Fifteen years after taking over Pete’s Pets at 2801 Cerrillos Road, the Interfaith Community Shelter is leaving what Santa Feans now call Pete’s Place. On Tuesday, Santa Fe’s Governing Body held a special meeting at which it voted to terminate the lease of the Interfaith Community Shelter as of July 31, handing over the longstanding shelter for the houseless community to Urban Alchemy.
Three hours of public comment that sided resoundingly for keeping the current Pete’s Place lease intact wasn’t enough to deter the city council from taking action on what City Manager Mark Scott and Community Health and Safety Department director Henri Hammond-Paul called “a public safety emergency.”
Just after midnight on Wednesday, the Santa Fe Governing Body voted 7-1 to terminate the lease, with District 1 councilor Alma Castro recusing herself. The full body then spent a good (or bad, some might argue) hour cussing and discussing the idea of entering into two contracts with the Bay Area service provider that also operates in a growing number of cities, including Austin, Texas, and Birmingham, Ala.
After the clock struck 1 am, the council voted 8-1 in favor of entering into two contracts, totaling $9.4 million, for the next four years with UA. District 2 Councilor Michael Garcia cast most of the questions and the only “no” votes on the night. The contracts put UA in charge of the shelter at 2801 Cerrillos Rd., including support services and street outreach.
Before the council voted on a resolution to terminate the lease, representatives from Urban Alchemy were on hand to answer questions from the council for another two hours. During that time, company representatives explained they’re hiring practices, street outreach strategy and attempted to allay concerns. UA Chief Operating Officer Bayron Wilson said the nonprofit plans to hire 35 full-time employees to work at Pete’s Place.
“I want to be crystal clear,” Wilson said Tuesday. “We want to hire Santa Feans.”
UA Chief of Talent and Development Ian Clark Johnson backed the claim: “The core of our work is our workforce—the people we hire. They’re men and women who are formerly incarcerated, formerly addicted, formerly homeless. Urban Alchemy was my first job. We’ve already started outreach with parolees already here in Santa Fe. We’ve done some outreach to community-based organizations.”
Common questions
When the special meeting started at 5 pm on Tuesday, City Hall was packed with people, most of whom attended to show support for Interfaith Community Shelter, starting with a septet calling themselves The New Mexico Raging Grannies. Accompanied by acoustic guitar, six senior women and a single gentleman sang “Pete’s Place is here for me.” Those that followed over the next couple of hours delivered a variation on the same message.
Dave Cathey
Comments were at times contentious, and the crowd was occasionally derisive. Mayor Alan Webber called for a 10-minute break following a heated exchange. Ultimately, the public’s comments and questions followed a common theme:
- Keep the Interfaith Community Shelter’s deal in place.
- Consider the impact of the disruption the transition will cause.
- Why not give the $1.5 million annual budget planned for Urban Alchemy to ICS?
- Why not delay a final decision?
- Where was the transparency?
Among the dozens of speakers on Tuesday was Joe Dudziak, founder of Chaplain Joe Street Outreach, his overridingquestion was simple: What training do these outsiders have that the folks at ICS don’t have?
City Manager Scott answered the question, in part, before public petitions began. Scott said one of the contracts the city with UA up for consideration was for street outreach services.
“This is a new approach to dealing with a problem that’s tried and tested around the country,” Scott said. “Putting professional people that are well-trained, they’re value-driven, and asking them to go out into the street and deal with people and deal with their problems on the spot. They’re not a security force, they’re not a police department, they’re a street outreach effort.”
UA had few supporters on Tuesday, but among the minority was Amy Farah Weiss, who founded the nonprofit St. Francis Challenge in 2015 by way of San Francisco. While her support of UA wasn't full-throated, she vouched for the outfit as she called for collaboration.
“I have a unique perspective because I've worked alongside Urban Alchemy in the Tenderloin District in San Francisco. I considered them allies and kindred spirits and appreciate their slogan ‘No Fuckery.’ My organization was the first in the Bay Area to push for what we called SOS (safe organized spaces), transitional outdoor shelters during the pandemic. We even lent our shower trailer to one of the UA sites at no cost, so residents could bathe with dignity. In 2021, I moved to New Mexico and was later contracted by the City of Santa Fe to write a report on interventions to street homelessness, which laid the groundwork for the SOS pallet shelter program.”
Weiss said she had planned to attend open mic at Wayward comedy on Tuesday, but listening to the special meeting at home, she was moved to show up and speak.
“I felt the need to stand up here and say this: Urban Alchemy is a solid organization. They deserve the outreach contract they properly bid for. But Interfaith also deserves a chance,” Weiss said. “At the end of the day, UA is not more trained or more committed than Interfaith, choosing to shift that funding now would be deeply demoralizing to the community and we need an activated community. If you have even a little bit of doubt, please table this proposed change for at least a year of collaboration and capacity-building. San Francisco and Santa Fe are both named after St. Francis. I think Francis would be loving on Interfaith right now trying to find a win-win solution, but that guy is also famous for speaking to the birds because no one would listen. So please, more collaboration, less fuckery.”
Did somebody say fuckery?
As the evening progressed, questions turned to the new operator. ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer database shows Urban Alchemy had more than $70 million in revenue at the end of FY 2023
On top of recent forays into Birmingham, Ala., Austin, Texas, and its Bay Area beginnings, UA also operates in Portland, Ore., and Los Angeles. Since its inception in 2018, UA has endured criticism and lawsuits. In Sausalito, Calif., A 2024 complaint from a former resident of an Urban Alchemy-run site in Sausalito alleges staff were dealing drugs and having sex with residents, according to reporting in the San Francisco Standard. A San Francisco supervisor was accused in another lawsuit of sexually harassing several female staff members.
embers of UA were asked about the lawsuits they’ve faced and continue to fight on Tuesday and dismissed them as “frivolous.”
Among the things Urban Alchemy claims that sets it apart from other shelter operators is its hiring practices. UA not only hires ex-convicts but targets those who served long sentences for serious crimes, including murder. According to founder Lena Miller’s well-documented core philosophy, long prison terms equip a person for handling crises in the streets. But UA has been accused of shrugging off abuse claims and not implementing proper training to people transitioning from long sentences in all-male prisons to dealing with vulnerable people, especially women.
UA is currently caught up in a budget shortfall in San Francisco that’s put the nonprofit’s workforce in question and The San Francisco Standard reported last month that city officials have increasingly scrutinized Urban Alchemy’s management for regularly going over budget and asking the city for advances as it sheds staff.
The agenda also called for discussion about a proposed micro community at 2395 Richards Ave. next to Fire House No. 7, but it was tabled due to the lateness of the hour.
