Santa Fe's homeless population facing frigid temperatures
Nov. 28—They come in wheelchairs and on crutches, hobbling down streets in thin shoes, carrying blankets and pushing shopping carts containing their worldly possessions.
They are the faces no one wants to see at intersections, holding signs with pleas for mercy.
"I am freezing to death," read a cardboard sign held in the swollen, red hands of a woman standing outside a Taos post office. She lives nearby in someone's tree house and needs a kerosene heater, she said.
As temperatures fell and forecasters predicted snow and cold winds on Tuesday, Northern New Mexico's homeless population began making their way to shelters. Meanwhile, the city of Santa Fe has enacted a Code Blue status, an increased measure to get people out of the cold.
"We're working with the city's emergency management," said Korina Lopez, executive director of the Interfaith Community Shelter at Pete's Place on Cerrillos Road, where up to 125 people can seek shelter each night. "We're here if someone needs to come in from the cold. We provide meals and a clothing closet. We just put out requests for socks, gloves and hats. They need to layer up."
But comfort against the night's frigid temperatures only lasts a few hours. Shortly after daybreak, people must return to the streets, where not having a home comes at a steep price.
Outside the interfaith shelter, a man who would identify himself only as Shawn feebly attempted to wrap his sleeping bag in a battered plastic bag. His weather-worn hands were rough from exposure, swollen, chapped and stiff, refusing to yield to his commands. He tried again to tie the knot. Again, it failed.
Shawn is one of an estimated 350 to 400 homeless people seeking shelter from the cold in Santa Fe this winter, said Hank Hughes, executive director of the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness. About half the city's homeless population turns to shelters; the other half fends off frigid temperatures in tents or in cars or under bushes, he said.
Most of the homeless are single men, Hughes said. About 25 percent in Santa Fe are women, and 10 percent are children.
As Shawn worked, he balanced his weight on his good foot. On the other foot, he wore a brace. "I got hit by a car. The drivers here don't pay attention to pedestrians," he said.
He's been homeless for five years.
For two weeks, Shawn guarded his most recent companion, a 52-year-old woman who declined to provide her name, fearing the embarrassment of family members learning about her condition.
"I had a home for 26 years. I've been homeless since 2017, and I have congestive heart failure. I have no phone. I'm sleeping in a tent," she said, adding she fears catching COVID-19 in a shelter. She said she seeks the company of kind male companions to keep from being assaulted.
She wiped tears from her eyes. She was depressed and exhausted. The cold, she said, is unrelenting.
"There's no compassion out here. You can't even walk up to Taco Bell to get something to eat. If you're not in a vehicle or if you're homeless, they won't serve you. Our government is worried about downtown and the artsy side of the city, and here, we have nowhere to go," she said. "We were told by police this morning that we cannot sit out here. But there's nowhere to go. Everybody calls us in."
Women are especially vulnerable on the streets, Lopez said.
"The only thing worse than a homeless man is a homeless woman," she said, adding homeless women are marginalized to the degree that they fear reporting violent crimes committed against them.
"They have to depend on a man to protect them, or they have to rely on their own devices," she said.
At the post office in Taos, Angelica Chavez held her sign seeking a heater. She and eight other people pay $10 a night to sleep in a tree house with no heat or water, she said. They huddle at night for warmth and use a bucket for a bathroom.
Her desire to work is hindered by a lack of ability to bathe and by a medical condition she suffered earlier in the year. "The doctors put a tool in me to keep my bladder open, but I can't afford to get it removed now, so I urinate on myself, and I cannot help it," she said.
Joe Dudziak, who volunteered at Pete's Place for more than a decade, decided three years ago that instead of waiting for the homeless to come to the shelter, he would go to them. "I go all over Santa Fe and hike to where people are camped," he said.
Dudziak, who works under the name Chaplain Joe's Street Outreach, donates what he calls "sleeping bag packages" — with compact, zero-degree sleeping bags, large garbage bags, winter socks, hand warmers, hats, gloves, granola bars and wet wipes. People suffering from severe cold can get inside the garbage bags to keep from freezing to death, he said.
During his first winter as a Street Outreach volunteer, Dudziak gave out 18 sleeping bags. Last year, he handed out 306. In the last month, he's given away 52. "It's not necessarily due to an increase in the homeless population. I just got better at what I was doing," he said.
The homeless are not faring well in the cold, he said. "I have been hitting it hard and heavy the last two weeks. I've had at least four people tell me they had to keep walking all night long because they didn't know how not to freeze to death otherwise. Not everybody is cut out to be in a shelter. Some are not mentally stable enough to spend the night in one room with 100 other people."
Hughes said it's equally challenging to get people off the streets and into homes.
"We have one man we just helped get into a house, and he's been homeless mostly for 30 years," he said. The city spends about $3 million each year controlling the movements of the homeless population and getting them to hospitals when they pass out, he said. "It's more cost-effective to get them housed, and then they don't need the police to come to look after them, and they're not camping in someone's backyard or starting bonfires where they shouldn't be."
The stories of the homeless are as numerous as the population is, Hughes said, adding, "There's a saying: 'Once you've met one homeless person, you've met one homeless person.' "
Shawn, still struggling with his sleeping bag, was preparing to deal with a 21-degree Thanksgiving morning and an impending storm Tuesday that could bring snow to parts of the region and is forecast to bring lows of 16 degrees to Santa Fe, with wind chill that will make it feel considerably colder than it is for much of the day.
He said his hope is for compassion.
"We didn't choose to be homeless," he said. "It happened to us. We're not all drug addicts and drunks, and being homeless isn't against the law."
