Midtown campus houses some homeless individuals

Mayor’s move comes as Governor’s Office says 2 more people have died, 44 more have tested positive for virus

The city of Santa Fe is helping to ease the populations of people staying at local homeless shelters by paying to put some of them up in hotel rooms and moving others to midtown campus dorms.

Mayor Alan Webber, who announced the initiative Monday, said the dorm facilities at the city-owned property, which are undergoing renovations, are now housing five homeless people at the request of the state Department of Health amid the coronavirus pandemic. Officials hope to eventually open 150 beds in multiple buildings on the former college campus to allow homeless people to self-isolate and prevent the spread of the new coronavirus.

Webber called homeless shelters potential “hotbeds” for the highly contagious virus.

The news came as the Governor’s Office announced two new deaths in Bernalillo County from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus, and 44 new confirmed cases — the second-highest daily number since the pandemic reached the state earlier this month. The new cases include three in Santa Fe County.

The state has confirmed 281 cases of the new coronavirus and has had four deaths and 24 hospitalizations. The two deaths announced Monday were a woman in her 90s and a woman in her 70s. Both had been hospitalized and “had an underlying condition,” the Governor’s Office said.

Also Monday, President Donald Trump told Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham the federal government will provide New Mexico with a U.S. Army field hospital to prepare for a possible surge in severe cases.

In a teleconference Monday morning, Webber said, “The urgency of people who are experiencing homelessness is fairly self-evident. The homeless shelters, through no fault of their own, are the equivalent of our hotbeds, that could themselves become serious sources of concentrated sick people and easily spread disease. The priority there was pretty easy to see and understand.”

City Community Services Director Kyra Ochoa said she expects the midtown

campus dorms to be reserved for homeless people who are showing symptoms of COVID-19 and are waiting for test results.

People who have not yet experienced symptoms are staying in two Santa Fe hotels, which are not being identified, said city spokeswoman Lilia Chacon.

The city is partly footing the bill for hotel rooms for about 70 people — 45 who often stay at the Interfaith Community Shelter at Pete’s Place and about 30 people who are clients of St. Elizabeth Shelters, Chacon said.

This will continue until the city finds another venue for housing the homeless or the spread of the coronavirus subsides.

Edward Archuleta, executive director of St. Elizabeth Shelters, said residents of the organization’s men’s shelter and families experiencing homelessness were moved into hotel rooms Monday and likely would stay there for two weeks before possibly being transferred to the midtown campus dorms April 13. “That’s the plan so far,” he said, adding one person will stay behind in each of the organization’s shelters.

None of the residents who were moved to hotel rooms has been tested for the new coronavirus, Archuleta said, because they weren’t showing symptoms of COVID-19.

He said the negotiated hotel rate is $70 per room per night, meaning about $28,000 total for the next two weeks. The city is joining St. Elizabeth, Santa Fe County and other local nonprofits in paying for the temporary housing.

The shelter will continue providing three meals a day to hotel guests, Archuleta said.

“When we move into the dorms, there’ll be no cost for lodging, but we still have to provide staffing, transport, food, toiletries — that’s all going to continue,” he said.

His staff members are continuing to search for housing for clients and provide counseling, Archuleta said, but the future remains uncertain. “We really don’t know what the next step is; we’re playing by ear,” he said.

Ochoa said the city will consider who should stay at the midtown campus dorms on a day-to-day basis.

“At the midtown campus, we are really prioritizing people that are waiting for test results or may test positive,” she said. “While we have capacity, if they test negative we anticipate them staying.”

YouthWorks is supplying food for residents at the midtown dorms, Ochoa said.

The city so far has spent about $25,000 to fix heating, cooling and water systems at the dorms, according to estimates from the Public Works Department. Ochoa said the city hopes to offer 150 beds at the campus but did not have a timeline for when they would be available.

Last week, Lujan Grisham said she asked the Defense Department to send a 248-bed U.S. Army combat support hospital to Albuquerque as part of the state’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.

The governor also told Trump that New Mexico is seeing “incredible spikes” in COVID-19 cases in the Navajo Nation and a high rate of hospitalization among Navajos who contract the virus, and that state officials are trying to trace infections near Los Alamos National Laboratory, CBS News reported Monday. “If we don’t get that under containment and really be clear about surveillance, I think we have some significant national security issues,” Lujan Grisham said, according to CBS News.

The news station said Trump told Lujan Grisham on Monday, during a phone call with governors, “We’ll build you that hospital as quickly as we can.”

“At the midtown campus, we are really prioritizing people that are waiting for test results or may test positive.” City Community Services Director Kyra Ochoa.