
There are idylic properties, both realized and imagined, to be found beside rivers and lakes. As featured in the famous song written and sung by Otis Redding:
“I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay
Watching the tide roll away
Ooh, I’m just sittin’ on the dock of the bay
Wastin’ time.”
There’s a certain escape from harsh reality that can be achieved with waterside life. River banks may be owned, but they are prone to flooding and over time may become less than desirable as private property. Indeed they may be ignored entirely. Stretches of river banks often begin or wind up as, public property with little or no attention or interest.
For people who are unhoused, tangles of riverside growth seem to be popular as private refuge, belonging to the public perhaps, and sometimes less subject to ‘encampment clearances’ away from more desirable and convenient properties such as downtown sidewalks and public parks.
Read a reporter’s ride-along with the local GJPD (Grand Junction Police Department) as they patrol the river banks of the Colorado River, wending its way through the western Colorado city of Grand Junction. Like many other North American cities, it has a growing collection of unhoused residents, either native to the locale, or chased there from somewhere else.
Grand Junction presents a view of a police department that pretty much takes a non-criminal view of citizens who are homeless. That attitude may be purely pragmatic, seeing no meaningful purpose in piling municipal infractions upon shoulders of those who can’t comply.
Instead the GJPD (with safety support from the Fire Department) maintains a relationship with people who are unhoused that is relatively free from harassment. The police repeatedly encourage people who are unhoused to seek assistance if, when, and where it is available in the city. The handful of city by-law infraction tickets issued in 2023 is a sign that tickets and regulations are not being used to ‘manage’ homelessness.
The approach is certainly a humanitarian one and, insofar as it takes place along little used river margins, does not bring the unhoused into contact with frustrated businessmen or citizens who believe they deserve better than public parks polluted by the homeless.
The practices in Grand Junction may interest other jurisdictions that are looking for alternatives to physical and/or legal harassment. Read more in THE DAILY SENTINEL: How Grand Junction is dealing with unhoused encampments