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City of Albuquerque cuts ties with local non-profit after misuse of city funds


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – The City of Albuquerque has discovered a local housing non-profit organization was misappropriating city funds, putting some of their clients at risk of being evicted. Now, the city says they’re cutting ties. “They were outside of the scope of the contract,” said Gilbert Ramirez, Director of Albuquerque’s Health, Housing & Homelessness Department. “They used the money either for, I believe, staff, and or other administrative costs.”


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A little more than $200,000 of city funds were earmarked to help people pay their rent under the Housing Voucher program and given to the Supportive Housing Coalition of New Mexico (SHCNM). The city contracts with local non-profits, like SHCNM, to help funnel money from the city’s Housing Voucher program to landlords. However, according to the city, SHCNM chose to spend those funds in other ways.

“We’ve notified the organization that we do not plan to renew,” Ramirez said.

The city said it noticed the irregularity during a routine monitoring of contracts earlier this year. It led to delayed rent payments for more than 100 clients and almost resulted in 40 evictions. That’s when the city decided to step in to cover those costs by paying landlords directly and keeping tenants in their homes. “We worked really closely with the organization to identify all the leases, all the tenant payments,” Ramirez explained. “We reached out to the landlords, and I will say, it was probably over 60 landlords that were identified that we had to work with.”

The group will be responsible for paying back the funds they misappropriated. “They are drafting their repayment plan to us,” Ramirez added. “So, things have been moving very smoothly.”

City leaders are now in talks with other organizations to take the contract over. KRQE News 13 reached out to SHCNM for a comment, we did not hear back.

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