Lawsuit: City Bureaucrats Used Illegal Zoning Process to Allow Homeless Encampments Outside of Public Scrutiny
Denver bureaucrats have unilaterally and illegally authorized the creation of homeless encampments, and they’ve done so without citizen input or direct public accountability, charges a lawsuit filed today by a local citizens group.
The suit, brought by nonprofit Denver Deserves Better, details how the Denver Zoning Administrator, an unelected career staff member, changed city zoning to permit controversial homeless encampments, without public notice, public hearings or the involvement of the City Council or the appointed Denver Zoning Board.
Denver Deserves Better is a citizen group that opposes the notoriously expensive and unsuccessful way the City has managed homelessness issues. The group is being represented by the Public Trust Institute, a nonprofit public-interest law firm.
Denver Deserves Better argues that if homeless encampments are to be authorized through a zoning change that the Denver City Council – elected officials directly accountable to the city’s residents and taxpayers – should do so through the normal, public legislative process.
“Setting up tent cities for the homeless would not withstand the glare of public notice and citizen accountability,” said Dan Burrows, PTI’s legal director and an attorney representing Denver Deserves Better. “In the 2019 election, over 80% of Denver voters shot down the last attempt to allow homeless camps all over the city. Yet activists found a way to circumvent the public by having a city bureaucrat unilaterally impose a zoning change, hoping that citizens wouldn’t pay attention or demand accountability.”
“Circumventing the legislative process to impose failed policies attempted in other cities through deceptive use of our zoning code has not made an impact on the growing crisis impacting our city,” said Kevin Reidy, president of Denver Deserves Better. “We do agree with Mayor Hancock in his public statement that Denver does not have a homeless problem, we have a drug addiction and mental illness crisis. It is time for our leaders and our community to engage in every aspect of this crisis, to develop solutions specific to our city and commit to transparent reporting of the costs and outcomes.”
“The system is set up to require public notice and scrutiny for exactly this type of case: a controversial and difficult issue where politicians are proposing solutions that need to withstand questions and concerns from citizens,” Burrows said “The city did an end run around its own citizens and we're calling them on it in court.”
The case (Denver Deserves Better v City and County of Denver ex rel. Board of Zoning Adjustment) was filed yesterday in Denver District Court.