Shopping cart ordinance is no solution

The Las Cruces City Council will consider an ordinance at the August 5 meeting to make shopping cart possession outside of the normal grocery radius a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine or time in jail. (Theft of a cart is already a crime.) Proponents suggest the ordinance will help “clean up the streets,” but those arguments are deeply dehumanizing and flawed.

The proposed ordinance is both cruel and impractical. The alternative interventions proposed in the ordinance for individuals who are charged do not currently exist in Las Cruces, leaving the police with no option but to jail people. The city, county and state should be working together to (re)build mental health infrastructure, expand diversion programs and fund substance use treatment. As taxpayers, we should question whether incarcerating someone for possession of a shopping cart or asking for money in a median at the cost of $186 per day is the best use of our money. In comparison, it costs $25 per day to house someone in an efficiency apartment.

In the past year, the Mesilla Valley Community of Hope served 2,584 women, 400 veterans, 130 children in homeless families and 104 people over 65. Do we really want to be a community that sees incarceration and punishment of women, veterans and seniors, and diverting children from their families to the foster care system as the means to render invisible the homeless population?

People experiencing homelessness are a very vulnerable population. Most have suffered successive traumas, and often their whole world is reduced to a shopping cart. One veteran reflected on his life on the streets and said it is more terrifying than being in combat. Unhoused people are often the victims of violent crime, especially women and elders.

When someone is charged with a misdemeanor, it makes it more difficult for them to get a rental lease or a job in the future. Adding charges to the records of individuals living on the street will undermine our community’s ongoing, holistic approach to homelessness through housing, support services and enhancing employability.

Homelessness is a crisis that calls for community efforts and creative solutions, not rhetorical and legal villainization. Instead of reactively punishing the poor in an attempt to remove them from view, we urge the city of Las Cruces to further invest in innovative solutions to address homelessness. As a community, we can and will overcome the challenges that contribute to people becoming unhoused, but not by giving tickets to folks whose entire world has been reduced to what will fit into a shopping cart.  We urge the city council to vote no on these ordinances.

Nicole Martinez is the executive director of Mesilla Valley Community of Hope