A leading advocate for Denver’s homeless took a shot at the city’s sporadically enforced camping ban last week – revealing a failure to grasp the policy’s purpose. The criticism also reflected a surprising misunderstanding of the addicts and other drifters who opt for a life on the streets at the community’s expense.

As reported by The Gazette, Metro Denver Homeless Initiative Executive Director Jamie Rife complained to Denver City Council members on Wednesday that the ban makes her job harder.

“As we’re trying to rapidly house people … when their availability comes up for a housing resource, if there are camping bans or sweeps or anything like that, it actually makes connecting with the person more difficult because we don’t know where they’re staying,” Rife told the council’s Safety, Housing, Education and Homelessness Committee.

“We have outreach workers that are building relationships, working really hard, and then when things like this happen, it does make it more difficult to outreach to people,” she said.

Well, sure, it probably does make it more challenging. But that’s beside the point of a camping ban.

Whether it’s Denver’s policy – emphatically reaffirmed by voters a few years ago – or one tentatively approved not long ago by the city council in neighboring Aurora, a ban on so-called urban camping is meant to protect the community. Rife might not get that, but the public does.

Heaven forbid a meth-addicted panhandler who has refused offers of shelter – as well as medical, dental, rehab, employment, mental-health and other services – might be ordered by police, at last, to pull up stakes. Told to abandon the squalor of a filthy, rowdy encampment in a park near a playground – where kiddies and passersby are treated to billowing pot smoke, drunk and disorderly behavior, harassment and worse – vagrants might have to move, oh, a block or more away.

And then Rife’s outreach staff will have to go searching for them. Only to find them next to a school. Or someone’s home. Or, on a highway off-ramp – holding a sign informing motorists how hard it is to land a job amid the current labor shortage.

Of course, the inhabitants of a relocated camp probably will refuse help all over again, anyway. Many simply don’t want help. That’s not to say they don’t need it; they especially need treatment for their addictions as well as mental-health issues. It’s available, as is a warm bed – indoors – and a square meal. But it’s not a population, by and large, that wants to get back on its feet. They have fallen through the cracks due to their own life choices.

Which is to say most of them are “homeless” only in the strictest sense of the word.

In stark contrast, the majority of truly homeless people typically have endured a recent misfortune, often enough beyond their control. Perhaps an eviction, job loss or domestic violence. And they want to rectify their situation. So, they will make swift and smart use of opportunities to turn things around.

Not the “campers.” For all too many of them, street life fits their bad habits. And they force all of its ripple effects on the rest of the community.

A camping ban is the least the city can do to create some safe space for hard-pressed, rank-and-file residents. If only the city would enforce it more often.

Denver Gazette editorial board