The City of Santa Fe Governing Body met privately during its Wednesday evening meeting to discuss the disposition of real property—that property being the Interfaith Community Shelter (colloquially known as ‘Pete’s Place’) located at 2801 Cerrillos Road.
Rumors started circulating Monday surrounding the fate of the 15-year-old homeless shelter after the Interfaith Community Shelter Board and Management sent out a press release stating it has reason to believe the city plans to terminate their lease.
Will Costello
The Interfaith Shelter on Cerrillos Road, still known as Pete’s Pets among homeless people.
Several volunteers, employees and other community members showed up to the meeting to protest the possible lease termination, criticizing what they view as a lack of transparency on the city’s part. Joyce Benavidez, an employee at the shelter, said during public forum that she was shocked when she learned the cancellation of the shelter’s lease was possibly on the table.
“I am disheartened by the manner in which changes to this vital community resource are being considered without a thoughtful plan that would protect and support this vulnerable population,” Benavidez said. “Pete’s Place is more than a shelter. It is a lifeline for individuals who have nothing, literally no one else to support them.”
The Governing Body, except for Mayor Alan Webber and Councilor Jamie Cassutt (both absent), returned to the remainder of the public meeting without clarification of what they discussed or whether they had made any decision.
Councilor Michael Garcia moved to disclose some of the information discussed in the executive session, but the motion was struck down in a 5-2 vote.
“There is a lack of information, which is leading to misinformation, rumors spreading and ultimately, having community members fearmonger each other, and I think that we as a government have a responsibility to be forthcoming,” Garcia said. “Our rules allow for us to be forthcoming with information, and I would have hoped that we could have shared critical information.”
Councilor Pilar Faulkner specified that she voted against disclosing contents of the private session because she thinks the public “already knows” what they discussed, as reports of rumored lease termination have been published by multiple news sources.
“Transparency is kind of already happening, just through the process of gossiping. I think anyone with common sense knows exactly what's happening in all these conversations,” Faulkner says. “My vote for ‘no’ is more about the fact that executive session needs to be a place where leadership can have dialogue and get information and have a little space to wrap our hands around some very complex issues…anyone who claims we don’t know what's going on is lying. We all know what's going on.”
Adam Ferguson
Steve Albert (pictured on the left) says the situation around the Pete’s Place shelter on Harrison Road has gotten “exponentially worse” in recent months.
The city has been planning to phase out the shelter located at 2801 Cerrillos Road since October last year, when Mayor Alan Webber announced the city’s Homelessness Emergency Action Plan that would center numerous public safety concerns brought forth by residents and business owners along the Cerrillos Road corridor.
However, even then, Interfaith Community Shelter Executive Director Korina Lopez said the shelter was not informed it would be phased out at the time, and that the city had never approached the shelter’s leadership.
“It just feels like more of the same, and that's been our frustration,” Lopez told SFR shortly after the meeting. “We go to these meetings. We've been at the table. We've offered ideas that I think were pitched to the community like the city made these mandates, and these weren't.”
The most frustrating part of the city’s silence so far, Lopez said, is that the shelter can’t plan whatever they’re about to face.
“I had to notify my staff, and that was a hard conversation to tell my staff, and I know tomorrow they're going to be like, ‘What happened?’ and I have to go back and go, ‘I don't know,’” Lopez said. “They came out of executive session with no response, and to sit there and council is like, ‘There's rumors, we know what this is about, and the community knows’...then say it's about our lease and terminating our lease. Of course, it wasn't said.”
Lopez added she has been seeing a lot of fear and anxiety among her staff about their job security.
“They don't know how long until they're gonna have no job. Should they start looking now? They're dedicated to the agency, but at the same time, they have families,” Lopez said. “If they have to take care of themselves and find jobs elsewhere, which again, impacts our ability to then continue serving our guests, this is reverberating.”
Lopez said Interfaith’s leadership also has reason to believe that the city plans to replace the shelter with services from California nonprofit Urban Alchemy, due to an agenda item introduced at a May 27 finance committee meeting that detailed a $7.9 million four-year contract with the organization. The agenda item’s attached file specifically references the “high concentration of vulnerable individuals” along Cerrillos Road and downtown.
“To address these concerns, the City is launching a community-based public safety initiative that prioritizes proactive engagement, harm reduction, and service connection,” the agenda item’s purchasing memo reads.
However, Lopez noted they are still unsure whether the city specifically plans to replace the shelter with these services.
“The city councilors haven't said it outright,” Lopez said. “We know that's the contract. So, again, we're still speculating, because we haven't heard anything from the city. That was a very telling thing.”
During the Wednesday night meeting’s public forum, Lopez said she had to call an emergency meeting on Monday for all of the shelter’s employees to alert them of the agenda item.
“The way we found out about this closed-door discussion that can powerfully impact the future of our employees and our guests is very painful,” Lopez said. “To find an item on the agenda that so directly and immeasurably impacts our organization and to see that it is being held outside of public discourse—I believe that communicates volumes about the lack of transparency in this process.”
According to the press release from the Interfaith Community Shelter Board and Management, despite regular meetings with city officials, the shelter was not “informed, advised, consulted or otherwise apprised, nor had the opportunity to respond to any plans under consideration by the city” regarding potential changes to the shelter building’s lease.
“A decision to terminate our lease is a decision to disband the Interfaith Community Shelter,” the organization’s release stated. “An emergency homeless shelter organization without an emergency shelter is just an idea.”
“We deserve better from our city leadership,” Lopez said at the meeting. “My hope is that moving forward, the city will be an open, transparent and inclusive partner, not only within Interfaith, but all our local homeless service providers as the mayor and [Community Health and Safety Director Henri Hammond-Paul] hammer out their big, beautiful plan to address homelessness.”
The press release also noted that the Interfaith Board and Management has been making effort at its own cost to improve its conditions, including hiring increased security personnel; installing barriers outside the fence line and strengthened its zero tolerance policy to discourage loitering outside of the shelter; piloting a program allowing individuals to stay at the shelter 24/7 if they choose to; submitting a grant request to the city to fund a street outreach case manager position.
Additionally, the Interfaith Community Shelter has contracted with Denver architectural firm Shopworks and local architects to reimagine a 24/7 one-stop-shop for homeless services, named “the ROCk,” or the Resource and Opportunity Center.
“We've been very open and honest that outside our gates, we have no authority, so without that support from the city, we're just going to continue having these issues,” Lopez added.
Wendy Rhema, a long-time volunteer on the Interfaith Community Council who is also on the board, noted that several months ago, the board had met with the city to propose the idea of hiring a police officer located near or within the Interfaith Community Shelter.
“We did, in fact, offer to pay the full salary of one police officer near or in the Interfaith Community Shelter to help eliminate the problems, as we have zero authority outside of our gates, and we offered that again just last week [on May 22]—and even in that meeting, no transparency as to what was coming,” Rhema said.
Councilors Faulkner, Amanda Chavez, Alma Castro, Signe Lindell and Carol Romero-Wirth voted against disclosing what they discussed in executive session, and only Councilor Lee Garcia voted with Michael Garcia.
Romero-Wirth said she voted ‘no’ because the information she believes the public needs “is going to be out in public very shortly,” and that further conversations and a vote related to the issue will be public.
“I just ask [for] patience, as we get everybody up to speed, so that we can help folks understand,” Romero-Wirth said.
