Santa Fe’s Interfaith Community Shelter, or Pete’s Place snapped back at city officials over the weekend.
Shelter leaders issued a statement in response to the City announcing Friday that it’s recommending terminating the lease for the facility.
Pete’s has provided housing and services to the homeless community for nearly 20 years.
The statement argues that the city’s decisions around the shelter have been made without transparency and would disrupt vital services.
Santa Fe officials announced on Friday that, due to long-running safety issues in the shelter’s surrounding neighborhood, they want to move away from the agreement with Pete’s Place.
City Council will be asked to vote in a special session tomorrow evening on whether to continue the shelter’s month-to-month lease or end it.
The city’s current proposal is to hire an out-of-state contractor on an emergency one-year deal to evaluate whether the current Cerillos Road location is the best spot for a shelter.
According a 2023 report by The Nation, that San Francisco based consultant, Urban Alchemy, has faced at least six lawsuits alleging civil rights violations, physical and sexual harassment, and wage theft.
Urban Alchemy has denied most allegations, according to The Nation.
In addition to concern over those charges, Interfaith Community Shelter officials are taking particular issue with what they say is the city’s plan to grant a one year, one point five million dollar contract to Urban Alchemy.
According the shelter’s weekend statement, it receives much less from the city in one year.
For the past three years Pete’s Place has received $158,000 per year through a city grant.
They say that amounts to less than 10 percent of its budget.
The facility has provided shelter and meals to more than 900 people in the past year, about 27 percent of whom were over the age of 65.
Meanwhile, the city estimates that it has spent more than $3 million in emergency response services in the area over two-and-a-half years.
Most of those calls related to overdoses and other medical emergencies.
Last year, police responded to 3200 calls in the neighborhood.
Tomorrow night’s special session of the City Council begins at 5 p.m.
