The City of Santa Fe Governing Body unanimously approved to move $3,438,000 from the city’s general and Capital GRT funds to spend on supporting and expanding several human service programs designed for Santa Feans in need at its Feb. 26 meeting.
The existing programs included in this budget amendment resolution includes the city’s needs assistance program CONNECT, offering homelessness aid, guaranteed income for student-parents and immigration support.
Mayor Alan Webber described these budget amendment resolutions as the city’s “action agenda to address people who are experiencing homelessness” in addition to those who are “victims of some of the impacts of homelessness.”
"If you look at them collectively, you begin to see a pattern as to how the pieces fit together and reinforce each other,” Webber said. “I really do believe this item that we've spent some good amount of time on constructively does represent a lot of the work that's going forward. And I do hope it can move quickly, and I do hope that we can begin to see some of the rapid benefits of this approach.”
The largest chunk of the funding, totaling $1,375,000, is marked for the “Cerrillos Road Security” project, which the resolution says would pilot a security and outreach program in which “a service provider would be contracted to do community-based public safety engagement along the Cerrillos Road corridor and other high concentration areas of homelessness.”
Santa Fe Director of Community Health and Safety Henri Hammond-Paul described this item on the resolution as a mix of both community outreach and community-based public safety that deploys teams of individuals trained in conflict resolution, bystander intervention and overdose reversal to proactively engage with people in areas of the city with “documented needs and concerns”—namely up and down Cerrillos Road.
“We are in the process of directly engaging individuals who may be exhibiting symptoms of acute need that are not at the level of, for instance, warranting a 911 call,” Hammond-Paul said at the meeting. “Whether it is aggressive behaviors, or loitering that is disrupting businesses, or making individuals concerned for their own safety…these services are not officially tied into our emergency services and 911 services but are connected through coordination to make sure that, when it is relevant, we can bring in the appropriate level of emergency response needed.”
Hammond-Paul added that the Community Health and Safety Division is finalizing approval to issue a request for proposal, “hopefully in the next couple weeks,” so the department can solicit these services and “get someone on board as soon as possible to begin this important and needed work.”
The Cerrillos Road Security project would also include making storage available for homeless peoples’ belongings and providing a recreation area with “respectful and high-quality services.”
District 2 City Councilor Michael Garcia and District 4 City Councilor Jamie Cassutt voiced particular interest and support for this project.
“I’m thankful for this coming forward because I know last summer or last winter we allocated money for Downtown and strongly advocated that security needed to be provided throughout our entire city,” Garcia said.
Two items on the resolution related to hiring project managers. One project manager is listed as a one-time funding request of $158,000 to “complete a funding gap” for the Lamplighter Initiative, a project to create more affordable housing through renovating the Lamplighter Inn hotel on Cerrillos Road.
The other is a one-time funding request of $125,000 to support an in-house or contracted project manager to assist in homelessness issues, which Hammond-Paul says is estimated to be for a three- to six-month contract period to build a geographic information system the Community Health and Safety Department can use for “better tracking and transparency on things like identifying encampments …identifying challenges and issues in the community and moving them to resolution.”
Garcia voiced concerns with the individual project manager allocations, particularly after Hammond-Paul stated this one-time funding can be used until the end of the fiscal year this June, noting that if this project needs to extend into the remainder of this year, the city will be able to use said funding.
“I don't want us to be in a situation where we have the mindset of, ‘We've got it allocated. We need to spend it.’ Let's make sure we're spending it diligently and getting the products we need,” Garcia said. “With the request in front of us—$125,000 for three to six months—that's about $20,000 a month, and I don't know if we're getting our best bang for our buck on that.”
Cassutt said while “it makes sense” that the project focuses on Cerrillos Road because most businesses in Santa Fe are located there, she would like to request that these teams will be “going into the neighborhoods to address the impact on the residents,” and asked Hammond-Paul to clarify the geographic boundaries of the project.
“It is not a geographically hard-lined area,” Hammond-Paul said. “Services like this will be intended to identify the emerging hot spots and go and engage in those areas. If they are only doing work in a specific, small area, they wouldn't be doing their job well.”
Cassutt also asked what it would potentially look like for the public safety team to collaborate with park rangers, who are already involved with working with homeless encampments.
Santa Fe Youth and Family Services Division Director Julie Sanchez clarified to Cassutt that park rangers currently cover public spaces, and through coordination with the public safety team, would be able to “extend their reach to more private [spaces].”
“One of the other big benefits is that they would be working in coordination with other outreach teams that are currently going out, and so our job in our office is actually looking at a coordinated group that would meet regularly to discuss how we can move people through this system as they're found,” Sanchez said. “Park rangers could identify encampments on public property and have this organization come out and support getting those folks into a much more coordinated system and getting their needs addressed.”
The rest of the funding package is spread across several programs. One piece moves $1 million toward providing guaranteed income for up to 100 low-income student parents enrolled in a certificate, degree, GED and/or apprenticeship program.
Another allocates $250,000 toward supporting Santa Fe’s immigrant population through partnering with local organizations to provide safety and guardianship planning, a community education series, workshops and “know your rights” training for immigrants.
An additional $350,000 will go toward project management and engineering that would expand Micro Communities, which offer homeless people with non-congregate temporary housing with on-site case management and social supports, as seen in the pallet homes the city piloted through Christ Lutheran and the Lifelink last year.
CONNECT, a countywide network that provides residents with assistance with rent, utilities, food, transportation and other basic needs, will receive $150,000 in flexible funding from this resolution to support families in need.
Lastly, $30,000 will be allocated toward addressing emergency shelter in cold weather, citing four deaths that occurred in November 2024 due to cold exposure. The funding will cover overtime for staff, meals, bedding and other necessities for the homeless population, and the resolution notes a desire to pilot an “on-call services contract with local providers to be available to staff emergency Code Blue shelters.”
“This is such a complex issue…we've seen a lot of ripples throughout the city for individuals experiencing homelessness, for individuals who are impacted by people experiencing homelessness, and so it's just such a complex web and social issue, and I know that you both really work tirelessly to be finding different solutions,” Cassutt said. “I truly appreciate it, and really look forward to hearing both as we get this program launched, as well as updates on how things are going and how this is working.”
