By Sherry Robinson
All She Wrote

Since the U.S. Supreme Court blessed local government bans on public camping, many have tried to sweep away their homeless camps. They just pop up again somewhere else, or individuals fan out to new places.

Where are they supposed to go? Courts don’t answer that question. Neither do local governments.

Except Las Cruces, where Camp Hope, a sanctioned homeless encampment, has been thriving for 13 years at no cost to taxpayers. I often wonder why officials of every New Mexico community with a homeless problem haven’t made a pilgrimage south to see the Las Cruces model.

Camp Hope began in 2011 as an experiment. Nicole Martinez, executive director of the nonprofit Mesilla Valley Community of Hope (MVCH), asked the city for a three-month trial of a small tent camp on city land to give people living on the street a temporary place to stay. The city agreed.

Today Camp Hope can house up to 50 people in tents. Many tents are in three-walled, roofed shelters that protect them from sun and wind. The camp has restrooms, showers, laundry, kitchen and a community garden. Next door at MVCH, residents have access to a food bank, medical care, case management and a menu of services to help them get back on their feet.

Camp Hope hasn’t hobbled its programs with so many restrictions that people are discouraged from getting shelter. People can keep their pets. They can’t use drugs or alcohol on site, but if they return to camp after imbibing elsewhere, they can stay as long as they don’t bother others. There is no minimum or maximum stay.

The camp does have rules (no violence, no weapons, help with maintenance, for example), but it’s largely governed by residents, who have helped make the rules.

Camp Hope operates on the principle of Housing First, which holds that people can’t effectively respond to treatment and help until they’re safely housed. Once they have the basics, residents are more open to such services as behavioral health treatment, education and training, or eventually permanent housing.

Some residents aren’t ready to move quickly from tent to apartment – they need some transition time to develop trust and self-confidence. Camp Hope allows this transition time, but managers are clear that permanent housing is the ultimate goal.

“I see this 100 percent as a good investment for the city,” Natalie Green, Las Cruces’ Housing and Neighborhood Services manager, told Searchlight New Mexico in 2022. “Studies show that when we house someone experiencing homelessness, it’s much more cost-effective.” 

 Last year the Legislative Finance Committee reported that the homeless population statewide had grown by 48% to about 4,000, and that’s probably a dramatic undercount. The increase goes hand in hand with the lack of affordable housing. Wages can’t keep up with spiraling rents, and affordable rentals are half what they were in 2020.

Our largest cities have the worst shortages, but the report showed seven rural counties in the next tier of need: Curry, Grant, McKinley, Otero, Rio Arriba, San Juan and San Miguel.

 Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Española have waged the most public struggles with their homelessness, and they’re no closer to a solution.

Since closing the unsupervised camp in Coronado Park in 2022, Albuquerque has tents scattered around the city. Albuquerque and Santa Fe refuse to consider sanctioned camps mostly out of NIMBYism. The prevailing sentiment: Take care of “those people” somewhere else. Albuquerque actually had a nonprofit ready to supervise an encampment; after blowback city councilors ran the other way. Santa Fe didn’t get that far.

From my time volunteering at a homeless center, I know this group varies from working people who simply can’t find affordable rentals to the most down-and-out addict. They will respond to choices individually. For some, the sanctioned encampment is a godsend.

Sherry Robinson is a longtime New Mexico reporter and editor. She has worked in Grants, Gallup, the Albuquerque Journal, New Mexico Business Weekly and Albuquerque Tribune. She is the author of four books. Her columns won first place in 2024 from New Mexico Press Women.