The city operates a volunteer portal for residents to get involved — including in homelessness efforts — but there are other, perhaps not-so-common, options for Burqueños who want to help. Here are three to consider.
Help with a more accurate count
To secure critical federal funds for homelessness initiatives, the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness is required to make an attempt each year to count the number of people in the city experiencing homelessness.
The point-in-time (PIT) count requires scores of volunteers: Street teams walk sidewalks, cul-de-sacs, alleys, bike trails, arroyos and visit busy intersections. They look under bridges and scan the perimeters of vacant buildings. Once volunteers figure out someone is experiencing homelessness, they ask a series of survey questions.
The count has been expanded to a week this year — from Jan. 23 to Jan. 29 — and city officials say they’ll suspend encampment sweeps on those days to make it easier. The PIT count also serves as an outreach event to engage with the homeless community and hand out donations.
PIT count lead organizer William Bowen is looking for counters, and volunteers to deliver supplies to street teams, drive outreach teams and do data entry after the effort is completed. Click here for all the options and more information.
Homeless Coordinating Council on the hunt
Don’t let the term “subcommittee” make you reach for the delete key. The Homeless Coordinating Council (HCC) — a group that meets once a month — has recently formed new subcommittees and needs more help and expertise. This is not your typical wonky, drawn-out, government-suit led effort that does more talking than doing — at least not lately.
Albuquerque City Councilor Nichole Rogers, the HCC’s vice chair, has lit a fire under members to move quickly on what it was tasked to do — make real headway toward solving the metro areas crushing homelessness epidemic. There’s reason to be optimistic: The group is filled with folks who can make a real difference, whether from the city, Bernalillo County, Veterans Affairs or University of New Mexico Hospital. But they can’t do it all.
Rogers is asking for advocates, residents and those with lived experience of homelessness to sign up for subcommittees that include data-sharing and system barriers, reentry (after incarceration), African American homelessness, Native American homelessness and homelessness prevention.
Those who are interested can send an email to Ziarra Kirksey at district6@cabq.gov or call (505) 768-3152. More about the HCC is here.
Support an alternative to pooping on the streets
Don’t call it a red bucket, it’s the “New Mexico Circular Sanitation Project,” or more specifically, a composting toilet.
An unlikely effort led by Tawnya Mullen of the South San Pedro Neighborhood Association has picked up considerable momentum in recent months. The goal is to mitigate an expensive public health issue caused by a lack of public options that force those living on the street to urinate and defecate outdoors.
City and county officials are paying attention — many have given Mullen verbal support for the idea. City Desk ABQ wrote about the effort last November. Read “Are composting toilets an answer to city’s poop problems?” here.
Mullen said the project has about 50 volunteers so far — epidemiologists, physicians, public health experts, nurses, soil scientists, farmers, regenerative agriculturalists, hydrologists, business and property owners and area residents.
For more details on the project and to sign on to a letter of support, click here. Its Facebook group is here and a Google group here. Email organizers at nmcsbuildssoil@gmail.com.