Las Cruces camp is a bright spot in state's struggle with homelessness but faces opposition

Sep. 28—LAS CRUCES — Unlike most other residents at Camp Hope, Annie Miller spends nights in just a sleeping bag, exposed to the elements. She doesn't mind not having a tent — she likes to see the stars.

Miller, 77, has been living at the sanctioned encampment in Las Cruces for the last seven months with her cat, Maui. A native of Chicago and a former Truth or Consequences resident, she said she spent 30 years living alone before she landed at Camp Hope, which offers shelter to 50 people at full capacity.

"This is making me into a person," she said of life in the camp.

"I'll read or do crossword puzzles, and then when I'm tired of being alone, I'll go do some work or hang out with people," Miller said.

Her chore of choice is cleaning the on-site restroom and showers: "I just like things to be neat," she said.

Miller is one of the residents who have called Camp Hope home since it opened more than a decade ago. Run by Las Cruces nonprofit Mesilla Valley Community of Hope, the encampment rests on a 16.6-acre, city-owned campus that includes a health care clinic, a soup kitchen, a food pantry, a child care center, a day labor program and a case management center, all geared toward getting residents into some form of permanent housing.

The "housing first" approach Community of Hope practices, paired with on-site wraparound services, is seen as the best practice when it comes to addressing homelessness, and the group has received national accolades for its work.

"It's not just a place to pitch a tent and hang out — it's a place to get better," said Mark Oldknow, associate director of the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness.

"I think Camp Hope is absolutely a model for other cities to look to," said Las Cruces City Councilor Johana Bencomo, who represents the city's District 4, where the encampment is located.

While leaders of other communities around the state have made visits to Camp Hope, few have created their own sanctioned encampments.

Nor has the camp's track record curbed growing frustrations in Las Cruces with homelessness and crime.

'Everyone was just here'

Community of Hope Executive Director Nicole Martinez joined the organization in 2006 and initially agreed to manage a 10-month grant. After helping to run the shelter, she became housing program manager, using federal Housing and Urban Development Department money to find more pathways into permanent housing for clients.

Before Camp Hope's creation, the city required people to vacate the campus, where Community of Hope had been offering services, by 6 p.m. This created tension between the nonprofit and the city.

"The city was like, 'You have to kick people off campus,' " Martinez recalled. "And we were like, 'OK, where do we tell people to go?' "

The nonprofit called in Randy Harris, a local man who was launching a series of community talks called "The Great Conversation," to host a series of discussions with its clients about the conflict.

Members of the homeless community seeking services at the campus told Harris they wanted to be first in line for showers and food when it opened and that they felt unsafe in other places. After first brainstorming possible places in the city where they could hide out, they proposed the idea of a creating city-sanctioned tent city on the property.

Harris helped them develop the proposal, which they presented to the City Council. The city agreed to a pilot project at around the same time Martinez was named director.

Martinez was skeptical of the program at first: "I was focused on putting people in housing, not in tents," she said.

But after people began sleeping at the site, she realized this made it much easier to provide them with case management and support services to help get them into housing.

"In the past, I was leaving notes at the front desk or I was going over to the soup kitchen, like, 'Is Joe here?' " she recalled. With Camp Hope, "everyone was just here."

There were other changes, too.

"I oftentimes ride my bike into work and come around the back and there's a bench out there," Martinez said. "And often, more often than I want to say, there was a woman sitting there waiting to talk about a sexual offense."

After Camp Hope opened, offering security and a safe place to sleep, there was "a huge reduction" in people waiting on that bench to talk to her, she said.

When the pilot project ended, the nonprofit went back to city councilors and asked them to continue the program in a formal arrangement. The city rezoned the land as a planned unit development — a designation often used for townhome or single-family communities — and created a site plan with conditions the nonprofit had to meet.

A social worker by training, Martinez said she learned "a lot about city planning."

Since its start, Camp Hope has grown to include wooden shelters at each tent site, a bathroom with showers, an outdoor kitchen, a shade structure, a kennel for dogs and other amenities.

Most of the camp's budget comes from private donations raised by the nonprofit's annual community fundraiser "Tents to Rent," which brought in $113,000 last year — about what it takes to cover the camp's expenses.

Martinez said Camp Hope will continue to exist as long as people in the community continue to support it.

"Because if they don't, I don't have opportunities to get other funding," she said, noting federal funding for homeless shelters is limited.

'It takes brave leaders'

Martinez has traveled throughout New Mexico and to other states to give presentations about Camp Hope and has said she will offer resources to help other communities stand up a similar program.

Despite Camp Hope's success, few cities have replicated the program.

"NIMBYism," Martinez said, using the acronym for "not in my backyard" to describe local resistance to such a development. She noted officials from one New Mexico community recently visited Camp Hope.

"And it wasn't their first time," she said. "They keep trying to do it, and then the community is just: 'No.' "

Oldknow agreed. "It's such a knee-jerk reaction," he said. "NIMBYism is ubiquitous — no matter where you put something, you're going to deal with it."

Martinez said finding an organization willing to take on the work is also "a huge ask."

"One of the main reasons that we have been successful in our endeavor is because we're tied to a nonprofit, and we have the infrastructure and the funding sources in place," she said.

Martinez said the backing of the city, which does not charge the nonprofit for use of the space, is also crucial.

"It takes brave leaders," she said.

Still, she said, a rising sense of anti-homeless from the community is making Community of Hope's relationship with the city harder to navigate.

She sometimes feels "the administration is hesitant to continue to support us the way they have historically."

A growing backlash

Both crime and visible homelessness have increased in Las Cruces since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Martinez said. But there is much debate about how the two problems are intertwined.

"People have correlated this increase of crime and violence with homelessness, and I think it's been really hard to decouple that," Bencomo said.

To Vic Villalobos, co-founder of Businesses for a Safer Las Cruces, the connection is clear: "Ninety percent of [crime] is connected to homelessness." A frustrating rise in property crime led him to launch the group, he said.

To Las Cruces Police Chief Jeremy Story, drugs — especially fentanyl — are the culprit of the majority of problems the city is seeing.

"If you could take that away overnight with the wave of a magic wand, you would see drastic improvements in all these problems," he said.

Martinez said homelessness in the city became much more visible several years ago due to a few factors: a decrease in support services during the pandemic; the ACLU's legal challenge of the city's anti-panhandling legislation, which led to a halt in enforcement; and a spike in rental prices that prompted an increase in the city's homeless population.

"We saw people start breaking windows and just disturbing businesses and trying to just sleep wherever they could, because now they're outside," she said, adding this fueled anti-homeless sentiment, particularly among the business community.

A police officer's slaying earlier this year then ignited a furor.

"That was the impetus they needed to get the buy-in that all homeless people are dangerous criminals," Martinez said.

Officer Jonah Hernandez was fatally stabbed Feb. 11 while responding to a call about trespassing. A bystander who witnessed the confrontation shot and killed the man suspected of attacking Hernandez but was unable to save the officer's life.

Story said the man suspected in Hernandez's death had a rented room paid by his family but often chose not to stay there and was described by many people as homeless after the attack.

The violent incident shocked Las Cruces and led to the start of Businesses for a Safer Las Cruces. The group threw its support behind two ordinances, also backed by Story, that placed new limits on panhandling and banned the use of shopping carts outside shopping centers. Both ordinances passed 4-3 during a contentious meeting last month.

Bencomo, one of the three councilors who voted against the ordinances, said they will criminalize homelessness and poverty without addressing the underlying issues.

Others said the legislation is necessary to improve public safety and help people get needed support.

"When you see someone pushing their possessions down Lohman Avenue in 102-degree weather, to me, that's a call for help," Mayor Eric Enriquez said.

'Pros outweigh the cons'

City leaders and residents concerned about homelessness say Camp Hope residents are not the problem, though the encampment is located in an area where other people congregate and stir up trouble.

"The people that will go to Camp Hope and follow rules, they're looking for assistance and they receive it," Enriquez said. "What we're seeing are others that are outside, that are having mental, behavioral, substance abuse issues and really are the ones that are really causing problems as far as safety goes in our community."

Police respond to Camp Hope frequently for a range of issues, Story said, such as medical or mental health emergencies, and even overdoses, "but as far as actual law enforcement interactions where we're having to arrest people, it's not that often."

There are downsides to every shelter model, but Story said the "pros outweigh the cons" at Camp Hope.

"I think it's better than a lot of the alternatives," he said. "Having it all in one place, I think it's more likely that a higher percentage of people will engage in services."

He said the city needs more affordable and transitional housing and could benefit from another shelter besides Camp Hope and the Las Cruces Gospel Rescue Mission, a small shelter across the street. He said the state also needs to invest much more heavily in behavioral health services.

"The state has the money, that's the thing," he said. "Other states are struggling with how to pay for it, whereas we have the money; we just have to prioritize it."

Martinez said the political climate around homelessness has made her job harder.

"You would think that the toughest part of this job would be the horrific, tragic stories that I hear every day from the people I'm serving," she said. "Really, it's oftentimes the pushback from our leaders and community members who want disinvestment to the work we're doing, as if homelessness would go away if we went away."

Becky Gutierrez lived on the streets for several months before a spot opened up at Camp Hope more than a year ago. She said she became homeless when "everything went wrong with my finances all at once."

She appreciates the camp for the sense of security it gives her. She's one of several residents who said they prefer being in the camp to being on the streets.

"It's safer here than out there," Gutierrez said.

"It can get scary," said Diana Tollino. "You don't want to be on the street at all."

Tollino, 77, and her dog, Tisha, were at Camp Hope for the second time after she left a rental property amid disputes with her landlord. She didn't mind being back, however.

"It's pleasant," she said. "It's a good stepping stone to move forward again. They got rules, and that's fine. Follow the rules, and everything's OK."