MESA, AZ — A family emergency shelter in Mesa is closing its doors. The nonprofit that runs it, A New Leaf, says it is due to a lack of funding.
At La Mesita, the 16 units that have made up the emergency shelter for nearly 30 years will now be transformed into long-term, affordable housing.
Arik and Chastity enjoy playing tag around the playground at the place they call home. The young brother and sister say it means a lot to them. Just six years ago, the kids and their mom were homeless.
“You feel like a failure a lot of the times, but it's definitely a terrifying thing, not to know if you're going to have stable roof over their head,” Kira Filippelli, their mom, said.
Then the single mom connected with A New Leaf, first staying in La Mesita emergency family shelter, then moving into the nonprofit’s long-term housing.
“The resources that they provided me have helped me tremendously,” Filippelli said.
Now, A New Leaf is ending the emergency shelter service.
Last year, it served nearly 200 people, more than half of whom were kids, but the nonprofit says they can no longer sustain the shelter due to a lack of funding.
“So unfortunately, we've had to make a really tough decision to transition the shelter to affordable housing,” Laura Bode, A New Leaf Chief Philanthropy Officer, said.
As families transition out of the shelter within the next four months, the units will be turned into affordable housing units. The goal is to still address homelessness.
“Affordable housing is for families that are low-income families. They don't pay more rent than they're able to afford, and we have all the wrap around support services here on the campus to help them maintain stability and to be successful,” Bode said.
One ABC15 viewer reached out, concerned about the closure in light of the CEO’s income. He makes around $289,000, according to 2023 public tax documents. We asked A New Leaf if the budget could be reconsidered.
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“Nonprofits have to run like a business to be sustainable,” Bode said. “Our CEO has been with an agency for an incredible almost 50 years. He has been the backbone, along with our other the rest of our leadership team to sustaining this organization. We've seen so many other organizations fold because they didn't have the infrastructure to sustain the programming that they provided.”
A New Leaf’s governance board conducted a study to set the CEO’s salary. When ABC15 looked at tax records for similarly sized nonprofits in the Valley, we found his salary in line with others.
Bode says with a $40 million operating budget, the heart of the issue is federal funding cuts.
“Over the past few years, we've seen a significant decline in government funding for all of our shelter services, and we're spreading that funding across six different shelters that we operate,” Bode said.
This put another emergency shelter in Surprise at risk, she says, until the city just stepped in to save it.
"So, A New Leaf is strategizing in so many different ways, of different scenarios. If funding is cut here, where do we pool our resources to keep the most critically needed community services sustained? How can the community help support those?” Body explained.
A New Leaf gets 78% of its funding through 130 federal funding contracts. That money goes into 35 different programs across the Valley, serving 22,000 people in Arizona last year.
When La Mesita is turned into affordable housing, the nonprofit anticipates it will house approximately 64 people, including 37 children.
The money to run the emergency shelter will be funneled to other programs. Still, Bode says, it’s a loss for vulnerable families.
“Unfortunately, there's a wait list for shelter,” she said. “That can be really hard going into the summer months.”
Anyone interested in getting engaged with A New Leaf can visit their website to learn about donation and volunteering opportunities.
