With homelessness more or less unchanged over the past year in Colorado’s largest urban centers — numbers released this week show a slight dip in metro Denver and a small uptick in the Colorado Springs area — it’s worth another look at the innovative approach underway in Aurora.
Colorado’s No. 3 city has been ramping up a groundbreaking, comprehensive agenda for addressing the chronic homelessness that has blighted parts of the city for years. It culminated in the opening of the city’s Regional Navigation Campus last November, a renovated, former hotel that now serves as a “one-stop-shop” for homeless services and shelter.
The campus, in turn, is the hub of a “tough love” agenda for action on homelessness that includes a ban on the crime-ridden camps as well as a court system to handle low-level offenses by the homeless…