You can see them shooting up, vaping, smoking or guzzling out of a bottle — in alleys, parks, maybe a neighborhood playground. In their wake, they leave a trail of spent syringes and other drug paraphernalia, with empty bottles and cans as the chaser.

Just don’t you dare call them addicts. That might take the heat off of more fetching targets. You know, the usual suspects trotted out by politicians, activists and at times even the media — the landlords or employers or other faceless boogeymen who supposedly are hindering the quest for attainable housing.

It’s as if calling for greater personal responsibility by those on the streets might shift blame and undercut calls for “housing first” at any cost.

Of course, such rhetoric ignores the patently obvious — the pivotal role played by drug and alcohol abuse in stranding people on the streets in the first place.

Coloradans may be tiring of the blame game — and of being told to empty their pockets to house the homeless. Denver voters, for example, shot down a local proposal on the Nov. 5 ballot to pay $100 million a year in additional sales taxes to build affordable housing that, in part, would have been directed toward the chronically homeless on the city’s streets.

Colorado’s Common Sense Institute crunched the numbers a couple of years ago and found the Denver metropolitan area alone already spends two-thirds of a billion dollars a year in combined public and charitable funding on homelessness. Yet, the homeless keep coming.

All of which is why it was encouraging to read a Gazette profile this week of a Boulder advocate for the homeless who is willing to be frank about the subject. Like some other contrarians who actually move the needle on homelessness — Paul Scudo of Step Denver comes to mind — Streetscape founder Jen Livovich rejects conventional wisdom.

“Housing is not an intervention for mental health and addiction — treatment and recovery is,” said Livovich, herself a survivor of homelessness and addiction.

That may seem like plain, common sense, but it eludes many in the homeless-services sector who insist on spending ever more money on “housing first” for those on the streets.

As noted in The Gazette’s report, Boulder first responders are being overwhelmed by the spike in calls involving drunkenness, trespassing, indecent exposure, welfare checks, fires and overdoses, all related to homeless people. Criminal behavior among the chronically homeless is getting more aggressive, as well.

Livovich attributes a lot of it to addictive and deadly fentanyl and meth, which have deluged Colorado. And even those who live on the streets tend to agree. Boulder County’s July 2024 Point in Time survey found nearly 40% of those interviewed said they abused “substances.” Another 30% said alcohol was their drug of choice.

In other words, it’s not as simple as throwing someone the keys to a hotel room or, for that matter, a condo when their life has been overtaken by addiction and the other pathologies it causes. Housing first, often enough, is good money after bad.

Livovich’s Streetscape instead prioritizes mental health and substance-abuse treatment. She ideally wants to see streamlined services, supervised treatment when necessary and jail time for people who present a risk to themselves — rather than just throwing money at housing.

Sounds like much-needed tough love.

After all, true compassion for someone who is addicted and down and out may boil down to telling him, “You deserve better than the way you’ve been treating yourself. I’m going to help you get back on your feet — but it won’t work unless you first take responsibility for your life.”

More of our state’s policymakers ought to give it a try.