Jaemes Shanley is a resident of the Mark Twain neighborhood located in the mid heights. He first arrived in Albuquerque in August 1969, after graduating High School in England, to attend UNM from which he graduated in 1973. His parents followed a year later, and his father retired in Albuquerque after a 30 year career as a US Naval aviator. In 1971 they purchased a home in the Mark Twain neighborhood where they resided for the remainder of their lives. Jaemes worked a lifetime in the private sector in sales and marketing for various corporations in the United States, Australia, and Japan. His worked required extensive travel throughout Asia Pacific and Latin America routinely on the ground in more than 30 countries. Jaemes and his wife returned to Albuquerque in September 2006 to renovate and take up residence in his parent’s Mark Twain neighborhood home where they reside today, becoming actively involved with Neighborhood Associations.
JAEMES SHANLEY GUEST OPINION COLUMN
EDITOR’S DISCCLAIMER: Following is a guest opinion column written by Jaemes Shanley. The editor has added section headlines to assist readers. The opinions expressed in this guest opinion column by Jaemes Shanley do not necessarily reflect those of the www.petedinelli.com blog. Mr. Shanley gave consent to publish his guest column and he was not compensated for it. The guest column is being published as a public service announcement to educate citizens of Albuquerque and neighborhood associations.
A MARK TWAIN NEIGHBORHOOD PERSPECTIVE OF ALBUQUERQUE
Before the social media revolution, neighborhoods were the anchoring secular bedrock of community in America. They reflected and reinforced shared values, security, and above all, respect for the ownership or occupancy of property. They influenced, supported, and were supported by surrounding businesses. Children could be raised, play on its sidewalks and streets, and walk to and from school or bus stops. Property owners invested effort and money in the maintenance and improvement of their property with reasonable assurance the value of the investment would accrue to a stable if not increasing real estate valuation. Neighborhood streets were the “media” of face-to-face social interaction.
I live in the Mark Twain neighborhood, part of what is often referred to as the near northeast heights. When my parents acquired the house that is now my home the area was an iconic manifestation of an American polity and economy anchored in the expectation and realization of upward mobility. After 30 years of the nomadic military life, my parents reveled in the interaction and relationship formation the neighborhood offered, including an enduring decades long friendship with near neighbors Manuel and Jean Luhan who were residents here the entirety of his U.S. Congressional and Cabinet career.
My business travel through midsize towns of Ohio and Indiana in the early 2000’s alerted me to a troubling visible decay occurring in this country, but it was surprising and alarming to see it taking root in parts of Albuquerque a decade later. Over the past ten years anyone driving along many of our main corridors has witnessed scenes and sites of destitution and desperation that defy any cognitive reconciliation with the notion we live in the richest and most powerful nation on earth. In too many neighborhoods, including mine, a drive is no longer necessary to witness this stark visible contradiction of the national self-image I have held as an American all my life. At best it is only blocks away. At worst it can be seen on the sidewalk in front of my house. I had to travel to Mumbai India in 1994 to witness for the first time the kind of squalor and poverty I can now see in vast swaths of Albuquerque.
This is not the product of change in my neighborhood’s residential demographic and properties. It is the effect of an unchecked tide of downward mobility and economic marginalization within Albuquerque’s population, expressed in a steadily growing “community” residing on our streets, unanchored by neighborhood attachment, and characterized by subsistence level living, vagrancy, desperation, addiction, and, often, criminality. The most pronounced direction of that wave has been from the southeast International District toward us. In addition to frequent vagrancy and incidents of crime in the neighborhood, the irrefutable evidence of these changes can be seen in the nature and targeted clientele of surrounding businesses.
THE EVOLUTION OF FAIR PLAZA SHOPPING CENTER
Fair Plaza Shopping Center, positioned at the northwest corner of Lomas and San Pedro, was once a top tier boutique-like destination with Baskin-Robbins, locally owned Book Store, Gift Shop & Florist, an Imports emporium, a Wine Bar frequented by local residents, and upscale Smiths supermarket. To gain a sense today of what Fair Plaza was like 20-30 years ago, visit Mountain Run Shopping Center located on far north Eubank Blvd. Fair Plaza today is a destination catering largely to the economically challenged. As it draws an increasing proportion of its clientele from the food desertified areas to the southeast, the Smiths supermarket is defeatured in products offered compared to other Smiths supermarkets and it anchors a collection of businesses that cater not to the economic middle class but to the economically distressed bottom end of extreme inequality, including the unhoused.
The boutique-like businesses are gone and replaced by a Goodwill Depot, Family Dollar, RAC Rent-to-own Center, Safe House Thriftique, an anonymous unsigned homeless food support facility, a model railroad display, basic nail & hair salons and multiple vacant spaces. The corner gas station is now a windowless fortressed Stripes drive thru. Similar trends can be seen among business locations along both Lomas and San Pedro. Many of the once luxury apartment complexes on Louisiana between Lomas and I-40 have become low cost, often short-term rental accommodation. As the commercial and alleyway periphery of the neighborhood has become increasingly the domain of vagrancy, drug-dealing, and worse, local businesses are failing, fleeing, or closing.
COMMERCIAL COORIDORS PROTECT NEIGHBORHOOS
Commercial corridors surrounding neighborhoods are more than a collection of services and suppliers. They are also a protective “membrane” that encloses and, to a degree, protects and defines the borders and identity of neighborhoods. The reconstitution of our nation’s retail economy over the past two decades, especially from concentration into big box enterprises and online shopping, have been powerful and effective forces eroding the viability of many categories of small business. With their “immune systems” already undermined, they are seriously under protected from the impact and customer repelling effects of being surrounded by or trespassed upon by the vagrant or encamped homeless, a percentage of them impaired by addiction, who too often are the source of further incursions onto residential private property, often with vocal harassment, indiscriminate littering and fires, petty theft or vandalism, and occasionally escalating to serious crime or violence.
Many of us who reside here in Mark Twain have had personal experience of this. If not witness to shootings, dead bodies in alleyways, or, most recently, a middle-of-the-night shooting/murder at Mountain and Georgia NE, we are certainly aware of them. Residents of Mark Twain have reason to feel “under siege”. Seeing the more advanced effects of this street homelessness crisis in other areas of Albuquerque, like the International District “war zone”, residents talk of selling and relocating to gated enclaves or safer neighborhoods on the west side of Albuquerque. We can reasonably fear a “hollowing out” of Mark Twain in which property values plateau independent of the overall market and then start an inexorable decline.
There is no justification to be tolerated for this possibility. The construction and maintained quality of homes in the neighborhood, its proximity to UNM, major hospitals, downtown Albuquerque, the freeways, and Uptown, Winrock, and Coronado shopping centers should preserve the value and attractiveness of homes in the Mark Twain neighborhood now and for future generations.
YARDSALE INTERACTION REVEALS ANGST AND FRUSTRATION
This is the context in which I conducted a yard sale at my house in early November, as a resident aware of and concerned about what was going on, but living, even if disapprovingly, in the cocoon of my own property and interaction with immediately adjacent neighbors, paying more attention to national politics than local affairs.
Over the course of two weekends, I encountered and conversed with a variety of fellow Mark Twain residents I had not previously met. The levels of angst, frustration, and resentment I heard from them at the seeming inaction to address the blight on our borders was head snapping. I subsequently joined a small group to spearhead an organized effort through the Neighborhood Association to specifically address the dissolving of safety and security.
MAYOR KELLER’S CONSTRUCTIVE CONVESATION EVENTS
Last November that seemed a daunting, if not quixotic quest. We had a sense that City government, including APD, were overwhelmed and ineffective at tackling this issue. Starting out in Don Quixote mode the initiative quickly morphed into a kind of Alice in Wonderland as I tumbled down, aimless and uneducated, into the rabbit hole of civic engagement. Fortuitously, the Mayor’s office announced at this time a series of Constructive Conversation events focused specifically on the “homeless” crisis. I entered the Convention Center on December 7th for the first of these feeling dubious and cynical. I came away surprised and impressed by the scope and specificity of initiatives and the measurable advances being made. A broad and costly ($57 million annually) effort is being made by the City, in concert with an array of non-Profits and teams of concerned citizens to get people off the streets and offer a navigated path to recovery and restoration of secure and purposeful life.
I was gratified to experience the willingness of the Mayor and his team to reach out, engage with and earnestly discuss the issue in all its dimensions with members of the community. Attending a second event a week later confirmed my impressions but the most important takeaway was Mayor Keller’s forthright acknowledgement. Mayor Keller said this:
“We’re acting with urgency, but what the City can do alone is not enough. We are inviting everyone to come to the table, pool our resources and turn the tide on homelessness.”
I soon came to realize what he meant. In the following weeks, seeking knowledge and insight as a basis for future action, I engaged with the District 7 Coalition of Neighborhood Associations, the Inter-Coalition Council (of Neighborhood Associations), City Council (and my District Councilor), the Transformative Neighborhood Planning Group, StrongTownsABQ, NM Coalition to End Homelessness and the Point In Time count and survey of street homeless in the city, and spent half a day riding the full route of the ART. I am, at this stage relative to the complexity of the street homelessness problem, a graduate from kindergarten into first grade.
PLIGHT OF CITY’S HOMELESSNESS
The plight of Albuquerque’s homeless merits empathy and screams for radical and sustained remedial action. It is far too easy to be appalled at distance and forget that each unhoused person in our city is a human being who has a story. While it might be excruciatingly uncomfortable, we would all benefit in our capacity to understand and address this tragedy if we could, even mentally, walk a mile in their shoes. Apart from the evident misery, anyone who has, like me, witnessed up close over three decades the extraordinary transformation of a third world nation of 1.4 billion people into a first world rival superpower knows we in the United States have no spare human potential to waste. With all the attention the issue commands it is evident the “pooling of resources and coordination of parties at the table” to make transformative progress in Albuquerque has yet to occur.
A MOSAIC OF NEIGHBORHOODS
The City of Albuquerque is a mosaic of neighborhoods, each one defined uniquely by a degree of commonality in attributes historical, aesthetic, and socio-economic; not homogenous, but imbued with a capacity for connection. If any of the pieces of the mosaic are degraded by the rupture and destabilization of incursion or occupation by elements alien to a neighborhood’s common attributes and aspirations, be they criminals, gangs, or homeless encampments, then the total picture of Albuquerque as a city is tarnished and blighted, enough to discourage not only current residents but also the potential relocation here by professionals and specialists the City may (almost certainly will) need.
An explosion of street homelessness should not / must not oblige neighborhoods to surrender their freedoms, as responsible property owners and residents who wish to live in safety, privacy, and harmony, to the irresponsible and unrestrained freedom of others to infringe upon neighborhood residential and commercial property, spaces, and safety. We can see in other parts of Albuquerque what such surrender looks like. When neighborhoods are “lost” to this issue, everyone suffers. As the tax base of residential property, adjacent retail premises and area economic activity erodes, the City cannot depend upon its replacement via extended urban sprawl toward its outer edges. The problem will follow, as even residents on the western edge of Corrales are now experiencing.
The City’s Neighborhood Association Recognition Ordinance (NARO) and various clauses of the Integrated Development Ordinance emphasize and codify the essential role of neighborhoods in the life and direction of the City. It is time for them to be a more assertive voice and contributor at the table as Albuquerque grapples with the issue of street homelessness.
A Neighborhood “Bill of Rights”
- A neighborhood is a collective extension of the rights and freedoms that apply to the individual property owners and residents of which it is comprised.
- As an aggregate of tax and rate payers, the neighborhood collective is entitled to expect from City, County, and State officials the delivery of services that include basic security and safety from harmful incursion by individuals who are not members of the neighborhood.
- The public spaces within the neighborhood, including sidewalks, alleyways, and parks, should be freely and safely accessible to members of the neighborhood, including children, and should be free of vagrants, encampments, and the refuse thereof.
- Vehicle transit from arterial roads through the neighborhood should be safe and reasonably quiet. Compliance should be reinforced as necessary with stop signs, speed bumps, or roundabouts. Residents should be able to report violators to agencies of public safety with an expectation of redress.
- Residents of the neighborhood should, to the best of their ability and means, support those adjacent businesses that reflect and/or serve their values and interests.
- Businesses adjacent to the neighborhood that do not reflect or serve the interests or values of neighborhood residents should not expect their patronage. Those that directly or indirectly operate contrary to the welfare, harmony, and safety of neighborhood residents should be actively opposed and reported for violations of public wellbeing.
THE MISSION OF NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATIONS
It should be the priority MISSION of Mark Twain Neighborhood Association, and others similarly affected, to:
a). Engage with and join the chorus of representative voices demanding City, County & State government prioritize resources to effectively reduce linked issues of Homelessness, Addiction, and Criminality
b). Organize and activate to be a viable and visible template for positive Neighborhood Association influence in the community
c). Be an “always on” resource for residents to be comprehensively and non-politically informed of issues and initiatives that impact them as members of the neighborhood and residents of Albuquerque
AN AGENDA NEEDED TO AMPLIFY ENGAGEMENT
[A Neighorhood Association] Agenda [Is Needed] to Amplify Internal Engagement [And] External Influence. [The agenda would]:
- Maximize the “voice” – form or extend Associations to embrace the full community within their boundaries
- Leverage the experience and model of existing effective NA’s in Albuquerque
- Activate neighborhood association websites as a primary platform for residents to be kept aware continually of issues, actions, events, options, and resources.
- Reflect neighborhood unique positives and potential
- Objective reporting of issues of concern
- Offer free advertising/endorsement of “good” local businesses to the neighborhood community
- Incorporate a neighborhood “Angi’s List”-like endorsement of businesses and services based in the neighborhood and/or with which neighbors have had great experience.
- Establish a social media account (ie. Facebook) exclusive to neighborhood residents where incidents, issues and events can be reported and discussed in real time. Moderate & manage it with the care and responsiveness of a good corporate customer support center.
- Fully connect the neighborhood via the Neighborhood Association with APD Crime Prevention and reporting programs like Neighborhood Watch or Neighborhood Patrol
- Use as the “official conduit” for reporting and logging contacts to public safety (ie. Police, ACS, Fire Dept.) authorities
- Coordinate dissemination of “public safety/security” information to residents (via website, social media, email)
- Incident reports
- Compile and share a database of incidents experienced by residents
- [Make] home security measures recommendations and endorsements
- Engage with the District Neighborhood Association Coalition to keep it aware of neighborhood priorities and initiatives and to learn from adjacent N.A.’s.
- Reach out to community focused media to generate awareness of Neighborhood rights and violations thereof
- TV news
- Radio news
- Newspapers & newsletters
- Blogs
- Social media
- Be timely and assertive with “claims” and requests to City Council, Mayor’s Office, Police & ACS, Bernalillo County, Attorney General’s Office etc. on issues of concern to the Neighborhood
- Connect and engage with organizations and coalitions beyond the District (ICC, StrongTownsABQ, NMCEH, etc.) which are actively working on the street homelessness problem.
- Advocacy / voter mobilization for non-ideological common sense local government ordinances and initiatives.
- Support neighborhood residents with “neighborly information kits” and sharing of resources to maximize security, residential quality of life, and property values
- Camera systems, security doors, alarm systems etc.
- Energy efficiency
- Experiences with green transitioning (solar panels, heat pumps, appliances, etc.)
- Landscaping / tree pruning etc.
- Volunteers available for ride sharing (for medical, voting etc.)
- Assistance for elderly or infirm (heaving lifting, weeding/yard work etc.)
- Emergency & community support contacts
The time to start was actually quite a while ago, before so many of our streets became blighted and so many of our small businesses were driven under, when driving Central Avenue still conveyed a sense of travelling along historic Route 66.
It’s not too late. Coordinating effort and direction among the very large number of passionate, gifted and actively committed people who are “on the case”, like those I have encountered so far in my journey down the “rabbit hole”, to protect, polish, and restore all the pieces in Albuquerque’s extraordinary mosaic is an effort the city needs and deserves. We should remind ourselves and each other that each piece of that mosaic is a Neighborhood with a voice that must matter.
POSTSCRIPT
Links to two blog articles of interest
A Brief History of Downtown Albuquerque: 1952 to 2019
https://www.petedinelli.com/2019/03/29/a-brief-history-of-downtown-albuquerque-1952-to-2019/
A Brief History of Uptown Albuquerque: 1952 to 2019
https://www.petedinelli.com/2019/04/23/a-brief-history-of-abq-uptown-1952-to-2019/
