Santa Fe homeless shelter predicts doubled wait lists without federal funding
—Patrick Lohmann, Source NM
Threatened cuts to federal homelessness funding next year will have ripple effects across a state overwhelmed with a rising unhoused population, including at an emergency shelter in Santa Fe that already has a long wait list, according to the shelter’s head.
Consuelo’s Place Executive Director Michele Williams told Source NM that she expects the wait list at her shelter to at least double if the federal Housing and Urban Development agency carries out plans to drastically cut its main anti-homelessness program known as Continuum of Care.
HUD first announced that possibility in mid-November when it released an unexpected “Notice of Funding Opportunity” for the Continuum of Care program that suggested it was seeking to slash funding by 70%, including major cuts to “permanent supportive housing,” which is long-term housing for formerly unhoused people who also receive services for mental illness or drug addiction.
HUD removed the notice in early December, potentially in response to a pair of lawsuits, but Williams and other nonprofit directors say they are heading into the new year with increasing uncertainty about the program that usually provides the state about $14 million a year. The state received $17 million in the latest funding round.
Williams is anxious about the Continuum of Care cuts even though her shelter doesn’t receive any of its funding, she told Source, because she relies on organizations that do, including nonprofits that place people in permanent supportive housing after staying in emergency shelters like Consuelo’s Place. The shelter currently has a waitlist of between 30 and 40 individuals and families for a shelter that usually houses between 60 and 90 families a year, she said.
“It is one of the financial mechanisms that support how our clients leave emergency shelter and go into housing,” she said. “So if they are cut, clients will be stuck in shelter; families will be stuck in shelter; seniors will be stuck in shelter; in our shelter and certainly around the state and probably around the country.”
People being stuck for longer in her shelter will mean the wait list will grow longer, she said. Meanwhile, cutting funds for permanent housing will result in more people ending up living on the streets, she said. Those people will also end up on her wait list, she predicted.
“There may be some people that are housed in their programs that will become unhoused if they lose their funding, so that also may be where the need will increase to our shelter,” she said.
Unsheltered homelessness in Santa Fe increased over the course of the year, as well as the rest of the state, according to results of a recent Point-in-Time Count.
Monet Silva, director of the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness, which coordinates Continuum of Care funding applications from nonprofits across the state, previously told Source New Mexico she is hoping the Legislature will pay for the expected HUD funding cuts during the upcoming legislative session.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s proposed budget released Monday contains more than $110 million for housing, including $45 million for “homelessness initiatives,” though it’s unclear from the budget proposal how much of that funding is intended to offset Continuum of Care funding cuts. The Legislature will meet in January with its own funding priorities to approve the budget.
The threat of HUD cuts capped off a year at Consuelo’s Place marked by federal cuts to programs on which her clients rely, including the abrupt halt of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during a federal government shutdown. During that period, Williams said she was heartened to see community members increase food donations, as well as the state spending $30 million of its own funding to pay for partial November SNAP benefits.
As she gears up to celebrate Christmas, with the help of a donated tree and donated gifts for children in her care, Williams said she is optimistic that the state and the community she lives in will show up again to help her clients even if the HUD cuts happen.
“I think it’s all we can do,” she said. “We have strong local leaders. I look forward to working with them and feel comfortable about the community that is Santa Fe and how we are going to support one another in the short term as this hopefully gets resolved on the national level.”
In New Mexico, Republicans are eating into Democrats’ longstanding voter registration advantage
—Dan Boyd, Albuquerque Journal
With New Mexico set to enter a key statewide election year, Republicans have been steadily cutting into Democrats’ longstanding voter registration edge.
But whether that translates into more success for GOP candidates in what’s become a reliably blue state remains unclear.
Since March, New Mexico Republicans have added more than 7,000 new voters to their ranks, while Democrats have added roughly 2,300 new voters, according to data maintained by Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver’s office.
A similar trend has also played out over the last five years, as Republicans had nearly 16,000 voters more than they did in November 2020 as of last month, while Democrats had about 38,800 fewer voters.
At least some of that reduction is due to “purges” of the state’s voter rolls that are conducted in accordance with state law after every general election cycle. Such purges involve removing voters who have moved out of the state or are no longer eligible to vote from the state’s rolls. The latest purge occurred between January and March of this year, a spokesman for the Secretary of State’s Office confirmed.
But state GOP officials say the increase in their voter registration numbers is not merely coincidental.
Leticia Muñoz, the executive director of the Republican Party of New Mexico, said the state GOP has held voter registration drives in churches, gun shops and at community events in recent years, while also talking to voters about state-level policies that impact their lives.
“We will forge ahead continuing to outpace the Democrats,” said Muñoz, while citing multiyear efforts to flip states like Florida, West Virginia and Kentucky from majority-Democrat to majority-Republican.
However, Democrats still have a significant voter registration advantage in New Mexico, with nearly 573,000 registered voters as of last month — or about 41.3% of all voters — compared to about 441,000 registered Republicans.
That advantage has translated to a steady stream of victories at the ballot box, as the state has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 2004, although President Donald Trump made inroads in the state in last year’s general election, as compared to four years earlier.
In addition, Democrats currently hold all statewide offices in New Mexico, along with majorities in the state House and Senate. The state’s congressional delegation is also currently made up entirely of Democrats, and has been since U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez ousted incumbent Republican Yvette Herrell in 2022.
New Mexico Democratic Party spokesman Daniel Garcia said the number of registered Democratic voters in New Mexico surged for years, largely obscuring the recent Republican uptick.
“The Republican Party of New Mexico may try to tout a slight statistical uptick within a small two-year period because they need a good story, but the reality is that they’ve trailed Democrats in voter registration and, more importantly, election victories, for years,” Garcia told the Journal.
He also said the implementation of automatic voter registration in New Mexico has led to many younger state residents being registered to vote as independents. Automatic voter registration takes place when eligible residents interact with Motor Vehicle Division field offices around the state.
Many of those independent voters, who decline to state a party affiliation, align with the Democratic Party's values, Garcia said, and the state party has recently started mailing postcards to such voters that include instructions on how to change their party affiliation online.
In fact, independent voters are New Mexico's fastest-growing voting bloc, as they now make up roughly one-quarter of the state's nearly 1.4 million total registered voters.
However, independent voters typically cast ballots at a lower rate than either Democrats or Republicans. In the 2024 general election, for example, only about half of registered independents cast a ballot compared to more than 70% of registered Republicans and Democrats.
The June 2026 primary election will mark the first time New Mexico independents can cast a ballot without having to change their party affiliation, under a bill signed into law this year by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
Meanwhile, the offices up for election next year include governor, attorney general and secretary of state. All 70 state House seats will also be up for election, along with New Mexico's three seats in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Democrat Ben Ray Luján.
Filing day for statewide and congressional candidates is set for Feb. 3.