Mesilla Valley Community of Hope exchanging shopping carts for wagons before law enforcement starts • Source New Mexico

LAS CRUCES – Mesilla Valley Community of Hope staff are working to trade shopping carts used by unhoused citizens with other means of transporting their belongings, but so far the substitutes are less than durable.

Community of Hope is a nonprofit organization that offers various services to unhoused community members in the Las Cruces area. Several weeks ago the staff brought together  wagons and rolling luggage donations. These were offered as a substitute for their clients to use in place of shopping carts, an item that can soon lead to a local criminal citation if taken from private property.

Nicole Martinez, the organization’s executive director, said the community “stepped up” and donated items as well as funding for the group to get wagons out to people after city councilors passed two new ordinances on Aug. 5. 

“So far, wagons are sort of already breaking down,” Martinez said. “Our outreach team has been going out and giving as many wagons as they can to people and then returning the carts. But we’ve had people come back where the wheels immediately have come off and broken.”

Martinez also said many clients have disabilities that make it difficult for them to pull a wagon.

The call for wagons from Community of Hope came in response to a shopping cart ordinance passed 4-3 by the Las Cruces City Council, making it a violation of city code to remove shopping carts from business establishments.

The ordinance was one of two adopted by the council this summer that will directly affect people who are unhoused within city limits. 

The second ordinance prohibits solicitation on private property and some solicitations, like panhandling , on roadway medians.

The new Las Cruces law describes wrecked, dismantled and abandoned shopping carts as a “nuisance,” a potential health, welfare or safety hazard and an interference with pedestrian and roadway traffic. The ordinance also states that shopping carts can reduce property values and “promote blight and neighborhood deterioration within the city.” 

“What I see and say as a mayor is we’ve got to start somewhere, and we move towards the direction that’s going to benefit us all, including those on the street,” Las Cruces Mayor Eric Enriquez said to The Las Cruces Bulletin. “It’s not just ‘enforce a law’ or that we just penalize and incarcerate everybody, it’s a law that we try to make our city safer.”

Las Cruces businesses begin drafting plans to follow the new law

Business owners were also called on by the city council to create a plan for retrieving shopping carts from parking lots and reducing how many carts are taken from their property.

“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,” said Nicole Martinez, executive director of Mesilla Valley Community of Hope, in an op-ed published by the Las Cruces Sun-News.

The Las Cruces Bulletin reported that not long after the ordinances were passed, one woman was left collecting her personal belongings from a parking lot after Albertsons employees reclaimed the grocery’s branded cart she was using.

The shopping cart ordinance officially went into effect on Aug. 16, but Las Cruces police announced that their officers will delay enforcing the new law for 60 days to allow people to educate themselves.

“Even though this has felt really divisive, I think we’re all trying to find a solution that works for our community and that doesn’t work against our most vulnerable citizens,” Martinez said. “Once the ordinances are in effect, we still might have some poor outcomes, but I’m really hopeful that we can mitigate as many of those as possible.”

City community development and police department staff will hold a meeting Tuesday to answer questions from business owners about creating their “shopping cart plan.”