Homeless numbers are on the rise in Albuquerque, and local lawmakers are at odds over how to address the problem. 

According to KRQE News, the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness found that the city’s unhoused population more than doubled from 2016 to 2021. Despite spending tens of millions since June of last year to improve shelter conditions for the homeless, the city council will soon vote on two proposals that will change zoning codes to allow government-sanctioned homeless tent encampments throughout the City of Albuquerque, according to City Councilor Dan Lewis's email to constituents. Others are critical of the proposed zoning changes when more investment in the permanent housing, substance abuse treatment and mental health support that many homeless individuals need could be made.

“Not one neighborhood association in our entire city has endorsed or agrees with those two proposals,” Lewis told New Mexico Sun. “None of them feel like they’ve been a part of this process or have had a chance to express and weigh in on how they feel about it.”

One of the proposals, sponsored by Councilor Brook Bassan, would permit encampments deemed “living lots,” where individuals can reside in personal vehicles or tents on mixed-use zones and non-residential property. Bassan’s proposal is the “most radical version” of homeless encampments “with very little limits or regulations,” he said in an email to constituents. 

In the second proposal, up to 45 “safe outdoor spaces” will be permitted throughout the city, with at least five tent encampments in every council district.

San Francisco and Denver are examples of how similar proposals have not been successful across the country, Lewis said. 

“They’re not helping people deal with some of the core issues, mainly mental illness and drug abuse,” Lewis said. 

According to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle, the city spends approximately $60,000 on each tent in its sanctioned encampments every year— more than enough to put a family up in a safe, permanent apartment for the year, Lewis said.

Aurora, Colorado Mayor Mike Coffman spent a week living among the unhoused across shelters and encampments, and “came away from [the encampments] concluding that these are not helpful,” Lewis said. “In fact, they’re enabling people,” noting that the Gateway Center shelter has 50 to 100 beds available every night, but yet the encampment occupants do not choose the safer housing and its amenities. Coffman observed that the encampments were mostly communities of methamphetamine addicts, while the shelters were composed of substance addicts as well, but in addition to mentally ill individuals and people who had fallen on hard economic times. 

“The compassionate way to do this is to take all the money that we’ve spent on temporary shelters and spend it on running water and heat, and actual safe places that meet zoning codes and housing codes,” Lewis said. 

Lewis continued that there is hypocrisy in the two ABQ proposals, with the sponsoring councilors looking to add amendments that prohibit the sanctioned encampments from large portions of their own districts, including for the purpose of reserving the space for development. 

The growing homeless population is costing the people of Albuquerque, Lewis said. The mayor has proposed raising trash pickup rates across the city in the midst of record-high inflation times to pay for sanitation services for the encampments. Concerns of violence and crime also exist in the public mind where sanctioned homeless encampments exist (although NPR and The Guardian reports detail the gray area of homeless encampment and crime correlation vs. causation). 

Other organizations are taking more definitive action to not enable but eradicate the problem, the councilor said. Several ministries in his district alone are building so-called bungalows, a form of low income housing to help people transition out of homeless living. 

“[Encampments] are not the compassionate way to help those that have drug abuse issues that need treatment, or have mental health challenges that need help and support,” Lewis said. “This is not the compassionate way, to just round them up in tents in different parts of the city.”

If passed, Lewis said he will propose to put the issue on the ballot as a ballot proposition. 

“If [the public] opposes these things, they should support putting the question on the ballot and letting the people weigh in on whether they want us to enforce anti-encampment laws, or whether they want to allow people to live in tent cities and actually have government-sanctioned tent encampments,” he said. 

The city council votes on the proposals on Monday, May 16.