Injunction aimed to mitigate city's sweep of homeless encampments. But some say it's happening, more than ever.

Raymond Pineda has lived on the streets for six years, struggling against substance abuse and the elements. More recently, the 57-year-old said he’s facing, and losing, another battle: holding on to what little he has.

Pineda is one of several people who said city of Albuquerque workers come daily, often with police, to take their belongings or, at the very least, make them move elsewhere — but never telling them where to go.

His belongings have disappeared in the minutes it took him to find a place to shower. He’s had 15 of his camp setups thrown away, losing other possessions in the process, he said. Having to start over.

“Every time I hear a city truck, I panic right away,” said Pineda, standing beside his large structure on a rainy Thursday along East Central. “They’re like Pac-Man, eating up everybody’s things. I’m so sick and tired of it.”

A state District Court order took effect Nov. 1 that, on paper, severely limited the city’s authority to ask people camping on the street to move. This week, the New Mexico Supreme Court will hold a hearing to see if the injunction should be overturned.

Under the order, the city cannot enforce or threaten to enforce laws to move people or their things from public property unless it’s near a school or if their location is unsafe. Private property is exempt.

It’s also banned from taking people’s belongings without providing written notice, a “pre-deprivation hearing” and 72-hours warning. Afterward, people should have an opportunity to reclaim their belongings.

However, people camping on the streets and the groups that advocate for them say that isn’t happening.

Public records show a woman being cited for camping on city-owned property. Volunteers and advocates for unhoused people say they’ve experienced intimidation and sometimes been given citations themselves.

City officials say they’ve been giving appropriate notice and offering resources.

“I think, in general, we’re doing our best to follow what the injunction’s about,” Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said in an interview.

Keller said there’s been training on complying with the injunction, but acknowledged that among the hundreds of city employees, “there’s going to be some mistakes made.”

To prepare for the injunction, the city increased storage space for people’s belongings and shelter beds, he added. Still, he said it’s a “tough job” to balance helping the homeless while still making people feel safe and allowing businesses to operate. Keller said he hopes the injunction is overturned.

In an email to the Journal, Billy Gallegos, Solid Waste Management Department director, acknowledged the “pre-deprivation” hearings are not occurring because of confusion about what the hearings entailed. The city immediately asks people to move if they’re causing a safety concern, Gallegos said. It’s an exception provided under the injunction.

In other situations, the city is supposed to give people three days to move before seizing their camps.

Solid Waste’s encampment team has connected just two of the more than 500 people given notice to resources, Gallegos said in an email to the Journal. The Albuquerque Community Safety department, which does not participate in sweeps, has been more successful, getting 90 people to accept shelter beds.

‘I just move around’

Journal reporters watched Wednesday as city workers shooed Steve Martinez and several others away from a block near Zuni and Virginia SE. Martinez, 52, was not on the sidewalk.

He and the others camped on the block had purposely squeezed themselves between the sidewalk and private property in the hopes of not being moved.

Martinez wheeled his belongings around the corner and tried to figure out where to go next. He said it’s an everyday occurrence.

“I just move around,” Martinez said.

He said the city workers and police who clear them have not offered resources and have thrown his stuff away.

When asked about the clearing of Martinez and others, Carol Pierce, city Health, Housing and Homelessness director, said it is hard to know the reasoning behind the action without knowing specifics. She said typically, Solid Waste asks people to move for safety reasons.

But the vast majority, or 80%, of the people forced to leave their encampments were not moved for being a safety concern, according to numbers provided by Solid Waste.

‘We have to run a city’

Keller said on average, the city clears about 200 encampments per month. The rate has increased, however, with more than 700 cleared since Nov. 1, and almost 7,000 cleared in the past year.

Business owners and others around the International District, where Journal reporters spent a few days reporting, said they’ve seen more sweeps of encampments and police patrols in recent weeks.

“We’re just trying to keep up,” Keller said.

The injunction stemmed from a 2022 lawsuit filed by several unhoused people who alleged the city was violating their rights by unconstitutionally seizing and destroying their property — without providing enough shelter beds to give people an alternative to living on the street.

Keller said he appreciated the concern for unsheltered people in Albuquerque but called the lawsuit “unfortunately one-sided.”

“We have to run a city,” Keller said. “... These are tough problems, so they require complicated answers.”

City officials say beds are available. There are about 800 emergency beds that are in some way supported by the city, according to Pierce. Including other facilities, there are about 1,200.

That’s about half of the number of unhoused people counted in last year’s Point-In-Time count — a snapshot of the number of people experiencing homelessness in Albuquerque on one night in January. And that number is estimated to be a massive undercount because of limitations in the data collection.

There were about 175 city beds vacant as of Wednesday night, according to data from Health, Housing and Homelessness. The city can also “accordion” to accommodate additional need, Pierce said, by repurposing city buildings for emergency beds during the winter. That happened last week, when temperatures dropped.

“There are beds available for people right now,” Pierce said. “Not everybody wants to take advantage of that.”

Just two of the 175 available beds were at the Gateway Center on Wednesday. Pierce said there’s typically a waiting list for the beds in the center’s transitional housing program, as well as the emergency winter beds. Both require referrals.

Most of the available beds were at the Westside Emergency Housing Center. The department has been making improvements to the Westside shelter, Pierce said, including remodeling several pods, bringing back lunch, buying new bedding — there have been bedbug infestations — and adding locked storage containers for people’s belongings.

But the reputation of the Westside shelter’s conditions is difficult to overcome.

“Many people are not willing to give it a shot, especially as those changes are really new still,” said William Bowen, a program manager for the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness. Bad experiences with shelters and housing programs can make people wary to reengage with resource providers, he said.

Bowen organized last year’s Point-In-Time count and is in the process of organizing this year’s count. The clearing of encampments made it difficult for the volunteer team to get an accurate count of the number of people without shelter, but the team is “hopeful” the injunction could change that, he said.

“We can’t get an accurate count out if we don’t know where people actually are,” Bowen said.

Differing accounts, conflicting information

Several people have said encampments are being swept from public as well as private property.

Pineda was camped next to a city-owned lot near Alcazar and Central. Recently, a sign reading “private property, no trespassing” was installed, and people shared reports of sweeps on the lot.

Katie Simon, a spokesperson for the Health, Housing and Homelessness department, said that lot and another have been marked that way since they are soon due for development and there is only one type of sign to install to prevent trespassing. She said it’s not unusual for city land to bear those signs.

Ilse Biel, an advocate for people living on the streets, said that has forced people to relocate their encampments in front of businesses, residences and sidewalks.

“The neighborhoods have taken the brunt of this institutionalized neglect,” Biel said.

Wednesday on East Central, after disassembling their encampments under city supervision, people returned within minutes or simply crossed the street in a few instances.

Journal reporters watched and then followed city trucks for a few days last week as they patrolled areas, clearing encampments before moving on to the next block.

Christine Barber, an outreach worker who founded Asur New Mexico, said people were not getting notice as the injunction ordered.

In videos captured by Barber, who was camping in the area and presenting as unhoused, showed city workers and police give out conflicting information.

Officers incorrectly cited city property as being “private” and told Barber there is no camping allowed anywhere in the city. Police told Barber that people who didn’t leave would be cited and threatened to throw her tent away if she didn’t take it down.

A city worker told Barber that “some people have been handing out wrong flyers, and they’ve been arrested for it,” referring to flyers passed out by the American Civil Liberties Union informing people of the injunction.

In another video, a different city worker told Barber the injunction is for public parks and she can go there, where it was up to the Parks and Recreation Department “to remove you.”

“That injunction is irrelevant to what we do,” the worker told Barber. “As far as what we do, that injunction don’t mean nothing to us.”

Packed , ready to go

Albuquerque Police Department Cmdr. Luke Languit, who oversees the Southeast Area Command, said its officers’ job is just enforcing the law. He said the city is responsible for any notices or documentation related to clearing encampments.

“We’re just a spoke on the wheel,” he said.

Languit said his officers, particularly those on the Proactive Response Team, could spend up to 10 hours a day clearing encampments along Central. He said sometimes, they will clear an entire block of encampments, only for them to be resurrected “a week later.”

“Until we can get everyone into a housing solution, substance-abuse solutions and stuff like that, it’s a daily duty, a weekly duty,” Languit said.

At this time, he said, there are no plans to stop.

“At the end of the day, it’s about public safety, but … we also want our city to look clean, we want it to look good, right?” Languit said. “... We’re going to continue these efforts until we’re told otherwise.”

Languit said Police Chief Harold Medina gave the directive to clean up the Central Avenue corridor after the Balloon Fiesta.

Medina said the increase in enforcement was spurred by community complaints, comparing it to how they addressed shoplifting and traffic issues after complaints rolled in.

“I really try to listen to the community. (The) biggest complaint coming in from the community was the issue that they were having with the unhoused,” he told the Journal on Friday. “This was just the next item that came in that needed to be addressed.”

Medina said he prepared his officers to abide by the injunction but acknowledged that individual officers could “misinterpret something.” He said he has a lot of empathy for the homeless and hoped the issue inspired a conversation about how to provide them resources, particularly for mental health and substance abuse.

Medina said, as an officer, his job is clear — even if the encampments re-assemble as fast as they are dissembled.

“I just don’t think we, as a police department can just give up and say, ‘Oh, they’re back 10 minutes later, we’re not going to do nothing about it,’” he said. “And it’s our job to continue to try to address it, steer people towards resources, towards help.”

By 11 a.m. Thursday, Erica Lujan had packed her belongings into a few rolling suitcases, laying them neatly out on the sidewalk. The 35-year-old said she was getting ready to be moved again.

Lujan said at first, she would relocate to another block but now just leaves briefly before returning to the same spot. She said city workers have thrown out her belongings repeatedly, including paperwork that led her to miss a court hearing and a warrant to be issued for her arrest.

“We can’t really do nothing,” she said. “We’re always in a hurry to get back or one of us has to leave and the other has to stay.”

Lujan’s neighbor on the block, 61-year-old Joe Barrs, put it plainly: “You got to stay mobile.”

“There ain’t no telling when they’re going to come,” he said. “You try to find a spot where nobody hassles you.”

Barrs, who has been on the streets for more than a decade, said such a place doesn’t exist. “If there is, I don’t know about it,” he said.

Around him, all those camped out were packing up and getting ready. Lujan stood on the edge of the curb, looking each way down the street.

“They’ll be here any minute,” she said.