Tom Wolf was a homeless drug addict roaming the streets of San Francisco five years ago. Today, he’s an outspoken advocate for an approach to homelessness that is strikingly different from the “housing first” policies now in place in a lot of U.S. cities, including Denver.

Last week, as reported by The Gazette, he stopped by with an important message for Mayor Mike Johnston and other local policymakers bent on housing the homeless without first requiring them to make changes: It won’t work.

“Johnston is going to be scratching his head as to why homelessness isn’t gone in four years,” Wolf said at a town hall last Tuesday hosted by The Denver Gazette and Colorado Politics.

“There is an addiction crisis amongst the homeless community,” Wolf said. “I like Mayor Johnston. I think he has an opportunity to pivot because he’s new.”

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If he is to succeed, Denver’s mayor must do just that – pivot – and boldly defy the conventional wisdom of the progressive chattering class when addressing homelessness. Notably, he has to face up to what keeps much of the hardcore homeless population on the streets. It’s not lack of opportunity, hard luck or an unfeeling economic system. It’s addiction.

“We are now facing a situation where in Denver you have 5,000 homeless people,” Wolf said at Tuesday’s forum. “If 80% of them are addicted to drugs (according to a UCLA study)… that severely complicates the issue of actually ending that individual’s homelessness, and you can’t just end it by just putting them in a house or in a tiny home or in a shelter.”

Wolf’s view amounts to an about-face from Denver’s perennial – and perennially unsuccessful – policy of throwing ever more money at housing the homeless, come what may. The city spent $152 million last year and has budgeted $254 million for 2023. That’s more than 30 times the $8 million spent a dozen years ago when former Mayor Michael Hancock took office.

While the money funds wide-ranging services, including addiction rehab for those willing to participate, the principle focus is putting roofs of some sort over the heads of the diehard street dwellers. The city has gone to lengths like helping a nonprofit buy a motel to house them as well as setting up city-run tent camps that have drawn push-back from irate neighbors.

Some cities have gone even further down the same path. The Los Angeles City Council, incredibly, will ask that city’s voters next spring to require hotels to house the homeless.

Meanwhile, for all the expense and effort, the homeless throng Denver’s streets in ever-greater numbers. As a Gazette headline noted not long ago, the number of Denver metro homeless this year leapt by a third over last year.

And yet, the fledgling Johnston administration appears headed down that same road – toward the same dead end. The administration plans “to evaluate and integrate four main types of housing/shelter options,” including rental properties, hotels, commercial structures and “micro-communities/shelter alternatives such as tiny home villages, safe outdoor camping spaces and safe parking spaces.” By all indicators, there won’t be any screening for addiction or mental health issues and no requirement for treatment prior to placing people in housing.

Paul Scudo is another recovering former addict who once was homeless and now sees the light; he heads the groundbreaking Step Denver addiction-recovery organization. Scudo wrote in a commentary in The Gazette last year, “…Housing is NOT the be-all, end-all answer.”

“…Enabling homeless people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol is not helping them,” Scudo wrote. “We are causing more harm than good.”

It’s time to shift tack, Mr. Mayor.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board