As renovations continue at city’s Westside shelter, the facility also gets a new name

The front door and first hallway in New Mexico’s largest homeless shelter were lively one recent late afternoon. People staying at the shelter chatted with each other. One woman filled a large water bottle, a man was told to turn down his music, and at least four friendly dogs could be spotted in the hallway, each on leashes hanging out with their owners, as journalists were escorted down the hall by city officials to a newly renovated sleeping area.

The old sleeping areas were off-limits to the TV station cameras because people are living in them. In the summer, 450 people stay at the shelter on an average night. The pods are being renovated on a rotating basis, so that the shelter can continue housing people while the facility is renovated.

As city officials showed off the renovation in the Westside Emergency Housing Center, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller announced that the facility has a new name: Gateway West.

“Over the last several years, we have been transforming this into what it should have been all along, which is essentially a support center with services available for folks with no barriers to entry,” Keller said. “And so that’s why today we’re re-christening this the Gateway West, which, of course, it is our vision to have gateway centers throughout the city.”

The city’s main Gateway Center exists at the former Lovelace hospital site in Southeast Albuquerque.

The Gateway West shelter started as an emergency winter night shelter, Keller said. The former jail located west of the city off of the old Route 66 was in some ways ill-equipped to serve as a full-time shelter. The shelter was opened year round in 2018, and over the past several years has undergone various improvements: replacing a septic system with sewer to better serve a large population, adding a warming kitchen with a walk-in fridge and freezer to make sure three meals a day are available to people staying at the low-barrier shelter and working air conditioning.

The city is renovating the sleeping areas room -by-room, putting in new floors and replacing the three-bunk-high beds with a more typical option for shelters, single beds across the center of the floor and two-bunk beds along the walls. The beds have new mattresses, which are more appropriate for a shelter setting because they are designed to be bedbug proof and easily cleaned, according to Homeless Innovations Officer Maria Wolfe, with the city’s Health, Housing and Homelessness Department.

The third pod renovation was unveiled Thursday, and the city plans to complete four more by winter so that seven renovated pods will be available by October before the shelter population rises during the colder months, said Director of Health, Housing and Homelessness Gilbert Ramirez. In six weeks, volunteers will be building another 20 beds and getting two more dorms ready, Wolfe said.

There are 12 pods total and renovations on the other five will wait as every bed possible needs to be available during upcoming winter, Ramirez said. Seven of the dorms are for men, four are for women and one is for couples.

The city is also actively seeking bids for security cameras and looking into how else to improve security.

“Sometimes they say, it’s not a safe environment, and that’s not OK,” Ramirez said.

The building has five outdoor shade canopies, but more shade could be added, Ramirez said, and the city wants to add a pet relief area, platforms for service providers to do fairs outdoors and make upgrades to the property to make it more accessible.

The city has requested $2 million in federal dollars to meet ADA requirements by making sure showers, shower bars and seats can be modernized and to pave the outdoor paths to make them nice for wheelchair and walker use.

In summer, close to 100 people who use walkers or wheelchairs stay there on a typical day. Those people often stay at the shelter the whole day, because it is difficult for them to spend the day on the streets, Wolfe said.

The facility needed $8.9 million in repairs in January, Ramirez said. Bernalillo County contributed $600,000, which helped purchase the new beds and mattresses, while the City Council authorized $4.5 million, which will be enough to complete the interior renovations on all 12 pods.

Keller also announced that two city positions related to housing have been filled: Charley Salas-Ramos is the deputy chief operations officer and will oversee some of the facility projects, and Charlie Verploegh is a deputy director for the Health, Housing and Homelessness Department.

The city works with multiple nonprofits, which provide many of the services to help homeless people in Albuquerque.

“We want to encourage anyone in Albuquerque who wants to help out — help out a provider, one of these nonprofits that does this work each and every day,” Keller said. “It’s much more effective than just trying to do it yourself.”