Jake Schoellkopf/Special to The Tribune

Juan Garcia, a homeless Vietnam veteran, eats a slice of bread as he uses his wheelchair as a table for lunch at Robinson Park. A Catholic ministry called Trinity House offers lunch to the needy at the park on Sundays, but neighbors are growing increasingly concerned about the activity.

Jake Schoellkopf/Special to The Tribune

A homeless man sits with empty cups that were earlier filled with food provided by Trinity House at Robinson Park. Organizers say they have a social responsibility to help the needy, while neighbors say the homeless leave the park a mess.

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A perfect Sunday afternoon filters down through the trees of Robinson Park as a few dozen people fan out into the shade, many wearing pieces of military uniforms like stragglers from some long-retreating column.

Some sit at picnic tables, but most find their places in the shade alone, like Mike Scroggins. He pulls a pack of Basics from the pocket of his camouflage jacket and shakes free a smoke. He is homeless.

Volunteers from a left-wing Christian group pass through the assemblage with loaves of bread and paper towels. They have also brought a porta-potty, hitched to a trailer on their vegetable-oil powered truck.

Nathan Fox and Ivan Alley stand at a distance, watching. They own a home a block away and are tired of this scene - tired of the drugs and filth they say follow what they call "would-be Christian saviors" into their neighborhood.

"Number 1, they're not saving anyone," Fox is saying. "And No. 2, they're extremely irresponsible."

A woman asleep on the grass snores loudly a few feet away.

This is Robinson Park on a Sunday afternoon.

Comforting the afflicted

For some years, the park has served as a gathering place for the homeless, who were pushed here when courthouse construction erased McClellan Park a few blocks away.

But as development continues to spread Downtown, an influx of new business and home-owners have surrounded Robinson Park. And some, like Fox and Alley, say it's time for the homeless to move on.

Perhaps, they say, to the West Side, where a small Christian group calling itself Trinity House put down roots last year.

Trinity House is part of a loosely affiliated network known as the Catholic Worker. Most Catholic Worker houses focus on social activism and outreach to the very poor.

The house name refers to Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was tested in 1945.

Its founding member, Marcus Page, wears a T-shirt featuring an anarchy symbol encased in a heart.

Page, two volunteers and two guests live at Trinity House in an under-renovation home on Five Points Road decorated with residents' artwork. Tuesdays and Thursdays, a dozen or so people come by for showers and laundry service.

Sundays, volunteers meet at Trinity House and cook a meal, which they pack into the vegetable oil-powered van for the drive to Robinson Park.

Page says the group has tried to address the concerns of Downtown residents like Fox. But there's only so far they can go, he says. Because the poor are inconvenient.

"Jesus came to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable," he says. "I think society has the responsibility to face the problems it is creating, especially if it refuses to address them."

`Holier than thou'

Fox calls that sort of statement an example of Page and other Trinity House volunteers' "holier-than-thou attitude."

"They want to start talking about Jesus, but we have legitimate safety concerns, and they are disregarding those concerns," he says.

According to Fox, the Sunday afternoon meals make Robinson Park a mecca for homeless people. Along with the homeless people, he says, come drug dealers and prostitutes. As the day wears on, it is the volunteers who leave and the drug dealers who stay, he says.

That has led to an escalating conflict between Fox and Trinity House.

Fox recently penned a letter to the Weekly Alibi in which he said Trinity House "broke every health code possible" and called on the city to adopt tougher anti-vagrancy laws.

Page, in turn, describes Fox as a malcontent "bourgeoisie."

But, Page says, Fox's "whining, complaining attitude" has led to some improvements in the Sunday meal at the park.

Volunteers now take more time cleaning the park and complaints from neighbors led the Downtown Neighborhood Association to donate $500 that Trinity House used to buy a porta-potty.

Ivan Alley, who is Fox's partner, said the donation was a form of "negative support."

"It was either give them the money to buy a toilet or continue scraping human crap off the fence," he says.

Nearby residents aren't the only ones concerned by activities in the park.

When the Mid-Region Council of Governments relocated its headquarters to a renovated building facing the park last year, the group hoped its office at 809 Copper Ave. N.W. would serve as an anchor to draw more development into the neighborhood.

The council's executive director, Lawrence Rael, says he didn't expect the area to change overnight. It hasn't.

Within a few weeks of opening their building, Rael said, a homeless man walked in the front door, grabbed a letter opener and started threatening employees.

"He ran out, and we weren't able to retrieve the letter opener," Rael says.

Other incidents followed, and Rael says he and other employees have noticed a continuing flow of questionable activity in the park.

"You'll see a car drive up, someone walks up to the car, there's a quick interaction, and the car leaves," he says.

Alley and Fox describe similar scenes as well as other, more unusual activities. Someone stole the bronze statue that used to decorate a park fountain, they say. And Alley says he once caught a man trying to uproot a light pole.

"He was going to sell it to a recycling center as scrap metal," he says.

Rael, a former Albuquerque city manager, says he personally doesn't see a problem with feeding people in the park. But as the area continues to be gentrified, he says, attention will continue to focus on the park and its hungry visitors.

That's something Mike Scroggins can understand.

A veteran, Scroggins says he's homeless because he doesn't have an address. Without an address, he can't get a job, though he says he works wage labor. By Sunday, the money he made Friday is gone, and Robinson Park is the only place to get a meal.

"I know the neighborhood doesn't like seeing all these people in the park," he says. "All these homeless people."

He lights his cigarette.

"It unnerves them," he continues, drawing out the words. He can understand that, too. People asking for cigarettes and change, relieving themselves in people's lawns.

"It bothers me, too, and I'm one of them," Scroggins said. "But they're not bad people, just eternally broke."

As the Trinity House volunteers pack up and drive away, Scroggins picks up a paperback and reads in the shade.

A man wearing a gray and blue skullcap, who had been sitting at a picnic table eating, wanders over to an SUV with California plates and talks through the window.

Then he walks to a late-model Mustang, gets in, and drives off.

And the woman sleeping by Nathan Fox and Ivan Alley continues to snore.

It's a Sunday afternoon at Robinson Park.