Nederland, Colorado. A town in Boulder County that had embraced
marijuana dispensaries for profit, found itself just outside a wildfire that
burned 600 acres in July, 2016. Two homeless men were charged with
fourth-degree arson for failing to put out their camp fire. The townsfolk
reacted in anger, pointing to the increasing number of homeless people in the
nearby national forest. Officials had been forced to deal with “more emergency
calls, drug overdoses, illegal fires and trash piles deep in the woods.”[1]
Some residents urged the U.S. Forest Service to crack down on the homeless by imposing
tighter rules on camping, or banning it altogether in certain parts of the
woods most popular with the homeless. An analysis drawing on the political
philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, a seventeenth-century English philosopher can be
employed to reveal a broader perspective on the problem.
The full essay is at "Homeless Campers."
1. Jack
Healy, “As Homeless Find Refuge in Forests, ‘Anger is Palpable’ in Nearby
Towns,” The New York Times, August
21, 2016.
