Drop-in center to soon help homeless students
Group leases Ruidoso home after 3 years of work
RUIDOSO — The High Mountain Youth Project has signed a lease on a Ruidoso house where it hopes to open a drop-in center for homeless high school students in time to serve Thanksgiving dinner there next month.
“We’ve worked for three years on this project,” said Kelly Robbins, HMYP board president. “We’re extremely grateful to have found what we consider to be a perfect location.”
HMYP was founded to create a safe space for students whose family situations have left them unable to live with parents and forced them in some cases to improvise a series of shortterm living arrangements with friends, extended family or even in cars or public parks.
The afternoon drop-in center is intended as a first step toward establishment of a 24-hour shelter.
Ruidoso school officials each year have identified a few dozen students of high school age living in these circumstances, struggling to maintain school attendance and grades without knowing from week to week whether they will have a safe place to sleep, dress and do their homework.
Social workers and other staff at Ruidoso High School help out as best they can during school hours with a food pantry, lockers and bathroom facilities for anyone who needs them. But outside school hours, students who no longer live at home are on their own.
Soon they won’t have to be, if HMYP can overcome the last few obstacles it faces before it opens the doors at the new premises.
The house needs dishes, kitchenware and linens, as well as some essential items of furniture. It needs to organize a staff of trained volunteers to provide adult supervision and referrals to social services or other support when it’s needed. It also needs to find insurance coverage, and of course money to pay the rent and other operating expenses.
Perhaps most critical, HMYP needs a conditional use permit from the village Planning and Zoning department similar to what would be required for operating a day care center in a residential neighborhood.
One goal of HMYP is to protect the privacy of young people who work hard to keep up normal appearances at school.
“Everyone’s so judgmental,” said former RHS student Allouette Hummer. “It’s a hard time in your life, and high-schoolers can be jerks.”
Hummer, 27, said she wasn’t aware that RHS had a homeless student problem, but she did have one friend who lived in a tent.
She said it was really hard,” Hummer recalled. “She lived alone and had to wake up really early to get dressed and make sure she looked clean and neat. She didn’t want anyone to know.”