City Councilor Joaquín Baca is threatening to block millions in new Gateway Center funding unless Mayor Tim Keller’s administration shows clear plans and real results from the $70 million-plus homelessness project.
The ultimatum follows years of cost overruns, delays and missteps that have kept the Gateway’s main facility mostly closed since 2019, even after it took most of the program’s taxpayer dollars. In that time, Albuquerque’s homeless population grew from 2,394 people in 2023 to 2,740 in 2024, despite the city pouring millions into the program.
“I got tired of funding stuff and having no idea, and living Downtown, I see the problem get worse,” Baca told CityDesk after voting to defer $3.6 million in Gateway expansion funding two weeks ago at a City Council meeting.
The funding standoff marks a breaking point for councilors frustrated with an administration they say has failed to provide basic accountability for one of Albuquerque’s largest infrastructure projects. Baca said he will not support more money with a lack of answers and actual data about Gateway operations.
The deferral vote gives administrators until September to deliver the comprehensive information councilors have been demanding.
Six Years of Promises, Little to Show
Gateway began in 2019 as a bold pitch to voters: turn the former Lovelace hospital on Gibson Blvd. into a one-stop hub for homelessness services, housing hundreds while connecting them to medical care, addiction treatment and permanent housing.
Voters approved $14 million in bonds for the project in 2019. The city purchased the 572,000-square-foot former hospital building in 2021 for $15 million, planning to run multiple programs under one roof.
Six years later, the main Gateway facility remains mostly unused by the homeless population it was supposed to serve. Small programs like medical respite, with about 30 beds and sobering services, with 15 overnight beds, operate in limited sections. A 150-bed housing program, meant to be the centerpiece, has yet to be launched.
The delays have been costly. What began as a $14 million voter-approved project has ballooned to more than $70 million in public investment, with additional millions requested for operations. Construction has been slowed by asbestos remediation, design challenges, retrofitting the old hospital and permitting delays that pushed opening dates from 2022 to 2023 and beyond.
Funding Transparency
Baca said his frustration comes from what he sees as a pattern of the administration asking for funding without giving councilors the information they need to decide.
At council meetings, administrators present requests for millions in new contracts, but Baca said they often can’t provide the comprehensive plans or detailed budgets he needs to evaluate them.
“You can’t just show me your plan. You can’t just show me the numbers. … You guys don’t have that, so it’s all piecemeal,” Baca said, describing his interactions with city staff over Gateway funding.
The most recent example came at the Aug. 4 council meeting, when administrators requested $3.6 million to expand Gateway housing services — $1.8 million each for men’s and women’s programs run by outside contractors Community Bridges and Chicanos Por La Causa.
Councilors asked about total operational costs, success rates and coordination between programs. They wanted to know why previous contracts weren’t executed and how the new expansion would fit with existing services. Many questions went unanswered, with staff promising to provide information later.
“We should be a team,” Baca said, “but it’s really hard to actually get anything done if you have no idea what’s happening.”
Seeing the Reality
For Baca, the frustration is personal and political.
As a District 2 councilor, he represents Downtown Albuquerque, Old Town and the surrounding neighborhoods where homelessness is very visible. As a Downtown resident, he walks the streets where Gateway was supposed to make a difference.
“Living Downtown, I see the problem getting worse,” he said, noting the disconnect between Gateway’s promises and street-level reality.
The councilor’s perspective shifted after he tried to visit Gateway West, the Westside shelter that’s part of the broader Gateway network.
Administrators initially tried to prevent the visit, he said, raising questions about what they were trying to hide. When he finally got access, he found conditions far better than critics claimed — leading him to question why administrators would block oversight visits in the first place.
“I tried to go sleep there, and they didn’t even want to let me,” he said. “It’s pretty ridiculous. I wasn’t trying to do a gotcha or anything. Folks would come for public comment and say how bad it was, how dangerous, and that it felt safer on the streets. I wanted to see for myself. I live Downtown, so I asked, ‘Is it really worse than sleeping on the street?’ After my visit, it’s nowhere near as bad as sleeping Downtown.”
The experience convinced him that transparency and hands-on oversight are key to knowing what works and what doesn’t in the Gateway system.
Gateway Struggles
Gateway has shifted from a single-site concept to a network of facilities across Albuquerque, with mixed results.
Gateway West, the controversial 660-bed Westside shelter, “functions much better than it did previously,” according to Baca, but only after millions in renovations to fix what critics called “deplorable” conditions. It now provides basic shelter services but falls short of the full-service hub once promised.
Recovery Gateway, a micro-community of pallet homes focused on addiction treatment, shows promise but operates at half capacity. The site opened in May 2025 along Pan American, just south of the Comanche exit, and can house 50 people in 46 small units — 42 for single residents and four for couples.
Residents can stay up to 24 months or until they move into longer-term recovery housing. On-site community rooms offer behavioral health treatment, case management and housing navigation. The city contracted with Endeavors to operate the program.
A Department of Health, Housing and Homelessness report found a shortage of low-barrier recovery housing in Albuquerque, with only 800 beds citywide. Recovery Gateway was meant to help fill that gap, but right now it serves only 27 or 28 people. Baca called it “about halfway full,” suggesting poor outreach or barriers to enrollment.
The main Gateway facility is the biggest concern. Despite taking most of the $70 million investment, it offers only limited medical services. Medical respite (about 30 beds) and medical sobering (15 overnight beds) take up a fraction of its space, while the core housing program has yet to open.
Even when programs succeed, graduates often have nowhere to go. The housing voucher program meant to provide permanent housing “doesn’t work very well at all,” Baca said, leaving people stuck after treatment and stabilization.
Regional Demand
The issue reaches beyond Albuquerque. Baca said mayors from small towns often tell him they send homeless residents to the city because they have no services of their own.
“I literally had mayors from small towns tell me, yeah, I send them to you guys because we have no services,” he said. “We can’t help them, but we know you guys have everything, we just send them to Albuquerque.”
That makes Gateway’s success critical for the whole state. If it fails, more people end up in Albuquerque without real solutions, concentrating homelessness here.
The result is a feedback loop: more people arrive seeking help that isn’t available or effective, visible homelessness grows, and public support for funding drops.
The Ultimatum
Frustrated by another funding request without key information, Baca gave the Keller administration a clear ultimatum — provide the data or lose his support.
“Without the answers, without actual data, without being able to see what was happening, I wasn’t going to be supporting more funding anymore,” he said during what he called their first full meeting on Gateway operations.
The move appears to have worked. Administrators agreed to provide complete operational costs, detailed service plans and clear success metrics by the next council meeting — information that should have been available from the start.
“I feel better now,” Baca said, “the fact that I said, ‘Hey, let’s actually talk about these things and really start functioning as a team.’”
He emphasized this is “just a start” of the accountability he expects going forward.
What Baca Wants
Baca wants to reimagine Gateway, balancing its promise with its limits.
“I don’t think you can get rid of Gateway,” he said. “But what the original vision was, I think those days are past.”
He supports bringing the 150-bed expansion online, but only with proof it will work. He opposes spending millions to build housing inside the old hospital, saying retrofitting around asbestos and infrastructure issues is too costly.
“I think you get more bang for your buck if you just start from scratch at this point in terms of housing,” he said. “The 150 beds, those definitely need to come online. But again, I need to see that it’s actually going to come online, how dollars are going to be spent.”
For Baca, funding must be sustainable. He wants annual state support, not one-time appropriations, noting Gateway’s long-term operational costs.
He’s also pushing citywide housing reforms, arguing Gateway’s programs are only meaningful if graduates have somewhere to go. He recently passed legislation streamlining development rules and plans more reforms to “get a lot of the red tape out of the way.”
Reimagining Gateway
The funding standoff affects 100 additional shelter beds for people experiencing homelessness as winter approaches. Baca said approving more money without accountability would be fiscally irresponsible and could backfire.
His stance reflects broader council frustration with an administration that repeatedly requests major expenditures without providing basic oversight. Other councilors have raised similar concerns about Gateway’s piecemeal funding and lack of comprehensive planning.
“I think Councilor Rogers and several other councilors are just as frustrated as I am at this point,” Baca said. “Let’s see if they provide all the information.”
The council deferred the contracts and gave the administration until the scheduled Sept. 3 City Council meeting to prove it can manage taxpayer funds responsibly.
For Baca, it’s a test of whether the City Council and administration can work together to address homelessness.
“We should at least be able to be partners to solve this issue. I think that’s not an unreasonable ask,” he said. “Lately it’s the council blaming the mayor, as if we don’t have a role in all this as well. It’s our job too.”