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No Place to Call Home
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I’m troubled about the shuttering of yet another Albuquerque Central Avenue Motel. The way the operation was handled leaves me deeply concerned.
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Tenants of the State Fair Mercado Motel, where rooms were rented to the hard working but near-homeless, arrived “home” to find out their rooms
had been locked up by Albuquerque's Safe City Strike Force due to reported unsafe living conditions.
It's time for the city to stop pitching people out on the streets with just a few hours notice. They must realize that if a building is
so unsafe that such behavior is warranted, then it should only be undertaken as a joint operation with local social service agencies,
homeless shelters and perhaps the City's Department of Family and Community Services.
There’s a very good reason for social service providers to be involved. If a homeowner is on the hook for a property failing to meet
city codes, then there's a chance that he or she may be experiencing some mental health issues. A surprise eviction could precipitate
a psychotic episode for someone who is barely keeping their emotional head above water.
The same reasoning also applies when the city moves against motel owners. I’m not saying, of course, that the city should allow unsafe
living conditions; just deal with the issues in a more compassionate and reasonable manner.
Many of the motels in Albuquerque that have been closed rented rooms to formerly homeless, or near homeless, people. Does the city want
to be known for ripping away “homes” from people who are already on the periphery of our society? Wouldn't a better approach be to get
human service professionals involved in advance, even if city officials are not sure that a closure will occur?
According to a June 10 article in the Albuquerque Journal, 15 of Central
Avenue's hotels have been closed, condemned or demolished. I understand that the actions may have been taken with very good reason.
But where are the people now who once occupied those motel rooms? Closing the buildings doesn't solve the problem of what to do with
the people who once lived there.
Describing the city's actions against some of these motels, the same article in the Albuquerque Journal read in part, “There are
vacant lots and boarded up hotels along Central Avenue that are covered with graffiti and overgrown with weeds. These properties used
to be ‘cesspools' -- magnets for crime, housing prostitutes, drug dealers and transients. City leaders now call them prime real estate.”
The quote was unfortunate, because it lumped transients together with crime, prostitutes and drug dealers.
Prostitution and drug dealing are criminal activities. Being a transient, or a homeless person, is a terrible place to be in, but it is
not (at least yet in Albuquerque) a criminal activity.
However, there could be a price to pay for displacing near homeless people from a motel, apartment complex or a private residence onto the
streets of Albuquerque with just a few hours notice.
In addition to possibly triggering a psychotic episode, it could launch a now desperate person into criminal activity. People with no options
do not act rationally.
I realize that most of the former clients of the Mercado were housed at another motel owned by Rose and her husband, but I doubt whether the
city would have responded differently if that option had not been there.
(Incidentally, it's a daily struggle for Rose and her husband to keep the doors of that other motel open and affordable to their guests).
I wonder if some people in Albuquerque are more interested in developing ‘prime real estate' than they are in the lives of people?
Albuquerque's Growing Homeless Crisis
It is apparent that Albuquerque has a potential crisis with the city's burgeoning homeless population. It extends outside the downtown area
and other places where the homeless have been traditionally known to congregate.
For example. Just recently, I saw a young man who appeared to be homeless lugging a heavy suitcase across an empty lot. Perhaps that wouldn't
have been so unusual, except he was in a fairly well-to-do area of Albuquerque, and the lot was close to a national coffee chain where speciality
drinks retail for between three and four dollars a cup.
Then a few hours later, I heard a story about someone who was observed “dumpster diving” for food in an even more prosperous area of the city.
Perhaps the needy's lack of welcome in the areas where they were once expected is forcing a migration to the northeast.
I paid a visit to the motel that was closed last week. The State Fair Mercado’s courtyard was almost empty, and a stark contrast to the bustle of
busy Central Avenue, just a few feet away.
As I entered the compound, orange signs attached to each room were clearly visible. They read, “Substandard building. Do not enter. Unsafe to occupy.”
A couple of minutes after I arrived there, a woman appeared and asked if she could help me. I explained that I run Joy Junction, New Mexico's largest
emergency homeless shelter, and wanted to let her know that we would be happy to accommodate anyone made homeless by the city's actions.
The woman identified herself as Rose Dharas, the co-owner of the hotel, and thanked me for my concern, but said that most of those people displaced
had already been housed.
Except two men in a wheelchair, that is, who were carefully making their way east on Central.
“See them?” Rose said, close to tears. “I don't know where they stayed last night.”
I followed Rose back into the small motel office, where she told me some of the story that led to the motel's closure.
Rose didn't deny some of the violations the city slapped her with in a mis-spelled and incorrectly dated document delivered to her following the
inspection. She said she just didn't know about many of them.
Close to tears, Rose said she asked city inspectors to make her a list and give her time to fix the problems.
“Don't shut me down, or I won't have the money to fix it,” she told me she said.
However, Rose wasn't given a break, and was ordered to have the premises vacated by 5 p.m.
She said, “People went to work, and when they came back they had no place to stay.”
Rose told me, “Some of my customers said we have stayed in other places (much worse). Why did they shut you down?”
Rose said that in the 22 years she has owned the motel there have been no real problems, and only a minimal number of calls to emergency services.
She said, “I'm careful about renters. I don't want to rent to troublemakers.”
Rose said many of her (now former) customers work at a nearby Labor Ready; work hard, leave the motel early, are quiet and peaceful and in bed early.
The now deserted courtyard was once their community, and a place to call home. How many more of these evictions - whether single or en masse - are
we going to allow before we put some badly needed safeguards in place to protect those who for whatever reason can’t speak for themselves?
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