The Editorial Board of The Masses received the following report from People’s Defense Grand Junction on the conditions of social murder prevailing in the city against the unhoused masses.
GRAND JUNCTION, Colorado — In acts of barbaric cruelty, the city of Grand Junction terrorizes and criminalizes its unhoused community. Since June 2026, City Council approved a modification to the city’s “camping” ordinance, removing an exception that prevented the enforcement of the ban on public “camping” when no overnight shelter is available. This came in the wake of the permanent closure of the HomewardBound North Avenue shelter and the start of a record-breaking heatwave during which the temperature routinely reached 104 to 110ºF.
Without a suitable shelter, people stay in public areas of the city itself, in proximity to crucial resources and survival aid. The city’s response is to sweep these areas frequently or to fully shut them down, as in the case of Whitman Park and Emerson. The police use “unsanitary conditions,” despite the lack of access to public dumpsters, to justify discarding and destroying people’s personal belongings. People are pushed into the desert and onto Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, land in the summer heat and winter cold, far from crucial resources and services. The people being forced to live on this land are then denigrated at all levels for having nowhere else to go. In a 2025 Daily Sentinel opinion piece, Mesa County Commissioner JJ Fletcher writes: “They [meaning homeless people] identify privately owned, unimproved parcels — land with no homes, fencing, or active maintenance — and use them as long-term campsites. These properties quickly become eyesores and public-safety hazards”. Fletcher’s article discusses the people who live on these lands as if they have any say in the matter, as if the state were not entirely responsible for the lack of alternatives. In their words and actions, the representatives of the State make clear their stance that property rights should be valued above human lives. They claim to value public safety, but not only do they neglect the safety of the unhoused population, they are in fact the direct origin of the violence they face. In the last two years alone over 57 of our neighbors, friends, and community members were killed by these cruel and hostile policies designed to assault our most vulnerable population.
None of this is random, and none of it is an accident. It is in line with the commonplace practices of the city, such as the closure of Whitman Park despite its crucial role in the distribution of much-needed resources. The latest national reports on homelessness, published in 2024, show an estimated 32% surge in homelessness between 2022 and 2024 to over 771,000 people across the country. This figure is a substantial undercount as it excludes large sections of the housing insecure population, including people temporarily living with family or friends, couch surfing, or living in cars because they have nowhere else to live.
Price inflation is directly correlated with rising housing insecurity. With a nearly 26% increase in prices nationally from January 2020 to December 2025, the Grand Junction Housing Division’s 2025 Unhoused Survey Report paralleled these findings, asserting an “estimated 14.84% increase in homelessness for every $100 rent increase.” More and more people every day are driven into homelessness, and yet our city, like many others, continues to fail those whom it has a responsibility to protect. Are the members of City Council oblivious? No. They realize the effect of their choices and are shoring up for the consequences. It is a factor driving the city to spend $2 million to research a $33 million annex for an already over-funded police department shelters in Grand Junction close due to lack of funds. With the resources devoted to criminalizing unhoused people, it is obvious this money could go toward creating housing instead. The simple answer is that the City Council has no interest in helping the masses and is benefiting from the city’s cruelty.
The corruption of the Grand Junction City Council begins with the National Association of Realtors, or NAR. The NAR is one of the largest trade organizations in the United States with more than 1,200 boards and councils across all 50 states and some U.S. colonial territories. Its size is matched only by its political influence through their Political Action Committees, or PACs. The receipts of just its congressional Super PAC, according to the Federal Elections Commission, totaled more than $2.7 million within the last year and a half alone. These, as well as smaller ones such as REALTORS’ Political Action Committee, or RPAC, have their interests served through squashing legislation, proposing property and vacancy taxes, and barring rent control policies.
The city’s treatment of unhoused people in relation to real estate values makes plain the effects the NAR plays in the politics of our city. Four out of the seven City Council members are beneficiaries of the RPAC, including the most vocal of these anti-people parasites, Cody Kennedy. Of the four, which also include Ben Van Dyke, Laurel Lutz, and Robert Ballard, Kennedy consistently degrades the unhoused community, depicting them as murderers, vandals, and literal hazards to the environment. These remarks are not only a product of his slimy personality but more importantly, a product of the interests of his NAR benefactors and the many properties that he himself owns throughout the city. According to his own website, Kennedy has been involved in the housing business for 20 years, and his company Riverside Real Estate manages 14 properties in total.
Cody Kennedy’s voting record and opinions reflect his interests. On May 6, 2026, Kennedy voted, alongside Van Dyke, Lutz, and Ballard, to cede 15 acres of city-owned land for the Camelback Gardens housing development project in the Redlands, notably, in Kennedy’s city council district. According to Zillow, the surrounding area boasts home values of $1-2 million. In other words, the members of the city council seek to capitalize on this development, nothing more. Kennedy in particular benefits from the prospect of wealthy allies in his electoral district. In addition, Kennedy voiced his disdain for a hypothetical raise in property taxes that would increase the budget for the Grand Junction Fire Department and its rural cousins, which may currently be spending $2.1 million more than they take in. Kennedy is using his position to safeguard his private interests at the direct expense of the local masses. This was not long after a particularly harsh fire season, with the city and its surrounding rural areas enveloped in smoke and ash. Clearly, maintaining a flow of profits from his properties and funding from RPAC are main drivers of Kennedy’s actions. Cody Kennedy prioritizes his profits so much that he would prefer that the city burned and its unhoused occupants died in the desert rather than lose a cent. Kennedy is no exception to the rule, for the members of the City Council, it pays to be cruel.
It is clear that the city council has no interest in taking care of the people they’re sworn to serve. Appealing to the conscience of corrupt and bourgeois politicians cannot change things. Votes and public comments mean nothing to them, nor do the lives of unhoused people in Grand Junction. The members of the city council are enemies of the people, not least because of the class power they wield on behalf of the capitalist class, but because they wield that power to line their own pockets at the cost of the masses lives.
To ensure the safety of our neighbors, unhoused and otherwise, the masses must take matters into our own hands. This may take the form of organizing to watch for police activity, patrolling near encampments, participating in politically charged and anti-opportunist food and resource distributions, educating our communities on the political nature of housing insecurity, and agitating around demands for expansive and accessible housing, restrooms, running water, food, a place to store trash, contraception, and access to free medical care.
These are basic amenities that the city could easily provide. In fact, these are amenities that the city literally did provide, in particular, running water and restrooms at public parks, but then literally locked up and closed down because people who did not have a house needed to use them.
The suffering of Grand Junction’s unhoused community is not merely a byproduct of the city’s apathy or ignorance, but an intentional choice made for political and financial gain operating through the regular mechanisms of the capitalist State. Their actions will continue because these actions line their pockets and appeases the Super PAC whose donations keep them in power. The masses cannot rely on the promises or solutions made by self-serving city council members, we must work together to protect ourselves and our unhoused neighbors. The deliberate slaughter of the ever-growing unhoused population is part of an intentional system to maximize profit, profit that, one way or another, comes directly from denying the people’s access to basic resources and necessities. Whether through hoarding residential properties and raising rents, or locking up public restrooms and using police violence to drive people into the desert, away, all exploited and oppressed people share a common enemy. That enemy is the global capitalist-imperialist system and its manifestations at our door. It is up to us to do something about it.
“The National Association of Realtors is the largest trade organization in the United States and also one of the nations highest spending contributors to campaign finance, operating through smaller beneficiaries to serve owners interests, paying for policies to defeat vacancy tax ballot measures, turn back rent control, and defend large properties from taxation. A major contributor to NAR is the Realtors Political Action Committee, which has also shared its generosity through the campaign cycle of Robert Ballard, Ben Van Dyke, Laurel Lutz, and Cody Kennedy, a real estate investor and owner of 15 duplexes and family homes.
They’re not dying because this city lacks funding. Homelessness is highest in cities with the highest income, because homelessness is caused by the higher rents and lower vacancy rates, which men like Cody Kennedy can only get away with when property value is on the rise. They’re dead for the same reason this revision was proposed. Our representatives and the interest groups that paid for them care more for property value than the value of human,” — 6/3/2026.
[Image Source: City crews under the Mesa County Sheriff gather and discard belongings, living structures, and necessities of unhoused masses living along the Colorado River, Grand Junction, Larry Robinson]
