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Her time-spotted face emerges from the tent as I approach, squints hard against the sun, and smiles like she just thought of a good joke. Diamond is the name she first gave me, but the neighbors call her Mama-san — and with good reason. As she exits the large tent, her cane leading the way, I can see the shelving units inside, lined with bottles and boxes, medicine, bandages, hygiene products, survival supplies.
The unhoused residents of the Arkins Camp in Denver’s 5 Points district come to Mama-san when they need something— and she provides all she can. Originally from Korea, English is her third language, and she has become the humble matriarch of this space, the largest houseless camp in the city, home to around 300 people.
I set a box of pre-packaged Thanksgiving dinners and pumpkin pies on the octagonal table in front of her tent. Food donations appear and vanish from this front stoop throughout the day; a few folks immediately amble over and politely ask Mama-san whether they can take a plate. She nods her head and waves like she’s shooing flies. “Yes, go. Please, eat. Eat.”
Philly walks up, fifty-something and quiet, with frost at the curled tips of his charcoal stubble, listening to our discussion of what residents plan to do when the police and garbage trucks arrive in force on Monday morning to kick them out. There are conflicting opinions and plans; rumors rule when the city declines to share details with those being forcefully evicted. Some standing in the small circle want to hold their ground, arguing righteously that they shouldn’t be forced to leave. Others want to pack up over the weekend and avoid the sweep entirely. Comforted by the sense of community she creates, some say that they will follow Mama-san. Philly shakes his head and mutters, as though to himself, “But where? We can’t go any further.”
Denver continues to play whack-a-mole with people’s lives, dehumanizing and abusing them even before the sweep begins.
This northwest edge of 5 Points does feel like the end of the line, and this camp has become a natural backstop for Denver’s unhoused folks. After suffering through a summer of relentless sweeps, many have retreated to Arkins, well away from downtown, where they could be left alone. In less than 48 hours, that sense of escape and delicate stability will be wiped out by earthmovers and the well-practiced cruelty of the Denver Police Department. As Mama-san laments, “They tell us to leave, but where they want us to go? They treat us like cockroaches… chasing us away, but we survive. We’ll be back.”
This unhoused community encircles a huge plot of fenced-off land being held as an investment by JV Denargo LLC —the same real estate company that owns much of the neighborhood, including the new luxury condo block rising just south of the camp. Some residents have lived here for months, or even years, with multi-tent domes, community kitchens, well-insulated tents, barbecues, tv tables, storage racks, and miniature Christmas trees beside their welcome mats.
Giovanni leans easily in a camping chair beside me, cigarette in hand, explaining his idea for a concert series around Denver, with a mobile concession booth of donated items and food, operated by houseless folx, with the profits going directly back to the unhoused community. He is a musician, and a voracious reader with a remarkable memory—a natural storyteller. The first time we met, he schooled me on the indigenous history of Nigeria’s Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba tribes, then jumped into a jam session in the park, holding the rhythm down on an overturned storage crate. Years ago, he worked as the Director of Marketing and Sales at the Denver Urban Spectrum.
He has lived on the streets for three years and regularly roams the camps, forging networks, playing music, and speaking with passion to those who will listen. “For three years, I’ve been out here, amongst this world, on a real level, and I’ve learned that people don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care… we need economic empowerment, the individual ability to get up on our own feet — the resources necessary to survive. There are people down here who have lost their heart, who have had strokes, accidents, people who have undergone serious traumas… that temporarily knock the life out of us. And then that’s it.”
Moving down the camp’s edge with a box of danishes and muffins, I spot a familiar face. Yatta is small, but mighty, a captivating speaker who spits fire and raw truth. She lives at the corner of Arkins and 29th with her pit, Lala, who sniffs my knees with brief suspicion, then recognition. They both moved to Arkins just over a month ago, after being swept and displaced from camps multiple times this summer. She was working as a certified nursing assistant when she was hit by a car, shattering her hip, and sending her into a spiral of pain, poverty, and housing insecurity.
When asked about the greatest need of houseless folks, at this camp and others, she doesn’t miss a beat: “If people actually took the time to come have a conversation with us, and figure out why we’re here, and what we have to offer… I’m a certified nursing assistant. I got hit by a car, now I’m homeless and I can’t work. I’m fucked. We don’t get help because everyone looks at us like, Oh, they’re a bunch of drug addicts… but that’s not what it is. It’s just that no one is giving us the opportunity, and that’s what we need. Not pity, opportunity.”
Yatta filled out and submitted a Med-9 Form requesting “Aid to the Needy and Disabled” more than 9 months ago, pre-Covid, but has received no word on her application. JB has been living rough for two years, and now stays with Yatta, watching over her like a brother. His right leg was crushed by a cinderblock wall while working construction; he submitted his Med-9 in 2018 but has yet to receive any aid:
“Sure, I can walk a bit, but I can’t feel my ankle, so I keep breaking it. When I ask about getting help, I keep hearing “You’re too young”, like young people can’t be disabled.”
This frustration and exhaustion and cyclical trauma is reflected a hundred times over by those who call Arkins home. Instead of providing essential services to the most concentrated population of unhoused and vulnerable residents in the city, Denver continues to play whack-a-mole with people’s lives, dehumanizing and abusing them even before the sweep begins.
“Denver Homeless Out Loud paid for the two port-a-potties here, but the company came and took them away last week. Why? What was the fucking purpose of taking the port-a-potties? It makes no sense. You have us all stuck here, and then you want to complain and kick us out because there’s shit in a bucket, or piss in a cup… well, if someone takes the port-a-potties, people pass out food here all day. Are we not supposed to digest that?”
It is said, the first thing you lose on the street is your individual identity, as you fall into society’s collective category of “the homeless”. However, the issues facing the unhoused community in Denver are as diverse as the unhoused individuals themselves. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but heartless sweeps like the one happening here on Monday solve nothing; in fact, in the midst of devastating public health and economic crises, they make the most glaring problems markedly worse.
In terms of intersectionality, the unhoused community represents the most deadly overlap—injustice towards BIPOC populations, police brutality, wealth inequality, invisible disabilities, and untreated drug addiction, among so many others. In a year where millions of people took to the streets to demand change, accountability, liberation and justice, the housing crisis in Denver and across the country has largely remained under the radar, even as it quietly swells to a breaking point.
The unhoused human beings of Denver deserve far better, and until our leaders deliver realistic solutions, which includes welcoming historically excluded populations to the table and ending these vicious taxpayer-funded sweeps, the Queen City will never be worthy of its crown.
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