City's clearings give glimpse of proposed encampment policy

One block off Central Avenue on Wednesday, Erica Rutledge tied all her belongings to a shopping cart. Her beagle puppy Zia’s leash was knotted to a chain-link fence and waiting to go to their next location.

Rutledge told the Journal she and her neighbors weren’t given any notice that crews would be moving them today.

“No one drove past. ... I would have said, ‘Hey, the city is driving by. The city is here,’” Rutledge said.

Rutledge then told Jeremy Clauss, whose tent was set up next to her, that if she had seen city officials, “I would have woken you up right away. Not the case.”

A newly drafted policy on encampment clearings, which made those along Central a top priority, wasn’t supposed to go into effect until after Nov. 19, when the Mental Health Response Advisory Committee is set to provide comments on it.

The Journal watched on Wednesday as the city’s Solid Waste Management Department, the Metro Security Division and the Albuquerque Police Department cleared encampments near Central. People were being told to place folded-up tents and stacked-up belongings into — and in many cases on top of — shopping carts before retreating farther from Central.

Those affected by the encampment clearing told the Journal that they were not notified to vacate the area ahead of time.

While not requiring notice to clear an encampment deemed an immediate risk, the existing policy allows for 72 hours of notice to be given to those occupying the encampment if they were not present.

The new draft allows for only 24 hours of notice for lower-priority encampments and 36 for even lower-priority encampments. For the top priority (Priority 1) encampments, the draft policy says city personnel should give two hours notice to the individuals before clearing the site — but can give even less notice if deemed necessary.

For its part, the city said it notified those camping before conducting its efforts Wednesday on Central. It also said the clearings were intended to direct those experiencing homelessness to resources before winter conditions set in again.

“The city is conducting outreach in areas most affected by homelessness to try to get people connected to resources and services as cold temperatures set in. Staff from Albuquerque Community Safety, the InterACTION Team, and city workers from various departments are doing welfare checks around Central multiple times a day,” city spokesperson Alex Bukoski told the Journal in a statement Wednesday.

Bukoski also provided photos from Wednesday morning of Albuquerque Community Safety crews — who are supposed to be the first people to notify residents — contacting those experiencing homelessness a block from Central.

“The difference folks are noticing is there are multiple groups of staff going to the same area in a day to offer services, and we’re also ramping up city services like street sweeping (and) graffiti cleanup in the same areas,” Bukoski said.

Bukoski did not respond to a question asking if crews had been instructed to begin following the new guidelines laid out in the proposed encampment policy.

An officer with the Metro Security Division told the Journal that the residents in the area were informed that if they couldn’t take possessions with them, they could store them with the city and would have two weeks to retrieve them. That’s the time allotted in the draft policy. However, the current policy states it’s supposed to be 90 days.

While the existing policy gives 72 hours of notice to those occupying the encampment if they are not present to vacate, Clauss said one of the tents neighboring him was thrown out on the spot while its owner was not present.

After Solid Waste and Metro Security left the street where the encampments were located, an APD officer briefly detained a few of those who remained on the sidewalks, eventually letting each go.

“We are doing various things along Central, some dealing with encampments, and some dealing solely with crime. We have Proactive Response Teams that routinely deal with proactive enforcement, and sometimes they run specific operations (dealing with drug use, drug trafficking, warrant enforcement, etc.),” APD spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos said in a statement.

“We are working with several city departments that have stepped up outreach and cleanup efforts along the Central corridor. APD is the last department to address problems with enforcement action,” Gallegos said.

Donna Clauss, Jeremy’s mother, is a social worker and retired high school teacher. She said she is worried about the city cracking down on encampments, like the one her son was in and disrupting the community there.

“This is not just Jeremy. ... Every little neighborhood has their whole group. It is just like Navy or Army veterans, their camaraderie. The camaraderie is incredible,” Donna said. “I don’t think most blue-collar and middle-class people understand that at all. We don’t understand the culture, and that’s part of the problem.”

Donna said that Jeremy had been listed as missing for six months, and she and the rest of the family did not know he was alive until he was featured on the front page of the Journal on Friday.

Since then, the family has taken turns visiting him, bringing him food, providing him with supplies to stay warm and a phone to contact them.

Donna said she wants to see the city do more for the unhoused community and receive more input from them on solutions as well.

“I don’t think the homeless are part of the solution,” she said. “We need focus-based solutions that are realistic, that take into account the entire community.”