Albuquerque Bookstore Owner Sues City to Continue Housing Homeless Neighbors

An Albuquerque bookstore owner is suing the city after he was fined $1,500 and ordered to evict unhoused people he was allowing to camp on his property. “The lawsuit seeks to affirm that private property rights include the right to compassionately help those in crisis without unreasonable interference from the government.”

Gil Kerley began allowing some homeless people to pitch tents in his bookstore’s parking lot and provided access to restrooms and water during the pandemic. Later, the city fined him and told him he had to remove the tents. Kerley asserts that “the city’s enforcement violates the inherent rights and due process guarantees of the New Mexico and U.S. Constitutions, which protect the longstanding right of owners to use their property peacefully to help those in need.”

Last year, the city enacted an ordinance criminalizing sleeping on public property, making private spaces like Kerley’s even more crucial to the survival of Albuquerque’s homeless population.

While the city has a Safe Outdoor Spaces (SOS) program for allowing people like Kerley to offer safe sleeping spaces, its onerous requirements make it difficult for small property owners to qualify. “City officials have proposed reforms that would streamline staffing and service requirements so that more private, well-run spaces can open across the city.”

According to one of the lawyers involved in the case, “Criminalizing sleep in both public and private places creates an impossible situation when shelters are full and people simply need a safe place to rest.”