A follow up mailing to my email (below):

John:

It really depends on the specific population. For the chronic homeless male, the numbers can be higher. But for the chronic homeless female, they tend to be lower on substance abuse and higher on mental health. Overall for the homeless population in general, it is around 40% that are on the streets due to substance abuse and mental illness. This will seem low, until you factor into the equation that 43% of our homeless are women with children.

I am familiar with your program and would invite you to become part of the efforts to end homelessness. All of our meetings are open to the public. The Implementation Meeting has about 60 agencies in attendance at each meeting. All the meeting times and places are listed on the website.

Hope this provides some additional clarity. Roxane White

I just sent this email to the head of the Denver Homeless Project in response to her email to me (see below):

Dear Ms. White,

Thanks very much for your email. Seems to me 40 to 60% alcoholic/addict is still
very much on the low side if we look at those on the street, those who most people
think of as homeless. What would you estimate for those folks?

I have a couple of meetings I attend at Trinity, that's my only connection there. For
the last couple of years I've been the manager of 1311 York Street Club
www.YorkStreetClub.com are you familiar with it?

Mayor Hickenlooper will easily be reelected, and it will be interesting to see how
the course is set for the next four years.

One thing we can certainly all agree on, the people on the streets in Denver are
a real, tragic problem for us all. The deaths far exceed those we see in any school
shooting, but they get over looked because they happen one at a time. Thanks for
your hard work to help find a solution.

John Wren

Mr. Wren:

I am confused about the quote you attribute to me. I don’t recall ever having said that only 13% have a problem with alcohol or drug abuse. I wonder if someone else misquoted me or if it was a reference to a specific subset of homeless but this number doesn’t make any sense. There are a lot of statistics on www.denversroadhome.org, but this shouldn’t be one of them. Depending upon the specific populations (chronic homeless for example), the number can be as high as 40%-60% of the homeless having serious substance abuse or addiction problems. The numbers are much lower for the children and families on the streets, but I am not familiar with any statistic that is 13%. The only 13% number I have is for 2005 when the % of people on the streets who were Veterans was at that point in time 13% but that was not in relation to substance abuse or addiction.

I noticed your involvement with Trinity and have had the good fortune to speak there several times. We appreciate the support from Trinity for the ongoing work at St. Francis Center and for the help with the mentoring program. Trinity is certainly a leader in helping end homelessness.

I hope this helps and if you have more specifics about the quote, I will try to figure out exactly what the reference was.

Thanks, Roxane White

Researchers explore scrapping Internet
By ANICK JESDANUN AP Internet Writer

NEW YORK- Although it has already taken nearly four decades to get this far in building the Internet, some university researchers with the federal government's blessing want to scrap all that and start over.

The idea may seem unthinkable, even absurd, but many believe a "clean slate" approach is the only way to truly address security, mobility and other challenges that have cropped up since UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock helped supervise the first exchange of meaningless test data between two machines on Sept. 2, 1969.

http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_5660132

http://cleanslate.stanford.edu/