Interfaith Community Shelter at Pete's Place
Interfaith Community Shelter at Pete's Place
The Interfaith Community Shelter at Pete's Place offers hope and a safe place for those who are homeless or vulnerable with the greatest need as they overcome adversity. Working with volunteers and community groups, the Shelter provides short-term survival services — food, clothing, shelter, showers, service navigation — for homeless individuals, active service experiences for volunteers and additional long-term services for homeless individuals in collaboration with several local service provider partners.
The majority of the people in the vulnerable population the Interfaith Community Shelter serves fall into two very broad categories: older people who are chronically homeless and suffer from serious mental health challenges, and younger people who have experienced early childhood trauma that led to mental and behavioral health issues, including but not limited to self-medicating with harmful substances. Trauma, both in early childhood and from mental illness and homelessness itself, is one common denominator in all of the people the Shelter serves; employees and volunteers receive training in trauma-informed responses and care of this fragile population.
The Shelter has three core programs:
- Seasonal Overnight Shelter (SOS) – this is the Shelter’s core program, established in the early 2000s when a number of faith community leaders and parishioners banded together to fight an unacceptable tragedy in Santa Fe – people who were living on the streets were dying from hypothermia. SOS accepts anyone, regardless of their condition or circumstance, and offers them a hot meal and a warm place to sleep during the colder months of the year.
- Day Services Program – the Day Services Program acknowledges that providing shelter is not enough. The Shelter provides a wide array of wrap-around services to help people stabilize their lives and hopefully ultimately move into permanent housing. We have an array of partner service providers who come to the Day Services Program to offer anything from medical care to meditation to housing services.
- Summer Safe Haven for All (SSHA) – an extension of the former Women’s Summer Safe Haven, the Summer Safe Haven for All extends the overnight Shelter program to 365 nights/year for men, women and their children. The Shelter both recognized that people we were protecting during the wintertime were often being victimized and subjected to violence during the warmer months and that we needed to provide an alternative for people living in illegal encampments, which is why the SSHA is so important to the City.
Moving beyond the Shelter gates:
In addition to the three core programs, the Interfaith Community Shelter will soon debut Showers to Go, a mobile hygiene program that will take a truck, trailer and tent around town to serve homeless individuals wherever they are. Not only does the trailer offer shower and restroom facilities, but there will be trained navigators on-site to help people access other desperately needed services. Among the services that will be available will be HIV and Hepatitis-C testing, Narcan distribution, assessments for housing and information and referrals to other services throughout the Santa Fe.
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The Santa Fe Community Foundation invited its nonprofit grantees to submit stories related to our January topic of Health & Human Services.
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