SANTA FE, N.M. (KRQE) – After a growing chorus of complaints about crime and homelessness in Santa Fe, the mayor is rolling out a new plan to address the problem. News 13 spoke with Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber to find out more. "I think it's clear that there are three issues that every city in New Mexico, every city in America has to deal with: homelessness and affordable housing, mental and behavioral health, and opioid and fentanyl addiction," Webber said. Now, Santa Fe is rolling out a plan, starting with a focus on the busy Cerrillos Road, which is a heavily trafficked road. "It is our most heavily trafficked road in town. It has a high concentration of hotels, motels, stores, restaurants," Webber explained. The stretch also houses the Interfaith Shelter, 'Pete's Place.' Two teens sentenced in 2022 gas station murder "Over time, they've expanded their services, and now, we have about 80 people who are living, more or less, at Pete's Place, the Interfaith Shelter. That becomes a central location for people who are maybe not homeless but want to prey on homeless people," Webber stated. It's played host to a number of illegal activities according to the mayor, like drug trafficking and human trafficking. "To be clear, not everybody who's homeless is a criminal and not everybody who's a criminal is homeless." The mayor is directing police to do more patrols along Cerrillos, while pushing the shelter to hire security, and putting them on a month to month lease. "Reducing the density and reducing the concentration of people who are experiencing homelessness, giving them their own individual safe unit changes their lives," Webber stated. That means building more pallet homes, like those set up by the city at the Christ Lutheran Church. The city is also looking to convert hotels, motels, or apartment buildings into housing; and to get all this done, the city has set up a task force with city departments and law enforcement to execute the new action plan. A first look at New Mexico’s newest housing facility for teenage boys "The situation that many folks experience here, whether they're unhoused or just residents of Santa Fe, that feels like an emergency, and we want to acknowledge it as such," said Henri Hammond-Paul, director of the city's Community Health and Safety department. "I think all things, in an emergency, everything needs to happen at the same time. This isn't a step by step; we're working on things simultaneously," Hammond-Paul said, "We want to take a bold set of actions to address acute emergency aspects of this—safety security, temporary housing, things like that. There's also some long-term infrastructure that we need to develop and deploy." "Making Santa Fe safe and also treating unhoused people with respect and dignity are not mutually exclusive," Hammond-Paul said. In the next few weeks, the city says it will release its full plan to the public with timelines on when they hope to get the work done.