Española residents and officials are at a deadlock. On a dusty bank of the Rio Grande, about 30 unhoused people live in limbo — waiting for resolution as the city vacillates between evicting them and allowing them to remain in their tent community.
Though authorities have bowed to the wishes of angry townspeople — and say they will soon shut down the encampment — the unhoused people have refused to leave, and Police Chief Mizel Garcia says his officers will not intervene. He says he refuses to “criminalize homelessness.”
To date, there has been no action or official word about how or when the tent residents will be forced out.
The threatened upheaval has created panic among the tent dwellers. Few, if any, know where they will go next. They’re afraid of losing their belongings and worry that their families and friends will no longer be able to find them.
The city’s only homeless shelter is overflowing, and many local residents are hostile and even violent toward them.
“I feel so lost,” said Matthew Duran, who shares a tent with his boyfriend and his boyfriend’s aunt. “I have no idea where I’m going to go.”
Until February, Duran and many of the other homeless people here were living on Ohkay Owingeh land behind the Walmart on Española’s main road. After the Pueblo cleared that encampment, the city, with assistance from Rio Arriba County and Española Pathways Shelter, moved them to a plot of land off Fairview Lane. Local officials offered them basic services, such as toilets, trash pickup and needle exchanges.
Española officials initially said they would close the encampment in early April, but time passed and they allowed the residents to stay. The encampment seemed to have improved some of the city’s most glaring problems, lowering the volume of emergency calls and reducing the amount of trash on city property. But with the arrival of spring rains, the swelling river began to endanger the tent community and passersby harassed and physically threatened its residents. The people living there say that city officials assured them they would be relocated to another plot of land.
Local resentment and harassment
Whatever promise may have been made fell apart after a town hall on May 16. Dozens of Española residents and taxpayers attended, many expressing deep anger about crime and drug use among the homeless population. They complained that law enforcement was inadequate and demanded that the city disband the encampment.
“Three weeks ago, my partner had a gun pulled on her face, trying to get someone out of our property,” said Linette Campos, who lives near the encampment. “Two weeks ago, the house right next to us got broken into. A week ago, they started a huge fire behind my house with an explosion.”
Attendees shouted out that the homeless people should be bused to other cities or states, though authorities say that most of them were born and raised in northern New Mexico. When one speaker threatened to take up arms if the tent residents broke into his house, audience members cheered.
“I’m all for getting rid of the homeless here,” said Buddy Espinosa, owner of Dandy Burger in Española. “As long as we keep supporting them, they’re gonna keep coming, they’re gonna keep coming, they’re gonna keep coming."
Eight days after the meeting, Española announced it would close the encampment within a week. City Manager Eric Lujan said that telling the encampment residents to leave was one of the hardest things he’s done. “I’ve been working with these people since I placed them in this encampment,” he said. “The help they were getting, it was working.”
City Executive Administrator Esperanza Trujillo and Assistant Fire Chief John Wickersham agreed that the encampment was making the city safer and helping unhoused people find stability.
‘This is what we go through’
The locals’ threats to take up arms aren’t empty. Tent residents have endured months of near-constant harassment from drivers crossing the bridge just north of the encampment. A reporter and photographer from Searchlight New Mexico witnessed it firsthand one quiet afternoon in April.
The river rolled by as some people napped in their tents and others returned from their jobs. A “Do Not Disturb Sign” hung in front of one tent, and a heart with the word “Love” dangled over another. Dogs lounged in the sun. A rainbow hammock swung in the breeze.
Then a gunshot, fired from the bridge, exploded the quiet.
“This is what we go through,” said Dee Martinez, barely glancing up at the sound. Martinez, who was born in Española, became homeless more than two decades ago after leaving a violent partner. Since moving to the encampment in February, she has found a job cleaning building sites.
Encampment residents report that drivers throw ice, rocks and fireworks at them, sometimes at night when people are sleeping.
“Get a job!” someone now shouted out a car window. “Go home,” another driver yelled.
Cities vary in their approach to homelessness
Homelessness has grown sharply across New Mexico, as it has everywhere in the country. From 2022 to 2023, according to a U.S. government study, the state’s homeless population grew from around 2,500 to 3,800; precise figures are notoriously difficult to calculate and these numbers are likely underestimations.
Cities are taking starkly different approaches to the problem. In the past year, Albuquerque has been bulldozing encampments and tossing out people’s treasured possessions. Las Cruces for over a decade has maintained an encampment where people can access water, food, bathrooms, mental health treatment and safe places to sleep. And this spring, Santa Feopened a village of tiny houses with case management and employment services.
By opening the encampment by the Rio Grande, promising people a long-term place to stay, and then evicting them, Española seems to be occupying an awkward middle ground. There are well over 150 unhoused people in the city, according to City Manager Lujan, and that number is increasing — largely due to a lack of affordable housing and the ongoing opioid epidemic.
If the camp closes, harm reduction workers from Rio Arriba County and El Centro Family Health say they may no longer be able to locate and treat clients. One of those clients is Matthew Duran, who lost his house and his job in 2019 after he broke his back in a car accident. Doctors overprescribed oxycodone for his back pain, he said, and when they abruptly cut him off from the drug, he turned to heroin and eventually fentanyl.
Duran has applied for numerous jobs — and has been repeatedly turned away. It’s a Catch-22: To afford a home he needs a job, to get a job he needs a home. At least here, he has a place to sleep. He also receives clean needles and basic medical care.
“By just ending the encampment without much of a plan in place, that can hurt the town, and that can feed into the concerns that the community members are already having,” said Dena Moscola, executive director of Española Pathways Shelter. “When there’s an encampment, people can receive services, they can get to treatment, they can get to the hospital, they can get food. They can get to what it takes to stay alive.”
This article first appeared on Searchlight New Mexico and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Searchlight New Mexico is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that seeks to empower New Mexicans to demand honest and effective public policy.
