Another piece fell into place in the City of Santa Fe’s attempt to solve the puzzle better known as the affordable housing crisis.
The good news is the puzzle-solving has commenced. The bad news is the puzzle they’re working on might have an infinite number of pieces. But the only way to find out is make a plan and execute it, which is the message the council has heard for months, if not years, from constituents.
At Wednesday’s meeting of the Santa Fe Gathering Body, City Councilors voted 8-1. To designate a parcel of land at 2395 Richards Avenue, next to Fire House No. 7, for development of a micro community.
The move, which was opposed by a majority of the dozen and a half or so residents who stepped up to the dais to petition, is the second in the past two weeks intended to evolve the city’s campaign to course-correct its support homeless residents while managing the impact of vagrancy on the community at large.
In a special meeting of the Gathering Body last Tuesday, councilors voted to terminate the lease of the Interfaith Community Shelter after 15 years operating Pete’s Place and contract with California nonprofit Urban Alchemy as its replacement. That move, which met with much pushback from the public, comes with a street outreach program and a long-term strategy to eventually close the shelter on Cerrillos in favor of smaller satellite shelters and micro communities spread around Santa Fe.
But Santa Fe Public Health and Safety Director Henry Hammond-Paul reminded everyone present Wednesday what the new campaign is really all about.
“Any conversation about homelessness that doesn’t touch on affordable housing is not doing service to the real issue at hand,” Hammond-Paul said. “We can’t lose sight of that when we talk about what I consider to be stopgap interventions to address challenges in our community.”
The first of these stopgap interventions include the change of operators at Pete’s Place and now the first in what the city hopes will be a series of micro communities under city management. Last week’s print edition of SFR included a story by Mo Charnot about the micro community campaign, including a peek inside a pilot program community that’s been under way for more than a year through a public-private project at Christ Lutheran Church.
Among the micro community bill sponsors were District 4 Councilors Amanda Chavez and Jamie Bossutt, who both spoke passionately and, at times, emotionally about the importance of the proposition.
The only pushback came from District 2 Councilor Michael Garcia, who lobbied for an extra two weeks of public engagement and input. The votes of mayor Alan Webber and the other seven councilors was indicative of their belief that meetings in January, May and last week on top of a preponderance of media coverage was ample.
“I’ve heard from a lot of constituents about this issue, and they want something done,” Bossutt said. “The majority of people I’ve heard from support this site.”
Garcia was able to amend the proposition to include language ensuring the micro community intended for families with children be a drug-free zone.
