Colorado City Using Money from Cannabis to Help Homeless

Colorado has been generating a ton of tax revenue from marijuana. One city, Aurora, Colorado, has decided that it is going to use the marijuana industry to carry out social justice; they believe this will be done by using its tax revenues towards helping the homeless.

In the month of April, the Aurora City Council announced that it would give $220,000 from cannabis revenue to Colfax Community Network, an organization that helps families struggling financially. For a long time, reports have shown that homeless people were headed towards cannabis’s legal marijuana market. At the moment, the influx of homeless people might see some benefit from the market that brought them there.

The money given to Colfax Community Network is a small step in Aurora’s plan to give money gained from the cannabis industry to programs helping the city’s homeless people. The city council also decided reentry that it would use $3 million from its budget, all of which came from the legal marijuana industry, to perform services for homeless people.

Aurora believes that they are going to make $4.5 million in cannabis sales over the next two years; Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan agreed but was quiet about funding Colfax Community Network for more than a year. Here is what he had to say in an interview:

“I believe there’s a value to it beyond just what it does,” Hogan said of Colfax Community Network. “That value is that it’s an organization that’s been around for years. Organizations that have been around for years tend to catch the eye of funding foundations. The problem with Colfax Community Network is, in my view, there were a lot of well-intentioned people who had no idea how to go out and get money. That’s why they’re in trouble now. Saving it makes sense to me.”