A Colorado county has attempted to tackle the problem of homelessness and street begging by placing signs with a strong message on corners and roads that were once flooded with panhandlers.
“Handouts don’t help,” read signs intended to prevent people from giving money directly to homeless people in Douglas County.
On 70 signs throughout the area is a link inviting people to make donations on the Douglas County Community Foundation website. The foundation helps connect people in need with helpful resources.
Republican Douglas County Commissioner Abe Laydon said Fox News:If you see someone who seems to be down on their luck, you feel bad as you walk by and do nothing, but the other side of the coin is that we all know the stories of those who perhaps did not use all the funds they received in the most appropriate way.
“Maybe it goes to food, maybe it goes to drugs… you never know where the money goes.”
About 70 flyers across Douglas County encourage residents to donate to the Douglas County Community Foundation instead of giving money to panhandlers.
Colorado County has seen its homeless population decline significantly in the two years since the program launched.
Laydon, who founded the initiative in 2022, said the more people give money to panhandlers on certain roads or corners, the more congested those areas will become.
Thanks to these posters, which were also posted in newspapers and online, Laydon says those sites are now mostly clean.
The number of people living on the streets rose from 43 to six between 2022 and 2024, according to a report by local non-profit organizations.
The total number of people sleeping rough or in their cars has been reduced by 50 percent since summer 2023.
Douglas County Republican Commissioner Abe Laydon didn’t want the county to end up like Denver, which is experiencing a severe homelessness crisis.
The initiative began after Laydon noticed a homeless encampment “filled with liquor bottles and drug paraphernalia.”
‘There was stuff everywhere, but it was never as bad as downtown Denver. We started in a good place.
“(Our lower homeless population) gave us the opportunity to address this problem at its root before it became really widespread,” he told Fox News.
Douglas County is located south of Denver, a city where the number of homeless people has been increasing for years.
In 2022, Denver’s homeless population was 6,884 people. The following year, that population increased to 9,065.
The encampment congestion facing Denver is the result of an influx of migrants that has left shelters overburdened.
Denver’s immigration crisis has left streets lined with tents as politicians struggle to find a solution.
Shelters reached capacity when 40,000 migrants arrived in the city earlier this year.
In May, people living in these camps issued a list of demands that must be met in the sanctuary city before they would consider moving.