Inside the coyote fence that sits beside Christ Lutheran Church at the fork between Saint Michaels Drive and Old Pecos Trail, two rows of tiny white pallet homes sit in a line. One is decorated with potted purple flowers. Others have been set up with lawn chairs or tiny gardens. Each of them houses one homeless person—except for one.
On a cloudy Monday morning, The Life Link site coordinator Nicholas Tharpe prepares a recently vacated pallet home at the Arroyo Chamiso Micro Community for a new arrival.
The Life Link’s case managers have operated this haven for the homeless since early 2024, helping clients with housing and voucher applications, updating benefits, renewing insurance and obtaining birth certificates, social security cards and IDs to get them back on track to a more stable life. They also set housing and health goals with their residents individually.
Adam Ferguson
Adam Ferguson
Adam Ferguson
“We've got a solid nine that have been permanently housed out of the 36 people we've had total, which may not sound like a lot, but that is tremendous for our population, who can't pass background checks or don't stick around long enough to actually engage in services to get the housing voucher,” Tharpe tells SFR. “There's a lot of barriers that our folks come up against.”
Additionally, he says nearby neighbors and business owners have yet to complain about the micro community residents, and there have not been any incidents at the site that required calling police.
“I think I've only had to call the non-emergency [police number] twice, just to be on standby…but usually we reach out to the fire department. We're all trained in trauma-informed crisis de-escalation, so we usually can handle all that ourselves,” Tharpe says. “The cops never come here, and when I've talked to them out in the community, they have no idea we're even here—we're not on their radar.”
Despite this community’s success so far, the City of Santa Fe’s progress toward establishing at least two more micro communities around town has been met with ire from would-be neighbors.
At a Jan. 29 Governing Body meeting, dozens of residents spoke out against the creation of more pallet home communities. One resident there referred to micro communities as “disaster shanty towns waiting to happen.” The pushback has continued all the way through May.
When the city introduced a potential location during a meeting last week, backlash intensified. During the May 28 meeting, the city identified property at 2395 Richards Ave as one of its future micro community sites, and introduced a resolution that would authorize City Manager Mark Scott to officially establish the address as a micro community.
According to Community Health and Safety Director Henri Hammond-Paul, this location “checks a lot of really important boxes,” such as being close to city services, being next to the Genoveva Chavez Community Center and not being directly inside a residential neighborhood. This site would have between 30 and 40 units, he says, and will specifically serve homeless families with children.
“Families and children deserve to be in neighborhoods, but that said, there is considerable concern in the community that having micro communities directly in neighborhoods might cause challenges,” Hammond-Paul says.
However, the community living in the neighborhoods surrounding 2395 Richards Ave are concerned about this resolution’s introduction. So far, community meetings have not been held to specifically discuss any of these locations, despite being told these would be happening soon since January.
Keeping In Touch
The city council did not approve the May 28 resolution. Nevertheless, those living near the proposed site criticized the city’s lack of communication with the neighborhood. Resident Matt Johns said this sudden proposal “tests the spirit” of the community, noting there has so far been “no meetings, no outreach and no dialogue” between the city and residents of the neighborhoods around Richards Avenue.
“You have excluded District Four zoning interests and shut out the entire city,” Johns said. “Thus far, the [city] council said it would be more transparent, but it has gone silent. The council said it would engage better, but it has closed ranks. The council said it would listen to constituents, but it has given us no voice.”
Adam Ferguson
Kat Kincade, a resident who has attended multiple meetings this year to show support for micro communities, also criticized the sudden resolution on the agenda, but remains “a staunch supporter of the concept.”
“Putting 2395 Richards [Ave] on the agenda tonight completely undermined any trust in the process, and I think set us back,” Kincade said. “I would like to see some robust, informative community meetings that maybe even have a pallet shelter at the meeting, that people could walk in and walk around, maybe a day that people could visit the same Safe Outdoor Spaces site at Christ Lutheran, if the residents were willing.”
Previously, Hammond-Paul told SFR his team “could have definitely done a better job” in communicating future micro community sites to the public, and on May 30 said the city will host a town hall at the Santa Fe Convention Center on July 1 to engage the community on “the types of things they want to see in additional sites.”
Community engagement and other outreach, he says, begin only after the resolution establishing the micro community is approved. The resolution states the city manager and his staff “may take all intermediate necessary steps required to establish a micro community on the city property, such as land use permitting, site preparation and community engagement, and any other administrative steps necessary to operate the city property as a micro community.”
However, this clarification is not reassuring to all residents.
Lucy River, a resident who lives right off of Richards Avenue, tells SFR she believes involving the community this late in the process doesn’t make sense.
“I think that for them to have town halls after the sites have already been selected is ass-backwards, and it does not involve the residents in the actual decision about where sites should be,” River says. “However, if there are town halls after the fact, you can bet your life I'll be there.”
A free-for-all or a reputable refuge?
River found out about the potential micro community locations when she attended a neighborhood meeting concerning a road construction project affecting Richards Avenue, from neighbors who were passing out flyers. There, she discovered one of the sites (1085 Richards Ave) is less than 700 feet behind her home, separated only by a street.
“I am rampantly against it,” River says of that location. “We already have this huge road development going right past our homes, which will really impact sound and traffic. To double down, essentially, and have a second, huge, negatively impacting project so close to us is super unfair and irresponsible of our city officials.”
Since then, River has been reaching out to city councilors, hoping to spur the city toward removing the location from its list of viable micro community sites. So far, she has not been pleased with the responses.
“Some of the response was like, ‘Well, nothing's been planned yet, but when things are published, we'll let you know.’ But really, telling people after the fact is just too late, and people need to be more involved in the process,” River says. “Homeowners—they absolutely should be involved, and it would be farcical to pretend like that's not a factor here.”
Many residents criticizing the project have cited fears about potential rises in crime and declining property values typically associated with neighborhoods near congregate homeless shelters.
These fears are not unfounded—several studies have shown neighborhoods experience these issues after a homeless shelter is established. One 2018 study from the University of Pennsylvania on emergency winter shelters in Vancouver found “a significant increase in property crime in the shelter’s immediate vicinity” when shelters opened there.
Similarly, a 2019 study from the New York City Independent Budget Office found homes within 500 feet of a homeless shelter sell for 7.1% less than homes further away, and sales for homes within 1,000 feet of multiple homeless shelters sell for 17.4% less.
River cites both of these studies as reason for her apprehension, saying she feels there is not enough research on the effects of pallet home communities on surrounding neighborhoods.
“If people aren't paying attention now, they should be, because this is going to affect crime rates and their home values, especially within this 500-foot radius,” River says.
While there is minimal research on pallet homes specifically, there are some notable similarities between micro communities and supportive housing, as they both are noncongregate housing that provide on-site services to residents for issues such as substance abuse or mental illness, despite supportive housing being more permanent than pallet homes.
The same study from the New York City Independent Budget Office found that while “congregate homeless shelters” negatively impact property values, the results are reversed for supportive housing, which the study says provide on-site services to people who need assistance with substance abuse, mental illness and more. The prices of homes within 500 feet of these places actually “rose more rapidly” than houses further away from supportive housing.
And, in contrast to how homeless shelters reportedly affect neighborhood crime, preliminary data on pallet home communities from other cities have reflected positive outcomes thus far.
In October last year, The Colorado Sun analyzed data from the Denver Police Department and found that in 2021 (the first year six micro communities went live), overall crime in the city increased by 14.3%, but decreased by 2.8% in the neighborhoods that hosted micro communities. In Vancouver, Washington, The Columbian reported a 30% decrease in police calls and officer-initiated visits within a 500-foot radius of a newly-built micro community throughout the six months it had been open.
Walk-ins are also not available for these sites—anyone who wants to live there must enroll and meet the site’s criteria.
Tharpe says The Life Link has a selection committee that determines whether someone can be admitted to the micro community on a case-by-case basis. The resident must be enrolled in another agency’s resources, such as the Southwest Cares Outreach Team, the Santa Fe Fire Department, The Life Link and others, who identify clients they feel would benefit from the micro community.
When the Arroyo Chamiso Micro Community has a vacancy, Tharpe says he alerts all providers, who then gather at this office to discuss the potential resident. He also notes this micro community is intended for those who are unable to live successfully at other shelters.
“This is for folks that cannot go anywhere else,” Tharpe says.
Hammond-Paul adds that microcommunities are desperately needed to keep people off the streets, as the “very low-end, conservative” estimate the city has of homeless people is about 400, and the total number of beds available at shelters across the city only adds up to 280.
“There's unsheltered homelessness in every neighborhood in Santa Fe,” Hammond-Paul says. “The question is, would you rather have people sleeping in arroyos or sleeping in a place with a roof—where there's security and they're getting access to services, and there's dignity?”
A model community
Adam Ferguson
Hammond-Paul says this conversation isn’t even new to Santa Fe, where the Arroyo Chamiso Micro Community already exists.
Every pallet home in the Arroyo Chamiso Micro Community is equipped with a mattress, a pillow, blankets, sheets, towels, a trash can, a plastic container and a set of dishes and utensils.
There’s two other units as well: one small building containing two toilets and one shower and another shack for the security guards. Inside the church, residents can use a community room, kitchen (with a stocked pantry) and laundry room during limited hours.
According to Outreach Services Director Janelle Bohannon, The Life Link became interested in joining the city’s plans to employ pallet home sites after the pandemic, when it temporarily ran an emergency service-based shelter to support the city when all the congregate shelters had to operate at 50% due to COVID.
“It seemed like the right direction for us to go into, given that we ran a really successful program,” Bohannon tells SFR. “I think, at the heart of it for me, at least when I was applying, is taking a different approach to shelter and really seeing these people as humans.”
Most of The Life Link’s chronically homeless clients, Tharpe says, go through a lengthy process to receive housing and health resources from the nonprofit: filling out a 22-page intake packet, meeting for a therapist for a preliminary diagnosis—all before finally meeting with a crisis case manager and receiving a final assessment to be enrolled in services.
“That whole process can take over a month, because of scheduling, just forgetting your appointment, not showing up, that sort of thing,” Tharpe says. “Over here, I can pull them in here and get all of that done in one session, and get them on the road to getting into the ballpark of housing.”
In addition to the nine individuals the micro community has successfully housed, Bohannon says two clients have vouchers and are awaiting placement, and another five were identified by the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness to be put on high-priority on a waitlist for housing vouchers.
Each resident’s needs are unique, and while finding permanent housing for their clients is a priority, Tharpe says success looks different for all of them. One man, who has lived at the micro community for more than a year now, has a housing goal to save up for an RV rather than traditional affordable housing. He’s been making payments on one, and The Life Link have helped him get his birth certificate, insurance and necessities for vehicle registration.
Bohannon says the micro community also has a focus on community-building activities, such as group sessions and field trips for activities like bowling, fishing and kayaking, to help their clients “re-integrate” into society. Tharpe says their clients can also choose to get paid $15 an hour to do chores at the site, and The Life Link helps them fill out W-9 forms and make bank accounts or apply for debit cards.
“I think we've seen a lot of different types of success—like people will go to detox, or they'll go into recovery programs,” Bohannon says. “I think with any sort of program, especially in the behavioral health field, the first time might not be the time that sticks. For some people, it might be a landing spot, and then some people, it's what they need to navigate into housing. A lot of folks don't know the process to even get into services, so we're here guiding them along the way.”
The Life Link has also been advocating for a community room for their residents to use during the daytime, and Christ Lutheran Church has agreed to build the structure next to the enclosed micro community, although progress has been slow due to issues with construction codes.
“Once they actually build the community room that was part of the contract, that'll help a lot of our folks out of their units, because a lot of times they just stay inside their units all day long,” Tharpe says. “I would go crazy.”
Next on the agenda
While the resolution to identify 2395 Richards Ave as a micro community site depends on the outcome of the June 3 Governing Body meeting and a June 4 Quality of Life Committee meeting, a second site has not been chosen. A May 28 Facebook post from the city about its planned July 1 town hall (time to be determined) says the city will “engage residents in identifying a second city-owned site for a future Micro Community.”
Hammond-Paul says in addition to updates from the city’s Facebook, the city has a Homelessness Response page to keep interested residents up to date on the micro communities and other homelessness response initiatives, though he describes the page’s current state as a “minimum viable product.”
“We have some core information up there, but we want to have a one-stop shop where people can go to get information coming from the city about this stuff,” Hammond-Paul says. “Without information, people will make assumptions.”
