Albuquerque Indian Center struggling to stay open
Without funds, it may close by April 1
For nearly three decades, the Albuquerque Indian Center has been something of a gathering place and safe haven, providing meals, clothing and a host of social services to poor and homeless urban Indians.
Located in the International District, at 105 Texas SE, it is struggling to remain open while searching for additional sources of funding at a time when the number of people it serves has increased, said Executive Director Mary Garcia.
Unless it gets an infusion of cash, she said, it may have to close by April 1.
“It’s a very real possibility,” she said. “A lot of people rely on this place.”
In just the past year, the center went from serving lunch to 70-100 people twice a week to as many as 150 people five days a week.
“These people live hard lives,” Garcia said. “They come in from the reservation, are experiencing poverty and are ill prepared to deal with urban life. This is their community center and closing it would only make their lives more difficult.”
The problem is a common one — an overwhelming need, limited funding and multiple organizations competing for the same dollars.
The center is currently operating with about $120,000, which includes a $55,000 grant from the Otten Foundation, $37,000 from the New Mexico Department of Health, $25,000 from United Healthcare, and lesser amounts from United Way and private donations.
Garcia said she was still hopeful that funding would come from the Navajo tribal government, which gave AIC a $100,000 donation last fiscal year, and the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department, to which AIC responded to a request for proposals and asked for $150,000, the same amount it got last year from the department through a noncompetitive emergency process.
In recent months, she sent a donation request letter to all the Albuquerque-area pueblos that operate casinos. The only one that responded was Laguna, which runs the Route 66 Casino Hotel, which sent AIC a check for $500, she said.
In 2011, the city of Albuquerque, which for at least a dozen years had provided about $175,000 annually to AIC, according to Garcia, began diverting those funds to First Nations Community HealthSource. That’s because First Nations scored higher on city-evaluated requests for proposals, said Doug Chaplin, director of the city Depart- ment of Family and Community Services.
First Nations operates two public health clinics and three health centers in Albuquerque Public Schools. It provides medical, dental, behavioral health and traditional healing, as well as an array of supportive social services. It also hopes to open a meal site by June 2016.
AIC focuses on social services and does not provide health services.
“They (the city) said we didn’t know our population and we couldn’t track outcomes — can you believe that?” Garcia said. “We’ve been here working with this group of people for almost 30 years and we don’t know them?”
As for tracking outcomes, “I’m not sure what that’s all about,” she said. “Every person who enters the center signs a sheet indicating which services they are using that day.”
Visitors may sit for a meal, pick up a food box, get clothing, retrieve mail, use a computer or copy machine, make phone calls, get help with résumés, get legal services, receive referrals for housing, or participate in programs, such as alcohol or drug abuse intervention, or domestic violence and tobacco prevention. All that information is entered into a database kept by AIC, Garcia said.
In 2014, AIC saw 12,000 unduplicated people, meaning the visitors were counted only once, regardless of how many programs and services they took advantage of, she said. About 96 percent of those visitors were Native American.
Chaplin said he fully understands Garcia’s disappointment.
“We see it in a lot of social services where there are more needs than funds and everybody is chasing the same resources,” he said. “The bottom line is there are limited resources, and I have a budget and we try to meet as many needs as we can.”