Pete's Place brings 'Showers to Go' to homeless people around Santa Fe
Carina Julig, The Santa Fe New Mexican
5 min read
Mar. 21—The Interfaith Shelter at Pete's Place, a fixture in Santa Fe, is expanding to help people beyond its door at the corner of Cerrillos and Harrison roads.
This week, the shelter launched a mobile hygiene unit, which will allow it to offer showers to people at different locations around the city, including outside a new day shelter that is open Thursdays at the Salvation Army.
The mobile unit, dubbed "Showers to Go" by Pete's Place, is part of the shelter's mission to reach more people in Santa Fe who are homeless but don't make use of its services.
Launching Showers to Go has been a long time in the making.
The city purchased the mobile hygiene unit during the pandemic for about $68,000 with federal pandemic relief funding and put out a request for proposals for an operator. Nobody bid on it, said Pete's Place executive director Korina Lopez.
The shelter knew the unit existed and last year, when the opportunity to apply for a mobile services grant from the state Department of Health came up, staff wondered if they could use it to operate the unit.
Lopez credited Pete's Place deputy director Beverly Kellam with getting the ball rolling.
"She's the brainchild behind this program," Lopez said.
With the city's permission, Pete's Place applied for and received the roughly $200,000 grant and worked with the city to secure a lease for the truck and trailer, which was finalized at the end of February.
The shelter started offering showers Monday at La Familia's Healthcare for the Homeless and had a grand opening Thursday at the Salvation Army. Only three people showed up Monday, program manager James Butler said, but Thursday a long list of people signed up.
"They seemed to really enjoy it," Butler said.
The unit has one accessible bathroom with a toilet, sink and shower and two smaller compartments with showers and a small sink. Butler said the unit can process 300 gallons of wastewater at a time, or an estimated 25 showers. Both locations are allowing Showers to Go to connect to their city water supply, but the unit could also offer a smaller number of showers without a water connection, Butler said.
Each compartment has heating and cooling, and they are disinfected after each use, he said. Users are provided with toiletries and a thick, disposable towel to dry off with, eliminating the need to do laundry.
"It's much more hygienic," said Butler, who had operated similar units while working at the U.S. Department of Health's Incident Management Team.
Along with support from other community partners, Showers to Go will offer people HIV and Hepatitis C testing, Narcan, medical care and other services. Lopez said the hope is Pete's Place can use the unit to connect with people who are reluctant to come to the shelter.
"The shower is the motivator, hopefully, for people to get more services," Kellam said.
Showers to Go is scheduled to operate Mondays at Healthcare for the Homeless and Thursdays at the Salvation Army to coincide with a new a day resource center.
The day shelter was spearheaded by Linda Regnier of the S3 Santa Fe Housing Initiative Volunteer Committee, who for over a year had been working to establish something of its kind in Santa Fe. Ismael Gutierrez, corps officer and pastor with the Salvation Army, agreed to let the group hold a pilot of the day shelter once a week starting in February. The program was a success, and they plan to keep it going from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. each Thursday for the foreseeable future, to roughly align with the hours the mobile hygiene unit will be there.
For now, the day shelter is a humble affair. Guests can get something to eat and drink, do a load of laundry, draw or work on a puzzle with one of the volunteers or just relax for a few hours out of the elements.
The ultimate goal is to launch a five-days-a-week warming shelter during winter. But that will require more resources, including a larger volunteer base and money so the group can afford security. Regnier said the group has begun reaching out to city officials to see if Santa Fe would be willing to partner with them or find a way for them to get funding.
During the first four Thursdays it was open, Regnier said, volunteers registered 65 guests and did 26 loads of laundry. Along with providing haircuts and basic first-aid care, volunteers made arrangements for one guest to be housed at St. Elizabeth's Shelter and transported him there and also arranged for the Street Homeless Animal Project to meet with several pet owners.
Gutierrez, who took the reins at the Salvation Army about a year and a half ago along with his wife, said part of the goal for him is to raise the Salvation Army's profile in Santa Fe.
"When we came into our position and talked to a couple of partners in the community, they were under the impression the Salvation Army was fizzing away," he said.
Not only are they still around, but Gutierrez also wants to work with other partners to increase the services they offer, including, he hopes, the winter warming shelter.
"Santa Fe is growing at a crazy rate; the more people that come into our community, the more services we're going to need to provide," he said. "We just want to make sure we're ready for the need when it comes."
Tashima Wildrose, another S3 volunteer, said she's proud of the difference the organization has been able to make.
"This group in one year has accomplished so much," she said.
Lila Casey is a member of Santa Fe's Lived Experience Advisory Board and is also on the S3 committee that worked to stand up a day shelter. Casey, who was formerly homeless, said one of the most valuable things the day shelter can do is provide a supportive community to people who are homeless without stigmatizing them.
"It does feel embarrassing now sometimes to remember that I slept outside of the Salvation Army; I couldn't even sleep inside in the winter because I had my puppy," she said. "Now when I look at people who are in those circumstances, I realize anything is possible — so much change is possible."
