City seeks new contractors for Westside shelter as Heading Home's expires

There are scant structures along the drive to the Westside Emergency Housing Center. Semitrucks rule the road.

The facility looms large in the ecosystem of services for unhoused people in Albuquerque, sheltering hundreds overnight. It looms ever larger as the city seeks a new contractor to handle operations and services at the facility after the current operator, Heading Home, declined to renew its contract.

The Request For Proposal for operations concluded Wednesday. Another RFP, for supportive services, is open until Friday.

As of 4 p.m. Wednesday, no completed application had been received for the operations RFP.

Katie Simon, a spokesperson for the department of Health, Housing and Homelessness said the facility serves a “critical need” and will always be staffed. Heading Home will continue operations until a new contractor is selected.

“We are now exploring every option moving forward, which could include re-issuing the RFP or emergency procurement,” Simon said.

On the night of June 20, 317 men, 180 women and 33 couples slept at the WEHC, leaving 170 beds available. Some 132 seniors were sheltered there.

The city acquired the building, which sits outside of town near Double Eagle Airport, from Bernalillo County in 2001. The facility opened in 2003 as a men’s shelter with 200 beds, according to a November 2003 Albuquerque Tribune article.

“We’ve removed everything that speaks of being a prison or being a jail,” one of the operators said at the time.

But more than 20 years later, as capacity and hours have increased, that reputation has proved difficult to shed.

There have been moves to change that.

Last year, the Albuquerque City Council approved a resolution to appropriate money to develop an outdoor recreation space at the WEHC. A purchase order for heavy-duty, bedbug resistant beds was also approved to make “badly needed” replacements.

An Albuquerque Office of the Inspector General report released in 2023 found that bedbugs were an issue at the site, despite regular pest control services. In an investigation into a death at the site, a person with disabilities who allegedly fell from a top bunk, found the bed measured 27 inches wide, smaller than a standard twin mattress. The Disability Rights New Mexico report published in January did not definitively conclude that he had actually died as the result of a fall from the top bunk.

Between Jan. 1, 2020, and March 1, 2024, 22 people died either at the facility or after being transported from the WEHC to the hospital, according to records from the Office of the Medical Investigator. Ten of those deaths happened in 2023.

Earlier this year, the City Council approved more than $4 million for renovations at the site. Simon said the city is moving ahead with an aggressive schedule, hoping to complete every dorm before winter weather increases demand.

New, wider beds have been installed in one of 12 dorms. The renovations for that dorm cost $196,000 and took between four to six weeks. Currently, other dorms are being renovated two at a time and may cost different amounts depending on the work needed. The next two should be completed in three or four weeks.

The new beds are put in place as the renovations are completed. In total, they cost $400,000.

Last month, several senior women were moving into the newly renovated dorm, which includes a fresh coat of paint and LED lighting. One woman apologized for the moving-day mess as potential bidders familiarized themselves with the space.

New Mexico Legal Aid was one of the organizations that sent a representative to the presubmittal meeting. But the organization ultimately decided it wasn’t “feasible” to offer services at the site because of space limitations.

“There’s not a lot of office space,” said director of communications James Hodgins. “When we want to talk about legal issues, we want spaces where we can discuss … confidentially.”

Currently, Heading Home employs 47 staff members at the WEHC who will be able to apply for vacant positions within the nonprofit.

As of January, the agency employed 56 people at the WEHC, operating with a shortage of 17 staff members. Although the nonprofit has previously offered case management, recent staffing constraints have limited it to operations.

The ideal minimum staffing, Simon said, is two intake people, a manager for each shift, a kitchen manager and assistant, and two staff members per dorm — in addition to security and drivers.

Staffing has been a challenge, said Connie Chavez, executive director of Heading Home, in an email to the Journal. The organization took over the WEHC’s operations in 2017, when the WEHC operated exclusively as an emergency winter shelter. The Albuquerque Rescue Mission was the previous operator.

“There was a need to keep the unhoused out of the winter elements,” Chavez said. “The existing operator was not renewing their contract.”

The shelter became a 24/7 operation in 2020. Two years later, the family dorm was converted to allow couples to stay there.

Chavez said the contract with the city was allowed to expire so Heading Home could focus on its mission of working to help people move from homelessness into permanent housing.

The city is offering two contracts — one for operations, and another for supportive services. The operations contract is $3.1 million annually and the supportive services contract offers up to $750,000 annually. Initially, an RFP was released that included both scopes, but the city “heard from providers that the structure was restrictive to organizations who were interested in serving special populations but not in operating the whole facility.”

No viable responses were received for that RFP.

“For an operator, we would like to see an organization that can manage the high volume of guests, ensuring safety and dignity,” Simon said. “For an organization or organizations providing support services, we are interested in more resources that will help guests work towards exiting the WEHC.”

That could mean permanent housing, or other options, Simon said.