City asks judge to declare bookstore with homeless encampment a ‘public nuisance’

After a yearlong conflict, the city of Albuquerque has asked a judge to declare a local bookstore a “public nuisance” due to health concerns and alleged illicit drug use by homeless people staying in the property’s parking lot.

If granted, city Code Enforcement would be allowed to enter the private property on Jefferson NE, just north of Central, and evict the people living there. The city also asked Judge Daniel Ramczyk for a second, more permanent consequence.

If the property becomes a public nuisance again, the city asked permission to petition a judge to sell the property to a new owner with no relation to the former, according to the civil complaint. The complaint also requests that the owner pay the city’s legal fees in the matter.

Nearby businesses allege that the people staying in the encampment have set fires, publicly urinated and defecated on their properties, as well as vandalized their storefronts, according to a civil complaint filed in 2nd Judicial District Court on Wednesday.

The bookstore’s owner, Gillam Kerley, refuted those claims and said he’s creating a safe space for people with nowhere else to go.

“The New Mexico Constitution guarantees everyone a right to seek and attain safety and a right to acquire and protect their possessions,” Kerley said. “And so what we are doing, I believe, is assisting them in exercising those rights under our state Constitution.”

The owners of surrounding businesses disagree and have complained about worsening conditions radiating from Quirky Books for years, said Alfredo Barrenechea, who owns Absolute Investment Realty nearby.

“I don’t know why it took the city so long try to do something about it, but thank goodness,” Barrenechea said about the complaint.

In reports made to the city, business owners said the encampments had scared away customers and cut into their profits, according to court documents.

Barrenechea said he and his employees find used hypodermic needles thrown over the fence line they share with Quirky Books daily and sometimes find bottles of urine. Barrenechea estimates that adding security measures, like a steel fence, cleaning up waste and repairing vandalism has cost his business about $30,000.

Barrenechea also believes that drug dealing and prostitution are happening on the neighboring lot, while Kerley turns a blind eye.

“How something illegal can occur in plain sight — it just doesn’t make any sense to me,” Barrenechea said. “But it just needs to go away.”

City code enforcers have also found drug paraphernalia and human excrement on or around the property, said city spokesperson Dan Mayfield.

When asked about the complaint’s allegations, Kerley denied them and said that the people staying on his lot are not the problem. The blame lies instead with local leadership’s failure to address issues like affordability and housing, Kerley said.

“These issues exist wherever there are unhoused people,” Kerley said.

In an attempt to address homelessness, the city implemented the Safe Outdoors Spaces program, which allows businesses, nonprofits and churches to host people, if they meet certain criteria. Some business owners, including Kerley, have criticized the program saying there are too many requirements and too much red tape for it to be feasible.

In the three years since the program’s inception, New Creation Church on Zuni is the only approved safe space in the city. Five applications have been denied and four locations have withdrawn their application, according to a city map.

Some of the requirements include having 24-hour security and access to showers, restrooms and social services, like job training.

In the unsanctioned Quirky Books encampment, residents bundled up in layers of long sleeves as the sun set Monday evening. There are approximately 15 people who stay there, though others drift through, residents said.

Long-term resident Jeremy Ryan said he and his neighbors are not to blame for the mess, though he sees why people think that.

“I’d like to curb the crap on the sidewalk — it makes us look bad,” Ryan said as his dog Sombra stood by his side. “The people who stay here, they know the rules.”

Ryan said that every day residents kick out troublemakers who wander in from Central.

Staying at the encampment has “been pretty much a godsend,” Ryan said.

Nearby, Rylee Drumm drew flowers with paint markers on the outside of her gray van to “make it less scary,” she said. She hopes that with a little extra decoration, passersby won’t be as wary of it.

Drumm has parked her van, where she lives with her dogs, at Quirky Books off and on for five months. With a court fight on the horizon, Drumm sees another solution.

Putting in a portable toilet and some trash cans would go a long way toward solving the neighbors’ complaints, she said.

“They don’t need to kick everyone out,” Drumm said.

With the encampment’s future uncertain, Drumm said she doesn’t know where she’d go next, but wherever it is, she worries she won’t be wanted.

“If they end this place, it’s just gonna put people in front of other businesses or people’s houses or in jail,” Drumm said. “There’s not really an alternative.”