Bennito L. Kelty
Audio By Carbonatix
My name is Jason Spelts. I am homeless in the greater Denver area and wanted to express sincere gratitude for Dr. Sarah Stella’s “This Doctor Has Spent Two Decades With Patients Experiencing Homelessness.” In my thirteen years of homelessness, this is the first time I have read anything where I left saying to myself, “Holy shit, this person gets it!”
I am one of the invisible people she speaks of. Having already been diagnosed with spinal stenosis, CES, arthritis and a herniated disk, I recently found out I’ve been walking around with untreated severe and chronic PTSD. Which has, undoubtedly, kept me away from any form of treatment until now. I have spent more than a decade sleeping in hidden places, staying clean to not look homeless, and avoiding people (particularly other homeless and police) in order to survive. It wasn’t until I found myself unable to walk that I finally got on Medicaid and went to the doctor for the first time since being discharged from the Air Force some 33 years ago.
People like me exist. We aren’t in most homeless counts. When social services learns where we sleep or camp, the location is flagged in a database shared with police. Inevitably, the local government will decide it’s time to “crack down” on the homeless. The first targets for police are the locations in that shared database — at which point, the very things we need to survive extreme weather are stolen and destroyed. It happened to me two days ago. With the stenosis and other back issues, I’m unable to carry the things I need to survive. Some days I can’t walk, even to a toilet.
What do local municipalities like Lone Tree, Aurora, Centennial, et al. do to people in my position? They steal our possessions and tell us to go die in the cold. This is the reality homeless people like me face. Most of us end up leaving the city to avoid arrest, and start completely over. The entire process is reset. Any progress made with social services is now gone, because the police force you to leave the locale.
Her solution is spot-on with affordable housing. What happened to the $500 per month efficiency apartments (one room with a kitchenette and bathroom) that were available in every apartment complex in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s? Gone. Developers will only build pricey, $2,000 per month units that cannot be afforded on entry-level pay.
Dr. Stella’s solution is correct, but local governments have clearly decided that making our homeless lives even worse is the solution. They are too blind to realize they are committing murder.
I hope more light can be shed on the issue of homelessness. Thank you for your time, and even more — thank you for your publication.
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