Aurora is commendably cracking down on the street-dwelling addicts and other drifters who force their squalid “camps” on the community. The Aurora City Council voted the other day to curb camping on public and private property – a refreshing contrast with ongoing attempts next door in Denver to aid and abet camping by vagrants.

The restrictions on camping in Colorado’s third-largest city, first proposed by Mayor Mike Coffman, would prohibit all urban camping on private and public property within Aurora. But the policy will applied gently. It requires a 72-hour notice before an unauthorized camp is shut down, and the city would have to have shelter available for every person staying in the camp.

It’s more of a camping ban-lite. The idea, though, is to give authorities another tool to rein in those vagrants who choose to impose their disorderly and, often enough, booze- and drug-addled behavior and lifestyle on the community. A final vote on the policy is slated for tonight.

Good for Aurora. Its citizens can credit themselves and their own good judgment for changing course in last November’s election. They elected a new council majority that wants to focus on public safety and overall quality of life – a welcome departure from the divisive, offbeat agenda of the previous council majority that played to the political fringe.

There is much Denver could learn from its neighbor. It shares not only a long boundary with Aurora but also some of the same urban challenges. Those include dealing with the encampments of itinerants who choose to wander the streets and refuse indoor shelter as well as help for their addictions and mental health.

Unfortunately, Denver decided a couple of years ago to largely moot its own sporadically enforced camping ban with city-sponsored camps. The city-funded-and-maintained camps run by a subcontractor provide the drifters with heated tents, bathrooms, laundry services, internet access, food donations, dental care, food stamps, COVID-19 testing, community service opportunities and services for finding permanent housing.

Which, as we have observed here before, only draws more of the hardcore drifters and street dwellers who seek that lifestyle. Go figure.

Denver Gazette editorial board