Keep block grants off the chopping block
Meet your Santa Fe neighbors: Joe has lost his long-time companion and, newly widowed, can’t find a room on his $450 monthly pension. Firstgrader Maria is skipping school because her mother is being kicked out of their home by her boyfriend. Frankie turned 18 and thus is out of foster care and on the streets. Evita hates the commute from Rio Rancho to her job with the state but cannot afford the down payment for a home in her hometown. Elena and her two young children sleep under the table of a friend’s house. And Erica can’t stand the thought of leaving the home and neighborhood she’s lived in for 40 years because she is unable to make meals for herself anymore.
Meet the services provided them: A rental housing provider got Joe a room to live at a senior housing complex. Santa Fe Public Schools’ outreach workers got Maria’s mother into temporary housing and Maria back into first grade. Five faith communities offer rotating housing and meals for young adults, including Frankie. Evita got down payment assistance from a housing nonprofit so she could move back to Santa Fe and afford her own house.
Elena and kids graduated from a shelter and, with use of a housing voucher, got a
rental housing unit. And meals are delivered daily to Erica so she can continue to live in her home in a Santa Fe neighborhood.
Meet the city’s role: resources to help these six Santa Feans and hundreds of others are approved by the mayor and City Council, based on recommendations by staff and vetted by the Community Development Commission. Packets assembled by the staff of requests from our nonprofit providers give a glimpse of the enormous housing, social services and community development needs of our Santa Fe neighbors. Some towns in New Mexico, when it comes to community development, prioritize paving streets.
Thankfully, the mayor and City Council has prioritized putting roofs over Santa Feans’ heads.
Meet the funder: Uncle Sam. Ever since Richard Nixon was president, the Community Development Block Grant Program has poured resources into states and communities to let them decide how to promote community development.
And what a difference this program has made — not only in the lives of the six people cited here but for people in every community throughout the nation.
One could hardly imagine a more successful federal, state, local, nonprofit partnership. And yet the Trump administration has zeroed out the Community Development Block Grant Program in its budget request to the Congress.
Surely this is one social safety net worth keeping in place. Fight the elimination of Community Development Block Grant and show Congress that this program is vital.