City cuts ties with organization after it stopped paying tenant's rents

The city of Albuquerque has severed ties with a nonprofit group it partnered with to provide people with housing vouchers after city officials said $200,000 in rent went unpaid.

But an official with the group, the Supportive Housing Coalition, said the way the administration of Mayor Tim Keller, who terminated the contract, presents the situation is inaccurate and a “mischaracterization.”

Supportive Housing Coalition, through a partnership with the city, was tasked with providing permanent supportive housing vouchers that covered residents rent.

“When funds came in, they were used to pay payroll and rent and things like that,” said Debbie Davis, interim CEO of the Supportive Housing Coalition. She also said the organization’s finances were an issue the city knew about for a while.

Federal tax records filed for nonprofits show that the Supportive Housing Coalition had a net income of minus-$244,024 in 2022. Filings for 2023 and 2024 don’t appear to be publicly available.

The city was giving the group $110,000 a month, and they’ve had a contract since 2022. Up to 48 evictions were prevented, according to the city.

“We’re a nonprofit. We don’t have a lot of cash flow, and so the cash flow here has always been limited,” Davis said. “They’ve (the city) known about it for a long time. For them to say they just discovered it is not accurate.”

The city acknowledged Wednesday that it had seen an issue with the organization’s finances dating back two years.

“We’ve been a long-standing partner with Supportive Housing Coalition, and in December of 2022, they actually had cash flow issues. … We worked closely with them because they have been such an integral part of ensuring that people are safely housed,” Ellen Braden, deputy director of the city’s Health, Housing and Homelessness department, told the Journal.

She didn’t respond to what Davis meant by “mischaracterization.”

“What I can say is that we paid Supportive Housing Coalition a certain amount of money each month to pay rent for the clients that they were serving to pay for their housing vouchers, and that money did not go to support the rent of those clients,” Braden said.

The city is still investigating to determine if any criminal offenses were committed.

“We referred the matter to the appropriate authorities and our primary focus remains on ensuring families are not displaced, which includes facilitating the transfer of vouchers to other providers,” Carla Martinez, the city’s associate chief administrative officer, said in a statement.

The city also reported the matter to the state auditor’s office.

“As CABQ has not yet determined the matter to be an apparent violation of a criminal statute in connection with their financial affairs, the (Office of the State Auditor) remains attentive and will reassess the issue if new evidence emerges that requires further examination,” David Pena, director of policy for state Auditor Joseph Maestas, told the Journal in a statement.

Losing the contract with the city has made times even tougher for the Supportive Housing Coalition, Davis said, but the nonprofit will still do what it can to help provide people with a place to live.

“We still own affordable housing. That will not go away, and we still have vouchers through a different program than the city, and those aren’t going away,” Davis said.

But she said terminated contract hurts the organization’s fiscal state even more, “because they are not renewing our contracts. That’s like $2.2 million worth of funding that is gone, and therefore it’s obviously taking our bottom line,” Davis said.

It also caps off what has been a turbulent year.

“We lost our CEO, we lost our board chairman, our chief housing officer turned in his resignation, our controller left — we’re kind of running really lean and mean right now,” Davis said.