Leroy Sanchez says he’s empathetic to issues facing the city’s homeless population. But he draws the line when the problem starts to creep near the backyard of his home in the Candlelight neighborhood.
Just 100 yards or so behind his house, on a privately owned hill overlooking an arroyo, sits what Sanchez called a growing homeless encampment.
Sanchez said the encampment at first seemed fairly harmless, with some trash and noise visible and audible behind his back fence. But he said his opinion changed when he saw a man relieving himself within view of his home, where Sanchez frequently hosts his young grandchildren.
“I get a little offended when I start seeing them right in my backyard,” Sanchez said of the homeless. “It’s tough. It is tough for everyone; it is very tough for the city.”
Recently, no-trespassing signs were installed at the vacant property in hopes of deterring further camping, but Sanchez said he remains unsure exactly how the city and its residents can strike a balance and solve what is becoming an increasingly untenable situation.
“I say have empathy for them,” Sanchez said. “But I don’t know what to do. I see a lot of job openings, a lot of jobs that people can work, but you see a lot of people on the corners.
“I just don’t know how to handle it,” he added. “But if they are starting to expose themselves, that is where I start to draw the line.”
The chasm between those who have shelter and those who don’t is at once widening and closing in Santa Fe, where some homeless people set up tents and sleeping bags close to homes and subdivisions — prompting concerns from residents who worry about sanitary issues and safety .
Complaints are up: The city said reports surrounding people camping in arroyos, parks and other public and private spaces have increased since 2021.
City Clerk Kristine Mihelcic said about 80 reported encampments can be found spread throughout the city at any given time. The locations are widespread. Mihelcic said the city’s best estimate is that there are at least 200 homeless people in the city, though others believe the number is much higher.
But whether the camps have many people or just a few, the phenomenon is prompting individual residents and business owners to react with increasing alarm — and volume.
Phyllis Lee-Redman lives off Calle Caballero and said she’s less concerned about people sleeping along the trail behind her home of 22 years — “Where else are they going to go?” she asked. But she acknowledged she’s a little more than frustrated by the noise she sometimes hears during the evening hours.
“It can wake me up in the middle of the night,” she said. “I’ve heard fights, yelling, the whole gamut.”
Such worries have reached the desk of Mayor Alan Webber, who said the city must strike a delicate balancing act: weighing neighborhood concerns with the needs of those who have no shelter.
“I think the community’s concerns about encampments and homeless people have gone up,” Webber said in a recent interview, “but we have to respond to that equally as we respond to the needs of the homeless people.”
In 2019, a federal appeals court ruled homeless people cannot be punished for sleeping on public property in the absence of an adequate alternative. Santa Fe currently does not have an adequate amount of shelter beds, according to a recent presentation from city Community Health and Safety Director Kyra Ochoa.
The city’s current policy does not fully eliminate the removal of encampments but does not prioritize them on city property if they don’t pose a threat to health, safety or the environment.
However, city parks have been designated for cleanup, including nearby arroyos, which Webber said is an “absolute” priority.
“We don’t want to allow that danger to exist,” he said. “We don’t want the presence of people in encampments to create health hazards where they are making the waterways unclean. There are standards that, even during COVID, we set for safety and health.”
Webber said complaints from residents have led the city in recent years to take additional steps to try to curb homelessness, pointing to its involvement in Built for Zero, an administrative philosophy that implements data and tracking to help address the particular needs of each person experiencing homelessness . Santa Fe is one of more than 80 communities across the country using the strategy.
The hope is that by using better data and communication, the city can help treat each case of homelessness on an individual level, as opposed to creating a one-size-fits-all model.
“I think it is important to recognize that there are people in our community who are struggling and dealing with homeless[ness] for a variety of issues,” Webber said. “There is not one explanation for what makes someone homeless.”
The mayor also pointed to the city’s use of $2 million in CARES Act funding to purchase a 122-unit hotel to create studio apartments for people struggling to keep their housing. The city is also in the process of converting the Lamplighter Inn on Cerrillos Road into affordable housing.
“We need to create more housing options for more people,” Webber said. “At the end of the day, the solution for people who are homeless is more housing. That is where the Lamplighter comes in, [what] other properties that can be on the market represent: a quick way to get housing for people who are currently unhoused.”
Camps and houses
But another initiative — a recommendation to construct a temporary sanctioned homeless encampment at the midtown campus, where about 50 residents would live in small structures — resulted in a number of residents pushing back at a City Council meeting two weeks ago.
Residents voiced worries about a potential uptick in crime, with some advocating for an encampment located farther from the city’s center. The midtown campus also holds Consuelo’s Place, which already provides shelter services to the city’s homeless community.
A community town hall is planned for early August to discuss homelessness, though Webber acknowledged the city has not been effective in explaining its approach to solving the issue.
“We’ve been making progress,” he said. “But we haven’t done a great job of informing the community about it, for both the homeless and the people feeling the brunt of these encampments.”
At the ground level, where those in homes and those without are in increasingly close proximity, the situation brings fear to those on both sides.
Denise Herrera lives in the Nava Adé neighborhood and said she has had occasional run-ins with homeless people. She said she has noticed more and more tents pop up — “literally in the backyard” of her neighbors.
She said she was told by one neighbor that their home’s water hose was moved from her front yard and dragged into the back yard sometime during the evening hours.
Herrera said the worry was that someone was either washing themselves or drinking from the hose.
“I took it upon myself to warn these people,” Herrera said. “You have to warn people, you have to be vigilant and in case something happened, you did do what you could do. All this is doing bringing the value down of our investment.”
Herrera, 55, said that incident was preceded by one in June when she said she was grabbed by a person she believes was homeless as she walked along Cerrillos Road. She was able to break free and run to a nearby auto dealership, where she asked an employee to call the police. She said it took about three weeks before police took a report on the incident.
“They are people; they are humans, and I do have compassion for them,” she said of the homeless. “But I do believe we have so many here [the city] has to do something. Our kids are going to be going back to school soon, and the safety of our youth is at risk right now.”
Mark Oldknow, associate director of the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness, bristles at stories like Herrera’s because they can further a phobia of unsheltered people, he said.
“We tend to select and reaffirm what it is that we already think about the homeless population,” he said. “The homeless population is just as diverse as our population. No one has the same problem, no one has the same behavior. But we hear kind of selective slices of it, and we sort of project that onto everyone.”
In an encampment near St. Francis Drive, about a quarter-mile from the Rail Runner’s Zia Station, an unsheltered man who asked to be identified only by his first name — Carlos — sat under a large tarp with his brother and a few friends.
The tarp was propped up by large pillars. Carlos was surrounded by soiled clothing and trash. He has called the area, a space that is privately owned, his home for two years.
A few other solo tents could also be seen nearby.
Carlos said he was in the process of trying to relocate from the space after police notified him on multiple occasions that he was squatting on private property. But it’s not easy, he added; his options are limited.
“We’re not asking for a handout,” he said. “I don’t know how to panhandle. I make stuff. I make jewelry to make money, but I am homeless.
“They are turning us into animals.”
Benito, another unsheltered person visiting the encampment, interjected. “We don’t do nothing,” he said.
A woman near Carlos said the people there just want some kind of help.
“They just want to throw us in jail,” she said. “… They act like we are doing something bad. But we are just here like this.”
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