Give Mayor Mike Johnston some credit for pushing back at the Denver City Council last week after it voted to let the city’s street dwellers freeze outdoors when temperatures plummet.

You read that right: “Progressive” council members voted 7 to 6 to prohibit closures of illegal homeless encampments whenever temperatures fall below 32 degrees. You’re not alone if you are scratching your head over that one. Rest assured, the reasoning behind the vote is just as mystifying.

It seems shutting down the squalid and dangerous camps and moving their largely alcohol- and drug-addicted denizens indoors — as the Johnston administration has been doing since last summer — is somehow “inhumane,” “cruel” and “damaging” when it’s below freezing.

That’s according to the proposal’s ring leader, at-large council member Sarah Parady. She was elected last spring with an endorsement by the Democratic Socialists of America.

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On Friday, Johnston vetoed the council’s handiwork. His mild and conciliatory veto letter to the council explained their new ordinance, “would restrict the city’s ability to do this life-saving work for approximately four months of the year.” He then thanked the measure’s sponsors for their “open and ongoing engagement.”

Parady and her co-sponsors weren’t about to be sweet-talked. They announced the same day they were placing the ordinance on the Feb. 12 council agenda, presumably to attempt a veto override.

Meanwhile, the absence of any rebuke in the mayor’s letter — much less, “What on earth were you thinking?” — underscored how his please-everyone approach is ultimately as flawed as the council’s.

The council’s policy would have imperiled the lives of the street dwellers straight away, leaving them to the freezing cold alongside the usual threats of overdoses, alcohol poisoning, violence and other staples of their existence.

The mayor’s policy exposes them to some of the same perils — but first nudges them into warm accommodations.

The Johnston administration had spent $45 million in tax dollars by the end of last year to acquire hotels, buy “tiny” shelters and set up “micro-communities” to accommodate the city’s urban “campers.” Yet, the effort only has reshuffled people who can’t sustain themselves — whether in illegal camps or city-sponsored hotel rooms — because it doesn’t address their addictions and other pathologies as a condition of giving them shelter. There’s no rehab, no job search, no mental-health evaluation.

The mayor’s “housing first” policy ensures most beneficiaries will be back on the streets sooner or later, assuming they don’t overdose first in their new taxpayer-funded digs.

The principal distinction between the two approaches? The council seems to be driven by blind dogma; the mayor, by political expedience.

An article of faith for the council’s political fringe is their quest to hobble the city’s longstanding but intermittently enforced ban on urban camps. Exactly what value they see in the camps, or why they’d rather let campers freeze, is unclear.

The mayor, on the other hand, understands how bad the camps are for their inhabitants. He also gets how urgently Denver residents simply want the camps gone.

And he has indeed shut some of them down for now.

But Johnston doesn’t wish to upset noisy and preachy progressives who reflexively blame the street population’s plight on economic injustice, institutional racism and the like — rather than on addiction and the dereliction it breeds.

So, he upgrades their accommodations, asks no questions about what really ails them — and hands taxpayers the tab.

The street dwellers haven’t gone away; they’ve just moved to a “micro-community” near your business or home. And now, they have a revolving door.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board