Housing looms large in governor’s Albuquerque town hall

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, along with Albuquerque and state officials listen to a speaker during a public safety town hall. This is the second listening session Lujan Grisham hosted on the topic. People from the public rose their hand to speak. (Photo by Shaun Griswold / Source NM)

At the second of a series of town hall meetings on Monday night, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham heard from members of the public for six hours.

In an auditorium at Central New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque, locals raised issues ranging from difficulty finding mental health treatment, unfair or unlawful evictions, lack of communication from the government offices responsible for victims of crime, and visible poverty in their neighborhoods.

“Every time I drive somewhere, in every single community, I see risks that are easy to see — that’s not every public safety issue — I see these risks escalating and growing exponentially,” Lujan Grisham said.

The governor was joined by a panel of elected and appointed government officials including Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller, Senior Public Safety Advisor Benjamin Baker, Health Secretary Patrick Allen, Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen, Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina, City Councilor Joaquin Baca, Albuquerque Associate Chief Administrative Officer Mariela Ruiz-Angel and Chief Deputy District Attorney Joshua Boone.

Audience member Kevin Cooper said people with substance use disorder should be put into the Metropolitan Detention Center, the county jail outside of Albuquerque. He said the jail is being “underutilized” because of bail reform . He was not the only one to suggest putting mentally ill people or those with substance use disorder into locked facilities.

“Let’s reimagine the Metropolitan Detention Center, call it the Metropolitan Development Center, and put people out there to get them off of drugs, into rehabilitation, into job learning,” Cooper said. “There’s a hospital out there. There’s 2000 beds tonight, ladies and gentlemen, that could house our homeless.”

Comments like that scared Erica Davis-Crump, a mental health advocate who also attended the town hall.

“The stigmatization as I listen to a person of a certain demographic say that they want to fill the beds at MDC — as the daughter of the oldest in my home, where my intersection needs — my baby brother is panhandling out there somewhere,” she said. “I’m so scared for the intersection that my family sits at, and what that means for those that don’t have an option to have an exodus from here.”

Lujan Grisham has insisted that her legislative agenda is not intended to criminalize poverty or stigmatize mental illness.

“These issues are not about criminalizing being poor, unhoused, or mentally ill,” she said. “But there is an intersection.”

Taryn, a licensed social worker who was in the audience, told Lujan Grisham that’s exactly what she is doing with her policies.

“Our system was not meant for justice,” she said. “It was meant to oppress and marginalize people, and that’s what it continues to do, and that’s how I see your policies: as continuing to marginalize individuals.”

She said putting people in prisons or psychiatric facilities still doesn’t solve the lack of resources once they get out.

Lujan Grisham said she thinks “we need the jail, unfortunately, to be available until we get caught up.”

She said there are the resources available to build “a place for people to go, that’s not just a shelter, that’s really a reimagining how we lift people up.”

“But people have to want to go, and by and large, far too many people that are intersecting these systems are unwilling to go and stay in these programs,” the governor said. “I think part of that is we’re not getting to the right folks.”

An audience member who did not identify themselves said they have experienced homelessness and came up with a question for the governor while trying to sleep in the cab of his pickup truck.

“I’ve heard a lot of ideas of where the homeless should be, whether it’s prisons, or mental facilities, or hotels that are refurbished,” they said. “I noticed the one answer that never comes up is a place of their own.”

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