ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Hundreds, if not thousands, of our homeless battle substance abuse. The City of Albuquerque’s Gateway Center will soon be able to offer more than just an opportunity to sleep it off. 

Right now, our hospital’s emergency rooms are one of the only options when someone on the streets needs to sober up. It’s the emergency room or jail a lot of the time.

City officials have recognized that both options are nearly always at capacity. Now, thanks to two federal grants, the city will soon be unveiling a third option — a medical sobering center at the Gateway.

The director of the Health, Housing, and Homelessness Department, Gilbert Ramirez, says the City of Albuquerque is taking a unique approach to taking care of those who can’t always take care of themselves.

“So this project for us was very exciting in the fact that we are going to open up something innovating, and it’s a harm reduction-based model to have a safe space for people to sober with medical care to make sure nothing happens to them, and also provide support and connections to other services,” said Ramirez.

The city got a total of $4.2 million from the federal government to get this sobering center up and running. Once it is, Ramirez says it will take a huge burden off our local emergency rooms.

“We are looking at 50 beds a day, 365 days a year. That’s more than 17,000 individuals that can be diverted from costly care at emergency centers and ERs. Not only that it supports our first responders in having an alternative place to take individuals that is not a hospital,” said Ramirez. 

Under this new model for the sobering center, clients would stay up to eight hours before getting transferred to other resources at the Gateway Center. But that’s only after all these projects are up and running.

“The facility is still under construction right now, and we are looking forward to a winter open of 2024. We are right on task, we want to bring an operator online to finalize the last bits of construction programming and give them enough time to hire up,” said Ramirez. 

Ramirez says they are still taking bids for operators to run the sobering center, he says they should have a decision by mid-May.