Downtown Denver has gone so down hill (Center: crimes, home)

[Rogarven]

Originally Posted by mschrief

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%...p-commuting%2F

May work for you.

Thank you!!

[sheerbliss]

I'm a Denver native, too. I used to ride the 0 to and from work, sometimes getting on the bus at 11 PM. I walked to the stop by Republic Plaza from the Mercury Cafe. Walked down Broadway in Englewood to the 7-11 late at night to get a snack. Never had a problem. This was in from the early 2000s up until 2015, when I moved.

My sister-in-law, who still lives in Littleton, says she no longer goes on the South Platte trail because of all the vagrants there.

I was never a big fan of Denver, but I'm sorry to hear it's gone so far downhill. And no, "better than East Colfax in the 80s" isn't exactly high praise. It was hookers, drug dealers and the place where a classmate of mine was stabbed.

[COcheesehead]

My wife and I used to walk from our house in the Mayfair/Park Hill area, to downtown. Sometimes after dark, on weekends. We saw things, they saw us, but everyone left each other alone. We rode the 15 - the Jerry Springer on wheels bus according to the Denver Post. Best entertainment was riding the 15 on New Year’s eve. Wish I would have taken videos. We had tricks turned in the alley behind our house. We had break ins in our garage. Our parents told us often that we should move, but we laughed it off. We were city folk. Not much bothered us.
Then Denver changed, hard core changed. Denver was never a squeaky clean town, but now it’s turned and it’s sad.

[LS Jaun]

Sounds like what the light rail had brought to Phoenix to Mesa, otherwise poor areas got worse with Homeless and Meth heads able to ride into wide swaths of land that they didn't have easy access to years ago. Just proof that it happens all over.

[sheerbliss]

Ah, the 15...I had to ride it a few times. It was crowded, and the driver told me to find a lap to sit on.

[vunderbar]

That's really funny, sheerbliss

[sammy87]

I lived in Arvada, when they finally finished the light rail there were 10x more bums roaming hte streets. Which was sad. Old town Arvada was a nice spot but it kinda sucks now. Dont miss it.

One of our last times n Denver we took the kids to hte zoo. I dont remember which neighborhood we drove through to get back to I25 but tents everywhere. Nice condo buildings with parks and tents next to it. Its really sad. Didn't live in Denver in the 80s or 90s but it seems like Denver had a really small window when they made it nice and now its going back to its natural state.

[pikabike]

Originally Posted by vunderbar

Well, I've lived near/off Colfax for 35 years, and am here to tell you most of Colfax is better today than it was in the mid 80s. Yes, the #15 bus that goes down Colfax makes for an infamous ride that was even profiled in a Washington Post article recently. But large areas of Colfax have interesting cafes, restaurants and artisan shops that even 10 years ago were drug dens, "adult" clubs, prostitute stretches and drug dealer posts.

All your close friends may have moved away, but the city remains a magnet for young people, as the huge expansion and development explosion of downtown/uptown/Highlands/HiLo and RiNo proves. Did you count the cranes around downtown?

Denver today is a more dynamic, more interesting, more worldly and more pleasant place to live than it's been for decades. (Yes, pleasant. Did you go down to Confluence Park? Now that used to be a pit where you saw condoms and needles. Now it's a place that attracts families from all over the city. Did you go to Curtis Park? In the 80s and 90s there were regular gang turf wars in the area. Now it has gloriously restored Victorians and fun, safe, urban vibe.)

Sorry you had a bad experience. There isn't a city in the world that doesn't have a "bad" area, and you happened to have spent some time in Denver's. But to claim that the entire city has gone downhill is simply wrong. One can make a very, very good case that it's quite the opposite.

I took the Colfax bus (#16?) that ran between downtown Golden and the DCC almost every day in the mid-1990s. That avenue was like a linear snapshot of places and characters. Even then, the ridership was a mix of students, workers, bums. Usually the riders didn’t cause trouble, but I remember one night about 8:30, a large group of men boarded at Auraria campus. They were obviously drunk and probably had been drinking together since 4 or 4:30, because I had the impression it was a work crew. They loudly tried to stir up trouble on the bus. The bus driver warned them in no uncertain terms that if they kept it up he would kick them off at the next stop.

And he did (YAY!). I had ridden transit busses, trackless trolleys, and light rail for many years in the Boston area. Although I had encountered some crazies there, it had never gotten so bad that the driver booted them out. (In one case, he really should have done so.)

Cities and close-in suburbs teem with all kinds of personalities with all kinds of backgrounds. That’s what makes them so vibrant. Unfortunately, there’ve always been the, shall we call it less cooperative ones, too. There are plenty of alkies, druggies, and crazies away from the big cities also—even in rural parts of CO.

I agree that “hardcore” badness has shifted to much worse. Not just winos panhandling, but aggressive, violent, druggies and crazies.

[alloo66]

Denver is like all cities. An increase in real estate prices and more homeless. When you ignore issues for forty years this is what you get. I haven't been to one US city that doesn't experience the same issues that are discussed in the forum. Denver is like all US cities. Under funded. I drove for RTD for three years. I've seen everything. People just trying to survive. Not sure that I agree with the assessments on this forum. I ride my bike on Cherry Creek Trail all the time. No issues.

[Phil P]

This is really sad. Like it or not, Denver bet the ranch on downtown since the 90s, that's the focus of infrastructure and investment and the draw of the city, much more than the suburbs. But with a failing transit agency and increasing continual plague of subpar vibes for locals and visitors alike, there's not too bright of a horizon for the core. The downtown a big reason why I left Denver and why I won't go back (even though I'd now have the salary to afford a decent lifestyle). It's not a great city experience for the premium price tag. My hope is to go remote and go to the western slope or a mountain town, working on getting that job now .

I do think there will be less homeless in 10-20 years. The rate of fatal drug overdoses is astronomical, and a disproportionate number of these are homeless individuals. That alone will reduce the numbers down significantly. And weed is essentially everywhere in the US now so to the extent that was a draw for vagrants, it's gone.

Denver is NOT like all cities. The homeless aren't endemic, they're migrants who came for the cultural experience. If they weren't sprouted locally, fixing things like home prices won't make them disappear. And there are cities in the US, like Greeneville SC, which really don't have a homeless presence.