Council approves giving $70,000 to NAVO 3
By Molly Ann Howell
Managing Editor
After facing the possibility of eviction from the place they call home, the people who currently live in the Howard Johnson by Wyndham motel can rest easy knowing they won’t have to move.
At least for now.
During the Feb. 10 city council meeting, the council approved emergency funding to keep residents in the NOVA 3 Recovery Housing Program housed until the end of March.
David Conejo launched NOVA 3 in 2021 after Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services closed the WellSpring Recovery Center and he was terminated as the hospital’s CEO in 2020.
In an interview with the Sun, Conejo said he decided to start an outpatient program rather than an inpatient program because he thought it would be easier at the time, when COVID was still rampaging through New Mexico.
When Conejo started NOVA 3, he approached Ken Collins, who is now the Executive Director of the Hozho Center for Personal Enhancement. NOVA 3 and the Hozho Center struck up a deal that allowed Hozho Center to provide what Collins calls “peer support” for the Howard Johnson residents. This included Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, talking circles, and relapse prevention groups. With this deal, NOVA 3 was only responsible for housing, feeding, and providing medical support for the residents.
NOVA 3 received a federal contract from the New Mexico Behavioral Health Services Division in July to set up an intensive out-patient program and shelter at Howard Johnson’s, 2915 W. Hwy. 66.
As part of the program, Conejo and NOVA 3 were paid to place people in their shelter at the motel, and have those people participate in an intensive outpatient program that included addiction treatment. Collins estimated that the state was giving Conejo about $1,200 per each person he sheltered at the motel.
Everything seemed to be going well, until December 2024, when the state Intensive Outpatient Program Director Stanford Kemp passed away unexpectedly. With his death, the state’s IOP died too.
Without any revenue, Conejo’s house of cards started to fall.
By the end of 2025, Conejo hadn’t been paying the owner of Howard Johnson Nash Khalaf for a year. Khalaf said his rental agreement with Conejo was for $27,000 a month. After a year of not paying rent, Conejo owed Khalaf $324,000.
Khalaf said he’d initially wanted to support the NOVA 3 program because he wanted to give back to the community.
“I owe a lot to the people and the city of Gallup,” he said. “I wanted to join the NOVA 3 program because I believe we all need to help the people who suffer from drug abuse, and all that.”
In December, Khalaf told Conejo he had 12 days to catch up on rent, otherwise he would be evicted.
The clock wound down to zero Jan. 6, and Conejo allegedly resigned from his position Jan. 7, which left the Howard Johnson residents worried about whether or not they would be evicted.
“It’s a really delicate situation, and folks get so anxious because this is the only place they’ve got to live,” Collins said. “When Conejo left, it really took a lot to get people to calm down and realize they weren’t getting evicted.”
While this was all happening, Collins and Hozho Center continued to provide the residents with peer support programs, while also stepping up and supplying food.
After learning of the possible eviction, Collins alerted the City of Gallup to the situation. During the Feb. 10 council meeting, the council approved $70,000 to go to the Hozho Center and the housing program. Half of the amount comes from the city’s opioid settlement funds and the other half is drawn from the Housing Trust funds.
Collins and the city’s Behavioral Health Manager Debra Martinez said the money will pay the program’s rent for February and March. Collins is currently drafting up a rental agreement with Khalaf, but he said it will most likely cost the Hozho Center $25,000 a month in rental costs to keep the program running.
As for rent, it’s a work in progress.
Residents previously paid Conejo about $900 a month; but Collins says he’s looking at about $600 a month, or perhaps even $300 a month per person.
Collins said the Hozho Center is also considering the other expenses that are required to keep the program running besides rent, such as food costs and employee pay. He said his team is still figuring out how the program will look under their control, and that they’re trying to include residents in that conversation.
The program will also most likely see a name change in the near future.
Right now, 62 people live in the motel under the NOVA 3 program. There are 36 rooms and four offices available to the NOVA 3 program. Collins said some people are currently living in rooms by themselves, but there is a possibility of doubling up.
One of the current residents, Lawrence spoke to the Sun and explained how the NOVA 3 program changed his life.
Lawrence isn’t from Gallup, but he ended up here after local law enforcement pulled him over and found drugs and a firearm in his car.
He was sent to the county jail, and served eight months before being let out on probation.
Lawrence said he was released in the middle of the night Oct. 27, and he spent that first night of freedom out on the Gallup streets.
The next morning, he met a younger man at the Catholic Charities’ free breakfast. The young man took him to Goodwill, where he then met a woman who told him about the NOVA 3 program at Howard Johnson.
He’s been with the program ever since.
“If it wasn’t for this place, I don’t know where I’d be,” Lawrence said. “I know I got in trouble here, I shouldn’t have been doing what I was doing, but I’m paying for my mistake. If it wasn’t for this place, I’d be doing the same thing.”
Lawrence will be celebrating a year of sobriety at the end of February. He recently took a driving test in an effort to get his license reinstated. He’s also been applying for jobs in the area.
Right now, the NOVA 3 program is the only real option unhoused people have in the area.
However, Collins said it’s not exactly sustainable.
“We’ve got to come up with a better solution than what we’ve got now, because what we’ve got now is not good,” he said.
He acknowledged that motel living doesn’t fit everyone’s needs. He mentioned that the Hozho Center is looking to work with Housing New Mexico on a possible apartment complex that could be a better fit for people looking for transitional housing.
