Denver received national attention this week after voters there passed Initiative 301 to decriminalize hallucinogenic mushrooms. The result of Initiative 300, which would have repealed the city’s ban on public camping and sleeping under a blanket, passed with almost no notice beyond the local press.

Initiative 300’s proponents described it as a “right to survive” measure, since arresting and prosecuting homeless people for committing an essential human activity makes it that much harder for them to escape the streets. Most voters saw it differently. While they voted to decriminalize the recreational consumption of hallucinogens by a modest margin, they overwhelmingly chose to keep criminalizing homeless people for sleeping outside: 82 percent of them voted no on Initiative 300.

The result is a jarring contrast to the national discourse on poverty and inequality. Democratic presidential candidates have released a cornucopia of policy proposals on housing, unemployment, and healthcare. But none of them has proposed a plan specifically to help the estimated 500,000 Americans who face homelessness each year. That omission is a troubling reflection of this country’s view of homeless people and their place in American society.

Denver is far from alone in making life harder for the homeless. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty recently found that, among the 187 major cities the group tracks, 34 percent banned camping citywide and 59 percent banned it in certain public spaces. A majority of cities banned loitering, begging, or sitting or lying down in some public areas, while between a quarter and a third of them banned each of those acts everywhere. Forty-three percent banned sleeping in vehicles.

“Criminalization measures, rather than solving the underlying causes of homelessness, create additional barriers to accessing employment, housing, and public benefits needed to escape life on the streets,” NLCHP’s report concluded. And yet, the group found, such measures have largely increased since its last survey, in 2011. That may be due in part to the generous support such efforts receive: The campaign to defeat Initiative 300, which had the nerve to call itself “Together Denver,” raised near-record amounts of funding from local business organizations.