Schneider Park, the Ninth Street Bridge and the adjacent Animas River Trail in Durango are common hangout spots for a portion of the city’s homeless population. But they are also part of a prominent downtown pedestrian corridor, and some residents are reaching their wit’s ends with their unhoused neighbors.
For the last several years, reports of criminal activity often associated with homeless people have rung out from residents calling from Schneider Park along Roosa Avenue north of Ninth Street and other areas between there and the Albertsons grocery store to the south.
Durango Police Department Cmdr. Nick Stasi described that stretch of public space, businesses and apartments as a hot spot for reports of criminal activity. Open alcohol containers and drug use, vandalism, and illegal camping are the usual offenses, he said.
Yet, the number of reports received by police have dropped this year compared with last year, according to police data. Still, some Durango residents have had enough.
River Roost Apartments resident Matt Hogberg, who moved to Durango from Portland, Oregon, in September, attended a City Council meeting last month to plead for something to be done.
River Roost shares a parking lot with Applebee’s and is directly south of Ninth Street, well within the hot spot for reported criminal activity described by Stasi.
“I’ve had a knife pulled on me, I’ve had people threatening me with weapons,” Hogberg said. “The property is a thoroughfare for people coming off of the river.”
He said River Roost property management has been unresponsive to his concerns, at most telling him he can find a new place to live if he doesn’t like conditions there.
A representative from River Roost, which is owned by international property management and real estate investment company Greystar, declined to comment for this story, saying she is not authorized to speak to the media.
Hogberg acknowledged police efforts to patrol the Animas River Trail, but he said those efforts have driven homeless people onto the River Roost property. People are sleeping in the apartment’s and Albertsons parking lots, a bike path leading from the trail to River Roost is often littered with glass and Hogberg can hardly walk his dog without running into trouble, he said.
He said he’s recovering from a recent surgery to prevent cancer, and although he recently moved to Durango from Portland, he’s from Colorado and has family in the state. He just wants a safe place to call home.
“I’m happy to be a member of this community. The property, Greystar property management, has decided that their solution is just to tell me I can leave,” he said. “That’s not a solution to me. It’s not. I need a place to live.”
Stasi, while sympathetic to Hogberg’s experience, said he isn’t sure criminal activity has increased at River Roost.
The addition of pickleball courts at Schneider Park, which opened this spring, has not successfully pushed homeless people out of the area as some people had hoped, he said.
The police department received 218 calls from residents reporting alleged criminal activity between September and November this year in the area from Schneider Park south to Albertsons. In the summer, from June to August, it received 193 reports for the same area.
That’s lower than reports through the same time frames last year, which totaled 321 calls from June to August 2023 and 277 calls from September to November 2023, Stasi said.
Stasi attributed the downtrend to the city hiring police service technicians and opening park ranger positions in the past year.
Year-over-year, reports of trespassing dropped from 75 in 2023 to 18 this year in the area from Schneider Park south to Albertsons, he said, adding the caveat that reports are subjective to whoever is calling them in. One person might describe an incident as trespassing while another might describe the same incident as illegal camping, for example.
Although total reports are fewer this year than last year, the River Roost has been a source of criminal complaints for a long time, Stasi said. Formerly the Downtown Durango Inn, it is located close to downtown bars and restaurants and was frequented by travelers who would go out for drinks and become rowdy. Alcohol-related offenses, domestic violence and disorderly conduct were common calls DPD received then.
Since Oct. 1, DPD has made three arrests on the River Roost property, two of which involved warrants, he said.
“That hotel has gone through a face-lift and a name change, and the type of incidents have changed, but it’s still a centrally located facility that is going to have high traffic, and sometimes with high traffic (comes) more incidents,” he said.
He said the way forward is communication and collaboration with business owners and residents. DPD has made the general Schneider Park area and the south Camino del Rio corridor a priority for patrols in recent months.
Stasi said he met with property managers at Albertsons, River Roost and the The Commons, which houses the Durango Adult Education Center and other programs, two weeks ago to discuss public safety.
While visiting Albertsons, he noticed parking lot lights were not turning on until late in the evening, well past sundown around 5 p.m. He said Albertsons immediately adjusted its timers so its parking lot lights would turn on earlier.
“There was a section of land that the new manager wasn’t aware that actually belonged to them, where we’ve been having some trash piling up, and so they’re working now to clean up that trash that’s there,” he said. “... So it’s just a lot of communication and figuring out what’s happening.”
He said he is working with River Roost to see if outside security cameras can be installed and waiting to hear back.
“There is certainly a perception of crime and a perception of safety that people have, and we want to help them feel safe when they’re in our town,” he said.
cburney@durangoherald.com
