Consuelo’s Place Emergency Homeless Shelter In Santa Fe Is A Success Story!

Michele Williams, executive director of Consuelo’s Place Emergency Shelter in Santa Fe. Photo by Maire O’Neill/losalamosreporter.com

Consuelo’s Place case manager Glenn Weber at his desk. Photo by Maire O’Neill/losalamosreporter.com

BY MAIRE O’NEILL
maire@losalamosreporter.com

Consuelo’s Place is a non-congregate shelter in Santa Fe for vulnerable individuals and families who are transitioning into permanent housing or whose unique circumstances make it difficult to succeed in a congregate setting; and provides life-stabilizing services for those individuals. Employees there are upbeat and clearly proud of what the shelter has accomplished and are excited to share the hope and optimism they have for their guests

The Los Alamos Reporter spent some time with Michele Williams, executive director of Consuelo’s Place and long-time friend Glenn Weber, Case Manager, who explained the shelter’s goal to transition all its guests into a more suitable, stable or permanent housing situation in 60 days or less.

Williams said last fiscal year, the shelter served some 218 people 148 adults 70 kids for the calendar year 2025 . At the time of the Reporter’s interview, there were 35 children staying there.

“We serve mostly Santa Fe County and have had some people from Los Alamos. The connection is that there are people who live here that work up there or people work here that live up there. People from Los Alamos mostly end up getting sheltered in Santa Fe or Espanola,” Williams said. “We serve Santa Fe and anyone in the surrounding area that does not have access to services.”

Williams and her team provide wraparound case management to their clients experiencing homelessness, substance use disorders, and poverty while practicing harm reduction through a trauma informed lens. The shelter averages 75-90 clients in house; ranging from infants to the elderly, and includes people with disabilities and families with children.

Consuelo’s Place during the COVID pandemic – just after March 2020 as a social distancing shelter. It is located at 1600 St. Michael’s Dr, Building 7, Santa Fe, NM 87505.

“We are considered an emergency shelter. We opened as an emergency shelter for other shelters to provide social distancing and quarantine for Covid Positive clients. Obviously there has been a huge increase in the number of people who are now considered homeless since the pandemic and it just increases every year. There have been a lot of hardships from COVID around job loss and illnesses that people just didn’t recover from quite the same,” Williams said. “The economy over the last few years. The cost of living in Santa Fe has increased, wages have not gone up to match, so in Santa Fe the cost of rent has gone up 76 percent since the pandemic and wages have not gone up to match that.

She said that all things equal, even if fentanyl had not become its own beast, it has become impossible for people to get ahead.

“With the rent increases there were people who were housed that could not afford rent. One of those populations that came right into our services here are seniors. People who are on a restricted income, disability income, social security income, rent prices went up 76 percent and social security income and disability payments did not increase and the money has to come from somewhere. There were a lot of people that were housed that became unhoused because rent prices went up,” Williams said.

She confirmed that there is a shortage of housing supply based on what the demand is.

“Anybody can charge what’s market value and if there’s enough supply – if there’s 100 homeless people, there’s 100 units and a third of the people who make a relative low wage income, then the apartment complex, to get the apartments filled will have to charge the amount that people can pay,” Williams said.

Williams and Weber noted that the shelter has had almost the same number of single dads as single moms – 60% dads-40% moms.

“We have co-parent couples. We have somewhat healthy co-parent relationships where one parent is housed and one parent is not and the parent who is not shares custody of the child here at the shelter and they go back and forth,” Williams said.

Consuelo’s Place works with Santa Fe Public Schools and with an organization called Adelante, to arrange for transportation. Sometimes kids have to transfer from one school to another.

“There are schools in our current location that are within walking distance so families do walk to school and we also get school bus pick-ups for other schools. Kids can do district transfers. The school district has been accommodating around either a transfer or a pick-up to maintain continuity of their education,” Williams said.

The average length of time someone stays at Consuelo’s is nine months – 276 days was what it was last year,

“We certainly are a homeless shelter but the services primarily that we provide are case management, and it’s wrap-around case management focused on social determinants of health and one of those is housing. Every client here must select a housing goal and the case managers help them achieve that. The service is case management and shelter is what they’re getting,” Williams said. “We handle food insecurity so they can sign up for SNAP benefits. Seniors might need home health aid, assistance with medical appointments, medical needs, transportation needs – we set up bus passes. When I say wrap-around case management – it is all their safety and transportation, health and housing needs – it’s all covered.”

Williams actually retired once from the City of Santa Fe and has been working for non-profits ever since.

“I went back to grad school and I got my Master’s degree in Industrial Organizational Psychology and I worked in program management stuff a lot in non-profits over the last several years. I kind of like to dabble in big hard problems. So I’ve worked in non-profits that deal with substance use responses, including Assistance Dogs of the West for a little bit where I trained dogs for people with disabilities,” she said, adding that she has also worked with veterans’ suicide issues. Consuelo’s place theoretically gives preference to veterans but doesn’t have a large number.

Cristus St Vincent hospital works Consuelo’s Place to allow short term medical respite. .

There are several drivers of people and how they become unhoused, she said. and substance abuse that is certainly one to mention, Williams said.

“Domestic violence is also a factor for about a third of people. If you had to name a top five, substance abuse and alcohol would probably be in there. Mental health diagnosis or lack of diagnosis. Conditions that exist. Domestic violence is profound so we do have a part-time case manager here that assesses and does safety planning for clients that have domestic violence mostly in their history. That’s often a reason why they leave a relationship and then they become unhoused. All of these things that play into a factor of why people are here,” she said.

Williams said the national average for people who go from street homelessness into shelter into housing or supportive housing of some kind is a single digit percentage.

“People who make it from street homelessnessinto or back into housing – our percentage is 60 percent. At the end of last year it was 60 percent. We are probably one of the top if not the top performing shelter in the state in terms of that percentage,” she said.

Consuelo’s doesn’t have a time limit for clients. As long as they’re working on housing and making progress they can stay at the shelter until they achieve “a housing goal”.

“And that’s the 276 days – about nine months. It costs us roughly $5,000$6,000 a client. We provide everybody wrap-around case management and wrap-around support here, so that may be maintenance cost that’s covered – supplies, toilet paper, cleaning supplies. We set that up a little bit so that the facility can run that way and clients do not have to spend money out of pocket to clean their rooms, to buy groceries, to do whatever. They get food benefits and we get significant contributions from Food Depot. Youth Works is also partially funded to support meals for us,” Williams said, adding that the shelter gets a lot of donations from the community also for those needs.

“We are really in need of monetary financial support to the tune of $5,000per client, which is what it costs to achieve that 60 percent. I want people to understand that if they contribute money to the shelter, what it goes towards. It goes towards getting people into housing. I know there’s probably a lot of community frustration when they see homelessness . There’s just always homeless, right?, Williams said. There aren’t enough shelter beds in Santa Fe, in Espanola, and we all in a regional way support one another in terms of providing people with shelter for the purposes of stability – to get people into housing, which is what we all want, which is what the clientele want. It’s the bottom line. And to be able to do all that, that’s roughly what it costs.”

Weber said Consuelo’s Place is probably one of the most fantastic places he has ever worked.

“I’ve really put my heart and soul into this. Michele and I have talked about this many times. I’m here for the long-haul, because I actually see Consuelo’s Place make a difference, unlike a lot of congregate type shelters,” Weber said.

Weber has been speaking to groups in Los Alamos and elsewhere who are helping to tackle regional homelessness issues. He recently participated in forums in collaboration with the Interfaith Coalition on Homelessness in White Rock and Los Alamos on “Understanding Homelessness”.

Williams explained that her Master’s degree is in organizational psychology – the psychology of people at work.

“Well, this is one of the reasons people want to come to work, because what I do, I can see what I do and I make a difference. If you feel like you’re just spinning your wheels – there’s a lot of burnout in this profession. Lack of success or being successful at your job, is one of the reasons people get burned out. Like CYFD – you go to the same families and it’s over and over. Why do people quit working at CYFD – because they don’t feel like they’re making a difference,” she said. “I don’t pay Glenn a million dollars to work here. I pay him in the service that we do, set up in a way that we can be successful, so he feels like he is successful. Who wouldn’t want to do that?”

Weber has been at Consuelo’s Place for about 2 1/2 years.

“I see the success of the clients I work with. I’ve worked with clients that had a lot of issues and we’ve been able to work through those issues and come up with a plan. I call that aggressive case management because I see them all the time – I see them every day. I see the results. I work with clients from the day they get here, coming in from homelessness, sleeping in a tent, and within a week I see a change,” he said.

Asked where the people who move on from Consuelo’s find housing, Williams said there are various projects in the area that are likely to get cut.

“There are affordable housing projects, there are some tax incentive based projects that are based on your identifiable income but there’s not enough of those facilities or there’s not enough developers that are given the incentives to do more. It’s the same everywhere. The need is greater than the supply. Is the supply sufficient enough if people are poor? If we had money for guaranteed income programs so that they could pay for market rate apartments and then you’re not talking about subsidized, the person’s subsidy and then we will provide for that but it doesn’t mean that the housing market is subsidized,” she said.

The question is how many available apartments or units does the community have versus the need.

“Who needs housing in your community? And that’s a big thing in Los Alamos, right? The community in Los Alamos needs x number of employees to work at Los Alamos National Lab but they also need folks to work at the grocery store, etc. and that’s where the bottom’s falling out. We know that there’s still not enough housing in Los Alamos,” Williams said.

She noted that with the new apartment buildings that have been built in Santa Fe in the last couple of years, many of them are occupied by Lab employees.

“People ask why there are still homeless in Santa Fe. They built all these new buildings and people who work in Los Alamos are living in those. People are being paid higher salaries to account for the cost of living. When people ask, ‘Who are your homeless?’ It’s often your teachers, your grocery store managers, and your CYFD workers, as well as your people who work at Walmart and Target,” Williams said.

The Reporter toured the shelter with Weber, who was proud and excited to show off the facility.

1600 St. Michael’s Dr, Building 7, Santa Fe, NM 87505.

Feel free to call for directions or questions: 505-372-8206

How you can help ~

Monetary Donations
Coffee, Creamer, Sugar
Toilet Paper
Paper Towels
Hygiene items (shampoo, toothpaste, laundry detergent)
Household cleaning supplies (we use pine sol and natural type products because of some client allergies and sensitivities)
Laundry soap and dryer sheets
Men’s & women’s deodorant
Q-tips
Sanitizing wipes
Feminine hygiene products
Adult diapers
Paper plates, cups, and plastic utensils
Baby formula
Indoor TV antennas