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Despite a University policy, homeless people sleeping on UNM’s Albuquerque campus continue to be a problem for police and groundskeeping.
Policy 2270 prohibits people from camping on University grounds. But UNMPD Public Information Officer Lt. Tim Stump said the problem of the homeless population on campus continues to persist.
“We try to address it as it comes up,” he said. “We have patrols throughout the nights and the day time. We do a lot of walkthroughs through campus.”
Stump said while officers do patrols, it is not possible to completely keep all homeless people from sleeping on campus.
“You can’t completely control it. It’s an open campus,” he said. “You’ve got the grass, the trees and a lot of availability for them to come onto campus. But we try to nip it in the bud before it even starts.”
Homeless people sleeping on campus usually pose a bigger problem for the University community late at night and early in the morning, Stump said.
“It’s easier for us to get to them because everyone on campus is calling it in,” he said. “But once it’s late at night, because campus is empty, they’ll try to sneak on and what not. So we try to avert that.”
Stump also said the homeless don’t sleep in any particular place on campus.
“It’s a pretty open place,” he said. “It’s a park setting. They have the grass, the trees. It’s a beautifully landscaped campus, so they find a lot of areas to kind of hide in.”
Stump said when officers find homeless people on campus, they usually try to measure their level of intoxication to determine whether they can be moved to a shelter or whether they have to be taken to the hospital.
“If they just need help, we try to lead them to the shelters,” he said. “Also we have MATS (Metropolitan Assessment and Treatment Services), a program where we can take them to try to get help.”
According to the Bernalillo County website, MATS Detox is a voluntary detoxification program for residents and homeless people in the county. The program requires participants to be at least 18 years old and they may not have an arrest warrant or a restraining order.
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William West, manager of grounds and landscaping for the Physical Plant Department, said his department is sometimes called on to clean up after the homeless.
“Typically the way the process works is UNMPD will contact us and make the request to clean up,” he said. “Our primary response is to clean up bodily fluids and other things like that that have been left behind. Unfortunately, there’s usually a lot of that. And we need to do that to keep the campus environment safe for obvious reasons.”
West said the PPD then posts a sign notifying the owner of whatever belongings were left behind that they have 24 hours to clean up. After one day has passed, the PPD disposes of the objects, West said.
West said the homeless sleeping on campus has always been a problem at UNM.
“We always have had instances where we’ve had to deal with this,” he said. “It’s not that it’s more or less common.”
