Two consistent issues of concern among city officials, residents and business owners in Albuquerque are crime and homelessness. But conflating the two is a mistake and leads to the baseless stigmatization and criminalization of the unhoused, say advocates for those living on the streets and in shelters.
Dozens of advocates and activists gathered at Robinson Park in Downtown on Wednesday to decry high incarceration rates of those experiencing homelessness and to call out city officials for aggressive encampment sweeps and a proposed “no-obstruction zone” that would prohibit anyone from sitting or lying down on Downtown sidewalks.
“I know a lot of us were at City Council on Monday trying to resist this new ordinance that’s going to criminalize people for basically being homeless in public,” Daniel Williams said at the “Right to Rest” event. “I was struck by the lies that we heard. We keep hearing leaders blame valid concerns about community safety on our unhoused neighbors.”
Williams is the policing policy advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico .