Ledes from the Land of Enchantment

Most Coronado homeless remain on streets

More than helped the Coronado Park residents surveyed prior to the park’s closure said they would find another park or place on the street to sleep. Pictured are carts full of belongings underneath the I-40 bridge near Downtown the day officials closed the park. (Chancey Bush/Journal)

As the city of Albuquerque prepared to shutter Coronado Park earlier this month, outreach workers surveyed the people living there to learn about their needs and plans.

More than half of the 94 homeless people who agreed to be surveyed said that upon Coronado’s closure, they would simply find another park or street location to sleep at night. Specifically, 19% said they would go to another park, and 38% said they would find someplace on the streets.

Less than a quarter — 22% — said they would likely go to a sanctioned shelter, according to the survey results provided in response to Journal inquiries.

More than 65% of them said they would be willing to stay at Coronado Park, even if rules and security measures were put in place.

The survey was conducted on behalf of the city by ABQ StreetConnect, a program within Heading Home that provides individualized, housing-focused services and case management to individuals with severe mental illnesses and who are experiencing chronic homelessness.

And that description fits a large portion of those who had been residents of Coronado Park, said Jodie Jepson, executive director of StreetConnect.

Of the assessors, StreetConnect identified 28 individuals with acute needs due to physical, mental, intellectual or “brain-related issues,” Jepson said. The most common disabilities reported included PTSD, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and orthopedic issues.

A majority of the former Coronado residents also have alcohol or drug addictions, said Jepson, although that question was not part of the survey.

The severe mental and physical issues among this cohort of the chronically homeless “make them unable to enter the workforce.” Consequently, she said, getting them into permanent housing is the first step to dealing with their myriad problems.

StreetConnect was able to get 27 of the park’s former residents started onto the pathway for housing.

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“They are not in housing right now, but we are currently working with them on triage and assessment” as a preliminary step toward securing housing, Jepson said.

More than 75% of the survey respondents identified housing as their no. 1 priority; Nearly 14% said getting benefits and having income was their top priority, particularly Supplemental Security Income or Social Security Disability Insurance. Some respondents identified more than one need. In descending order of priority these included health care, food, employment and transportation.

Eighteen of the survey respondents accepted vouchers that allow them to stay from days to weeks in motels that are working with StreetConnect. At least one respondent wound up at Heading Home’s Albuquerque Opportunity Center, enrolled in a program that is intended to break the cycle of homelessness. Another person was provided a one-way bus ticket to Las Vegas, Nevada, after case workers confirmed that the person had family there.

The city had earlier reported that 110 people at the park had been surveyed, but when the final analysis was completed it discovered that some of the individuals had been surveyed more than once, creating duplicate responses, requiring that the final number be revised.

Jepson said she did not take issue with the city’s decision to close Coronado Park, noting that it was the site of regular incidents of violence and abuse, particularly against women. In addition, she said, the park had become a biohazard safety concern because of a large number of cases of shigella bacterial infection among the homeless residents there.

“We needed to shut that park down,” she said. The multitude of problems there showed that “it got way out of control.”

Mayor Tim Keller announced in July that his administration was making plans to close Coronado Park, which had grown into one of the city’s most notorious unsanctioned encampments. From 75 to 120 people nightly slept at the park at Third Street and Interstate 40, officials said.

The mayor said there were shelter beds, mostly at the city’s emergency shelter on the far West Side, available for park residents’ use, though Journal interviews with those staying at the park revealed little interest in going to a shelter.

The city ultimately locked the park up last Wednesday. That closure marked a change in strategy for Keller.

As recently as June, the mayor said shutting down the park would create more problems than keeping it open, as residents would likely scatter into surrounding neighborhoods.

A month later, however, he argued that the park had become too dangerous to leave open.

By the time the city fenced it last week, officials said they had spent weeks doing intensive outreach to park residents.

Doreen McKnight, president of the Wells Park Neighborhood Association, whose boundaries include Coronado Park, said she was glad to see that 27 former park residents have been started on a path toward housing and many were given vouchers that will allow them to stay in motels, even if it’s just for a short time.

But even more important, she said, is the intensive case management and follow-up with these individuals.

“It takes that kind of work for people who have been on the street for so long to get off the street, and they’ve never really done that for them because it’s really time- and resource-intensive,” McKnight said. “It probably should have been done years ago.”

She said neighborhood residents have reported that since Coronado Park was fenced off, “a significant number” of the homeless people who stayed there have “moved to camps under various parts of the (adjacent) I-40 underpass, and around the new pickup and drop-off location (Indian School and 1st Street NW) for the West Side shelter, and I’ve heard from neighbors in Martineztown that there’s a lot more people out there, too.”

It is not surprising, McKnight said, that a large percentage of the homeless from Coronado Park are now being seen in other neighborhood locales. “If they close the park where a bunch of people were living, with no plan about where they would go, obviously, those people are going to distribute themselves nearby.”

The closure of Coronado Park has generated mixed feelings in the Wells Park neighborhood, McKnight said. “In one respect it was kind of a long time coming and probably a good idea, not just because of the problems it posed to the surrounding areas, but because it was so unsafe for the people who were actually living in the park.”

Another point of contention with the closure, she said, is it represents the city’s overall approach to issues surrounding homelessness — “they do things without a plan.”

Journal staff writer Jessica Dyer contributed to this report.

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