OPINION: After spending hundreds of millions of dollars for the homeless, arrests and citations are in order
Albuquerque’s Gateway Center at 5400 Gibson SE. Four lawsuits have emerged from discovery of asbestos at a worksite in 2023.
On Sept. 24, Mayor Tim Keller addressed NAIOP, the city’s most influential business organization consisting of developers, investors and contractors.
Mayor Keller started his remarks by describing what he sees on his walk to work from his West Downtown home located in the Albuquerque Country Club area. Keller told the audience this:
“We all know what’s happening now. I see homelessness. I see vagrants. I see broken windows all over our city. … All of the challenges we’re facing, I absolutely feel. I feel them and I see them. … I just want to make it abundantly clear that we are in this together. I don’t know anyone in Albuquerque who doesn’t have the same stories I just shared. … This, by far and away, is our biggest challenge. This is a generational challenge for America; it also is absolutely for Albuquerque. … This is the challenge of our lifetime.”
Mayor Keller proclaims the city has 5,000 homeless. Keller almost doubles the figure submitted to the federal government for funding in the annual Point-In-Time survey. The total count of persons determined experiencing homelessness in Albuquerque on Jan. 29, 2024, was 2,740 reported in three categories:
Emergency Shelters: 1,289
Transitional Housing: 220
Unsheltered: 1,231
Every time the PIT is released, the city and service providers always proclaim it is a massive undercount of the homeless population. Some argue that the city’s homeless numbers are as high as 9,000 to support demands for more and more funding.
Government and charitable homeless providers are motivated to make claims that the numbers are much greater when federal funding is at stake.
Keller has announced a total of five facilities to deal with the homeless that is intended to be operated as an integrated system: the Gibson Gateway shelter, Gateway West shelter, Family Gateway shelter, the Youth Homeless shelter, and Recovery shelter.
The two biggest shelters are the Gibson Gateway and the Gateway West. The Loveless Gibson Medical Center was purchased for $15 million, and the city has spent upwards of $90 million to renovate it.
Gateway West provides 450 beds and Gibson Gateway, when remodeling is completed, is intended to assist upwards of 1,000 homeless and accommodate at least 330 nightly.
According to the city budgets for the years 2021 to 2024, the Keller administration has spent a staggering $200 million or upwards of $60 million a year to operate shelters and provide homeless services.
Mayor Keller is throwing millions at temporary shelter as he fails to make a dent on the underlying causes of crime, mental health and drug addiction.
Given the numbers in the 2024 PIT report and the millions being spent on the homeless crisis it should be manageable. Yet the crisis only gets worse and worse each year and it is a continuing major drain on city resources.
During the past few years, the unhoused have become far more dispersed throughout the city, thanks to Keller. The unhoused are more aggressive, camping where they want and for how long as they want.
Unhoused who have no interest in any offers of shelter, beds, motel vouchers or alternatives to living on the street force the city to make it totally inconvenient for them to “squat” anywhere they want and must force them to move on.
After repeated attempts to reason with them to move on, citations and arrests are in order.
Until the problem is solved, the public perception will be that very little to no progress has been made despite millions spent to deal with what Keller proclaims as the “challenge of our lifetime.”
Pete Dinelli is a former Albuquerque city councilor, former chief public safety officer and former chief deputy district attorney. You can read his daily news and commentary blog at www.PeteDinelli.com.
