Although Bernallio County has spent $5 million on Tiny Home Village, a housing project intended to provide housing for the homeless, after a year in operation 26 out of 30 houses built remain empty, KRQE reported.
The county is requesting $500,000 in order to provide around-the-clock care for the residents, which is currently unavailable due to lack of funding and staffing issues, KRQE reported. The county commissioners approved the request for extra funds, KOB4 reported.
Tiny Home Village Manager Carolyn Chavez said they have many applicants waiting to be approved and moved in, however, they don't have the staffing to make that possible.
"We’re just looking at trying to get a little more operations funding for the village," she told the station. "This was a pilot program from the beginning. Once we got started we realized that the program design needed some adjustments.”
Last summer, planners realized the program designed "wasn't working wells and so we went back to the drawing board a little bit and started working through that program design," Chavez said.
"It was a pilot, it was a first of a kind thing in Albuquerque,” she told the station.
Bernalillo County District 5 Commissioner Charlene Pyskoty said "a lot of hard-earned taxpayer dollars" have gone into the project.
"I’m sure that I and my fellow commissioners want to make sure that any more money put into the tiny home village will go directly to helping as many people as possible," she told the station.