Pueblo bought a $365k building for the Pueblo Rescue Mission. Now, the city wants it back

The city of Pueblo spent $365,000 last year to purchase a new warming shelter for the Pueblo Rescue Mission to serve people who are homeless during weather emergencies. However, the mission has not sheltered anyone at the facility over the past several months.

Now, the city wants the building back.

The city last week asked the shelter to sign over the deed to the building because it breached its contract, Mayor Heather Graham told the Chieftain.

According to the city, the facility, located at 710 W. Fourth St., has been uninhabitable for months — a clay line collapsed after someone flushed a sock down the bathroom’s toilet around the time it first opened in November, Graham said.

The city bought the building last fall and entered into a subrecipient agreement with the rescue mission so it could use it as a warming shelter and house people who are homeless during weather emergencies. Those emergencies can be declared by the mayor between Nov. 1 and March 31.

Graham said the rescue mission has violated its agreement with the city, which requires it to shelter people at the new facility during weather emergencies.

Graham has made several emergency weather declarations since taking office in early February.

The contract with the city also stipulates that the mission must submit quarterly performance reports detailing its activities at the new facility. The first report was due Jan. 15, but the city did not receive one, Graham said. The next report is due April 15.

Failure to submit the reports by the due date “will constitute non-compliance with the agreement,” the contract states.

Rescue mission leadership had pursued the building for months, publicly declaring that it would help them increase sheltering capacity and expand services for the unhoused. Some current and former city leaders billed the facility as a permanent solution to the city's annual need to shelter some of Pueblo’s homeless when it gets too cold.

The building, however, hasn’t been used to shelter people since that November incident, Graham said.

“We’ve been, in good faith, thinking that we have additional shelter for unhoused people to be kept warm, and the mission dropped the ball,” Graham said. “It’s not been happening. It’s unfortunate.”

Leroy Gonzales, board chair for the Pueblo Rescue Mission, told the Chieftain in an email Monday that the new building was used until early December, before "serious plumbing issues surrounding collapsed sewer lines" forced the shelter to move clients to its current facility.

"The Pueblo Rescue Mission worked with the city to disseminate a request for proposal for the plumbing work and a contractor has been chosen per the selection process outlined by the Community Development Block Grant," Gonzales wrote.

"The Pueblo Rescue Mission has made progress on getting the necessary plumbing repairs needed for the emergency shelter building and a general contractor has been chosen to perform the repairs."

The city’s plan is to put out a request for proposal and identify other organizations that can run the building as a warming shelter. The city also wants to offer medical, behavioral health and legal services, among others, at the facility.

Other reasons why the city wants the building back

In a March 8 email to Graham, Melanie Rapier, executive director of the mission, said the shelter is “financially not in a position” to pay for the repair, which is estimated to cost $30,000.

That email was shared with the Chieftain.

The shelter must first pay for renovations, or in this case, repairs, before it’s reimbursed by the city because the city used federal funds from the Community Development Block Grant program to purchase the building. At least $35,000 was set aside for renovations.

Rapier, in that same email, said the shelter’s board decided to “put off” the repair until it has the operational funding to support it.

Graham said she found that decision by the board to be “not acceptable in any form,” particularly after sensing they had the funds to pay for the repair. She wasn’t told they didn’t have the money for it, she said.

“That’s when I thought we could no longer let this go on,” Graham said. “We’re past the point of no return here.”

Graham said that Rapier and the board’s responses, combined with their lack of reporting, amount to “poor management on their part.”

“They knew that they were not complying and not sheltering people,” Graham said. “They knew this whole time and nothing had been handled. I don’t know what you make of that. Sounds pretty irresponsible to me.”

Graham said she first learned that the shelter hadn’t used the new building since November during a February meeting with Rapier and some of the mission’s board members. They also reportedly shared that former Mayor Nick Gradisar knew they weren’t using it.

Gradisar told the Chieftain he was aware shelter leadership “used (the new building) some” but wasn’t sure how often they used it during December and January. He said that the mission was working with the city’s housing department to make those repairs.

Gradisar said he was convinced that the rescue mission had enough capacity to shelter the unhoused this winter.

“Whether they were sheltering them in the new shelter part of the time or in the regular shelter part of the time, there weren’t people going without shelter who needed it," Gradisar said. "That was the important part to me.”

Questions resurface about the rescue mission's financial health

Before city council approved the purchase of the building, questions arose about the rescue mission’s finances. Graham, who was a member of city council at the time, said she reviewed the shelter’s budget and didn’t see how they could operate another building. Councilor Regina Maestri felt it was unwise to allocate more funds to an organization that was possibly mismanaging them.

In a separate email to Graham that was also shared with the Chieftain, Rapier wrote that the “funding landscape is difficult” and that the shelter has been “struggling since November.”

Rapier also wrote in the email that she planned to lay off two or three full-time staff members and one part-time staffer. Gonzales wrote that the shelter hasn't laid off multiple people.

Rapier has previously said that capacity at the shelter’s older facility is dependent on its staffing levels and that people may be turned away when staffing is inadequate.

“We know what a significant homeless issue we have,” Graham said. “If the mission is having to turn people away because they’re at capacity, it’s a problem.”

Graham said the city received an email from the rescue mission saying that they have the funds for the repair, but the city’s position on the matter will remain because the organization doesn’t have the “operating costs to pay people in their existing shelter.”

The contract states that the rescue mission agreed to use its available beds in its current facility during weather emergencies until improvements were made to the new building. Gonzales wrote that the "shelter had capacity and availability for shelter during every emergency declaration," which amounts to more than 40 nights this winter.

“Now knowing that they haven’t been sheltering people (at the new facility), it’s alarming to me,” Graham said. “It should be alarming to the entire community.”

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Chieftain reporter Josué Perez can be reached at JHPerez@gannett.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @josuepwrites. Support local news, subscribe to The Pueblo Chieftain at subscribe.chieftain.com.

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: City wants Pueblo Rescue Mission to sign over unused emergency shelter