, no-nonsense, no-coddling structure of direct accountability that — step by step — helps men gain sobriety and find meaningful work.
This is a gift faceless government programs cannot easily provide.
Consider others who can be forgotten or pushed aside by bland bureaucrats who don’t believe these people can climb personal mountains. Check out the work of TACT — Teaching the Autism Community Trades — based in Englewood.
TACT was honored last week by the Daniels Fund (where I work) as one of three of the most successful, game-changing nonprofits in the mountain west.
Imagine opening a vista of careers to autistic young people who age out of the special education system — but are fully capable of learning skills to have a meaningful and fulfilling career, not simply a job. One TACT instructor, who is autistic, said he was unemployed for most of his life. Another young man shared how he learned how to be a chef and is so skilled now his mother says she just watches him create meals in their home kitchen.
These and hundreds of other groups in Colorado and across the country are proving big problems do indeed have substantive solutions — if you harness the best in people, even those who can seem unreachable or marginalized.
It’s a lesson that must be learned by many of our progressive elected leaders who believe — sincerely, but wrongly — the path to solving society’s toughest problems is paved only with government gold. Can men, women and children be challenged by groups operating well beyond government rules and regulations to achieve more than anyone — including themselves — could have imagined?
Society’s self-imposed ceilings are for groups like Christ’s Body, Step and TACT to smash. And they’re smashing them — challenging government, and all of us, to watch, learn — and be inspired.
Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens and longtime communications and media relations strategist, is senior vice president, communications at the Daniels Fund in Denver.
