Blue State County Bucks Welfare Trend, Homeless Population Craters

Just south of Denver’s homeless crisis, a Colorado county has nearly eradicated its own homeless population with a simple message to its citizens: “Handouts don’t help.”

Throughout Douglas County, there are about 70 signs with this message at intersections and on roads that were once popular hangouts for area panhandlers. Each sign directs citizens to DouglasHasHeart.org, where they can direct their donations to the Douglas County Community Foundation. The county has used print and online advertising to spread the message throughout the community.

“This idea came to me from a common sense perspective: I’ve seen a lot of people like my daughter feel conflicted at an intersection,” Douglas County Republican Commissioner Abe Laydon said of the initiative.

“If you see someone who seems unlucky, you feel bad when you walk past and do nothing. But the flip side is that we all know the stories of those who may not have used all the funds they received in the most appropriate way. Maybe it’s to buy food, maybe it’s to buy drugs – we don’t know where the money goes.”

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Douglas County Commissioner Abe Laydon, flanked by my Homeless Engagement and Outreach team members, holds one of the many “Helps Don’t Help” signs posted throughout the county. (Provided by Abe Laydon)

“It seems that the more you give to these street corners, the more people you attract. It becomes a topic of conversation on the street: if you go to this street corner, you will receive money,” he continued.

Today, Laydon said, the intersections and street corners where homeless people once hung out are cleared.

Between 2022 and 2024, Douglas County saw a sharp drop in the number of people living on the streets, from 43 to just six people, according to their latest Point-in-Time Count report by several nonprofits. Including people sleeping in their cars and in neighborhood shelters, the total number of homeless people dropped from 96 to 69, according to the count.

On that day, July 29, no panhandlers or encampments were spotted in the county’s five jurisdictions.

Based on its own point-in-time counts, which include people in shelters and on the streets, Denver counted 9,065 homeless people in 2023, up from 6,884 in 2022.

“I saw this coming from Denver: People would get off the light rail, not pay a fare, and get off at Long Tree,” Laydon said. “And then all of a sudden they’d be asking for money on a street corner.”

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A homeless encampment in Denver on August 23, 2023. (Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)

Laydon said he came up with the idea for the “Helps Don’t Help” concept when he was volunteering in the city of Lone Tree with his son and discovered a homeless encampment at the intersection of Lincoln and I-25 “littered with liquor bottles and drug paraphernalia.”

“It was all over the place, but never as bad as downtown Denver. We started off on a good footing,” Laydon said. “(Our smaller homeless population) gave us an opportunity to nip this problem in the bud before it became really pervasive.”

Laydon said the Douglas County Homeless Engagement, Assistance and Resource Team — which pairs behavioral health experts with area police officers in their interactions with the homeless — made 250 contacts with the homeless population when the initiative began in 2022.

In five branded vehicles, the HEART team approaches each reported homeless person and offers them services to get back on their feet.

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Pictured is one of Douglas County’s signs directing citizen donations from panhandlers to the county fund. (Douglas County, Colorado)

“If people need services, they get them. They get hotel vouchers, we partner with Ready to Work,” Laydon said. “If someone needs a job, they get one. If they need a bus ticket to go home to their family in Tennessee, we’ve got that. If someone needs food for a night or a week, they get it.”

If the homeless refuse help, said HEART Team navigator Tiffany Marsitto, their team keeps trying.

“Early on, in our first interactions, I met an individual who was reluctant to service. He was going through a mental health crisis. (Four months later), when he was ready to reconnect with our team, we were there for him. We helped him fill out an application for housing in the metro area,” Marsitto said.

“People may not be ready today, but they could be ready in the future,” she said. “They see our faces, they know we’re here, and they know our team cares. They know our community cares, and the fact that we continue to engage with these people goes a long way to their success.”

Additionally, camping is illegal in Douglas County. The HEART team said they don’t often issue tickets, but instead use the opportunity to encourage their contacts to visit area homeless shelters.

“Our goal is to enforce the law, to use the ordinance to get people experiencing homelessness to a better solution,” explained Rand Clark, a HEART navigator. “It’s very rare that someone intentionally wants to break the law. We’ve been able to use this tool in a positive way, to say our county ordinance says you may not be able to sleep here, so how can we help you find shelter in a place where you want to be and where you’re not breaking the law.”

However, Laydon said, “illegal activity is illegal activity, no matter who you are.”

“If you urinate, defecate outside, deal drugs on our light rail system, it doesn’t matter if you have a home or not, you’re going to be arrested,” he told Fox News Digital.

So far, the Douglas County Community Fund has received $11,000 in donations, many from citizens who saw their sign. The Douglas County Homeless Initiative, which includes HEART, was funded with federal funds from the American Rescue Plan rather than taxpayer dollars.

The “Aids Don’t Help” initiative, Laydon said, “could be implemented everywhere from Main Street to Wall Street.”

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“This is a systemic behavior change that could stem the tide of homelessness in every community across the country,” he said.

Asked whether such an approach could reduce Denver’s homeless population, Cathy Alderman, director of communications and public policy for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, was less optimistic about the prospect.

“We applaud any jurisdiction that is working to address homelessness, but given that they are not providing robust shelter and services, and we know that they are busing people to other cities and counties for help, it is hard to believe that being unwelcoming to people experiencing homelessness is a real solution to the problem,” she wrote in an email.