A look inside Bernalillo County's wellness motel

Amanda Apodaca left an abusive relationship in Nevada at the end of 2022 and followed the promise of a new job to Albuquerque.

With inflation on the rise, she calculated that she could make a similar income with a lower cost of living. Apodaca secured a job as a car wash supervisor but couldn’t find an apartment where she and her young daughter could live.

“I was scared because I’ve never been homeless before,” Apodaca said. “My dad worked two, three jobs at a time just to provide for me, and we either stayed with just me and him, or we would stay with my grandmother. But we always had a place to stay. And when he passed away, when I was four months pregnant with her, what was I going to do? I didn’t have a job at the time. And then I got into a horrible relationship after I had her. It was abusive. I didn’t know what to do.”

Apodaca and her daughter were left sleeping in their car for a week. The back seat was packed tightly with all of the possessions they owned. Apodaca didn’t want her young daughter to sleep in a car seat, so at night she cradled the 4-year-old in her arms.

“After the third day living in the car, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I just ruined our lives.’”

Then she found Bernalillo County’s wellness motel program, which offered Apodaca and her daughter a safe place to stay and assistance in finding stable housing.

“I was able to feel safe, have my own room. They had security around, which was amazing. They would always check up on us,” Apodaca said.

Her daughter played with other kids who were staying at the motel and they ate hot meals, thanks to the microwave in the room.

“I was able to save money and get on other programs to help me and my daughter to get back on our feet,” Apodaca said.

After two months, she found somewhere to live through the Women’s Housing Coalition. Almost a year after leaving the wellness motel, Apodaca has been promoted to manager for two car wash locations. She’s saving up for a down payment on a house.

The wellness motel program is focused on filling a specific niche for homeless services: transitional housing for families with children, according to Greg Perez, deputy county manager for public safety. At least 260 people have used the program, which finds participants through nonprofit or agency referrals. Albuquerque Public Schools is the source of many of the referrals, Perez said. The school district offers tutoring for students living at the wellness motel.

The location of the motel is undisclosed for the safety of people staying there.

Case management is part of the program, with support for participants who need help wading through bureaucratic paperwork to get new driver’s licenses or fill out applications for jobs or assistance. Two case managers are dedicated to the facility, and two case managers from the county’s CARE Campus also help out.

Emily Toledo got help from the case managers to apply for services for the blind, something she likely wouldn’t have done without their encouragement. Toledo can see but not well, and a cane should make it safer for her to cross streets.

Toledo retired early from a 27-year career in child care so she could take care of her mom. Retiring early lowered her Social Security benefits, but she was living comfortably with a friend until her teenage granddaughter needed somewhere to stay. Toledo’s granddaughter moved in, but the three of them living together didn’t work.

“My granddaughter had a lot of problems, and I hadn’t seen her in almost four years, and she looked for me when she had no one else. Well, she wasn’t sure if I was going to accept her. It was easy to accept her,” Toledo said.

They were referred to the family wellness program by APS and have lived at the wellness motel since August.

“They encourage you to do everything you can, which has helped me a lot to think about my self-esteem and everything else,” Toledo said.

Toledo plans to sign a lease for a new apartment Thursday. She and her granddaughter each will have her own bedroom after spending months in a motel room together.

The wellness program grew out of an emergency winter sheltering program at the same hotel. As spring came last year and winter was drawing to a close, it became clear that county staff needed more time to help participants find stable housing, Perez said. So the county commissioners approved a six-month extension to keep housed 24 families staying there . Since then, the family wellness motel has grown into an annual program.

“As of today, on the family wellness side we have about an 80% success rate in placing individuals in our program, either into their own form of housing or returned back with a loved one who’s allowing them to live with them on an ongoing basis,” Perez said.

The emergency shelter side of the program is still in operation, but Perez would like to see the two programs work more in tandem: bring people in through the emergency program, then once they have some stability, transition them to the wellness program, in which they can focus on being self-sufficient.

“A lot of them are just a paycheck away,” Perez said. “It was one paycheck that put them out on the street. So, can we get them back where they want to be? And that is really, ultimately the goal.”

The two programs have some key differences. The emergency program offers three meals a day, while the wellness program only offers breakfast. The wellness program requires more regular check-ins with county staff, and program participants have to be looking for work or have a job.

The wellness program is also continuous, while the emergency program was scheduled to end in March and start back up in November. But the emergency program has been extended for 90 days so that the people currently in it can be placed in stable housing before it ends.

“It just didn’t feel right to put them back out there just because we weren’t able to get it within the three months,” Perez said. “So, we’re going to look at that extension, which is exciting. It’s the right thing to do.”