City forms task force to strengthen collaboration, communication
By Sunni Battin
Sun Correspondent
Solving homelessness is neither new, exclusive, nor unique to Gallup. It’s happening everywhere and it only seems to be increasing. During public comments at the March 11 city council meeting, Lynn Heeneman announced the formation of the Gallup Homeless Task Force.
“We’ve had around 20 people participating in meetings,” he said. “What we are trying to do is nudge things along to do something to get those numbers down and some of the problems solved.”
A recent report by the federal government called the Point In Time listed 4,361 persons in New Mexico as homeless on a single night in 2024, an increase of 20% from the year before.
Throughout Heeneman‘s comments to city council members, he focused on the many programs to address homelessness at the local, county, and state levels. He mentioned a variety of organizations including the Gallup Police Department, McKinley Community Health Alliance, and the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness that all play a vital role in helping the unhoused population. With all the resources and services though, Heeneman noted a lack of coordination and communication with no person “in charge to pull it all together.”
“When we started this task force, there was general consensus that all these different good efforts in town are still not collaborating fully with each other,” he said. “They’re busy doing their job and then to create information, share information, facilitate communication between groups, that’s a whole another job.”
City Councilor Ron Molina, Dist. 4, agrees that Gallup has a concerning homeless problem, and he says he is interested in hearing and learning more about the homeless task force. Additionally, he says that in the end, the goal is to reduce homelessness and help as many people as possible in the best way possible. He plans on attending a future meeting and getting more information.
“We’ve got to combat this,” he said. “I’m hoping we see a lot less homelessness.”
Finally, Heeneman told council members that the task force’s bottom line is simply betterment.
“The homeless task force sees its intent is to support all these activities going on and see if we can help facilitate communication and collaboration between them so we get a more effective impact because the people are working hard but our numbers are probably not changing,” he said.
