Gateway Center feels like home for the homeless

Since January, 93 women have stayed in the overnight beds at the Gateway Center, the city of Albuquerque’s 24/7 one-stop-shop for shelter and additional services for people who are homeless.

Currently, 35 women are staying in the shelter, using beds separated by cubicle-like dividers at the Gibson Health Hub at 5400 Gibson SE. Rubbery sheets, studded with magnets, can be affixed to metal strips to add additional privacy.

Some furry friends have stayed in the shelter, which was site of a media tour on Thursday, as well. Like the Westside Emergency Housing Center, the Gateway Center is open to pets as well as people — a move Katie Simon, a spokesperson for the Family and Community Services Department, says lowers barriers to entry. Other shelters around the city may or may not allow pets, Simon said, which can make it difficult for some homeless people to take advantage of services.

“We’re committed to this being as low barrier as possible,” Simon said. “So many people have dogs.”

One hundred beds are available at the Gateway Center. But people won’t be able to walk in and access services — they’ll need a referral from another social service provider. Then, they’ll have to go through a screening process.

Currently, overnight beds are only available for women. Although sobriety isn’t a requirement to enter the facility, drug use is prohibited on the premises.

Family and Community Services Director Carol Pierce said men should soon be welcome at Gateway as well. Over the winter, emergency overnight beds were opened to all genders due to the weather, and nearly 100 men also stayed in the facility.

But although some one- or two-night stays are expected, the goal is for people to have longer stays, city officials say, and take advantage of the housing and job training resources, before eventually moving into permanent housing. The Westside Emergency Overnight Shelter, Simon said, has more than 400 beds — four times that of Gateway — and because of that is unable to offer the same depth of resources.

“Frankly, we don’t have the ability to intensively case-manage 450 people,” Simon said. “With a smaller cohort, we can spend all that time with some to say, ‘OK, what do you need?’”

Pierce said the goal is to move residents of the shelter into permanent housing within 90 days. Pierce wasn’t sure how many women of the 93 have moved to permanent housing, but noted that the 90-day program hasn’t been fully implemented yet.

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller announced the first two phases of the Gateway Center, the Housing Navigation and Engagement Centers, were completed Thursday. Eventually, people staying at the shelter will be able to get their hair cut, grab a ride to the clothing bank and get job training all in the same place, Pierce said.

In the first years, the city is hoping that 200 people will use the two centers. By 2025, that number is expected to be 1,000.

The two centers make up 20,000 square feet. Construction on the Gateway Center cost $7 million — about $340/square foot. And “the hammers are flying,” on the next phases of the project, Pierce said. Next on the agenda is a receiving area for first responders and Albuquerque Community Safety employees, followed by a medical sobering center and a “medical respite” center.

Construction was delayed after asbestos were found in the building earlier this year. In April, the city announced that remediation of the asbestos was complete.

The current construction costs are in addition to the $15 million building purchase in 2021 and $1 million per year contract with Heading Home, the homeless service provider that operates the center, putting the current price tag at $23 million.

The city already spends approximately $33 million per year on services for the homeless, including between $9 and $10 million on emergency shelters and $24 million on supportive housing vouchers.

After a decade-long decline in homelessness in the state, the number of unhoused people surged 48% last year, a May report presented to the New Mexico Legislature found. A point-in-time count — a count of people experiencing homelessness in one night in January from earlier this year found 2,394 people in Albuquerque were homeless, although city officials note that other data sources put that number much higher.