Comunidad de Colores, a free medical clinic that plans to serve patients in the low-income Hopewell Mann neighborhood of Santa Fe, has found a new home months after a Catholic clinic severed a partnership that called for shared space.
The new free clinic, which organizers hope to open by the year’s end, will provide adult primary care services from a space on 5th Street leased from the nonprofit Chainbreaker Collective.
It will sit between Chainbreaker’s headquarters and the food pantry Bienvenidos Outreach in Hopewell Mann, one of the lowest-income areas of the city, with a high demand for no-cost medical care.
“We’re between a tenants’ rights and transportation rights organization and a food access organization, so it doesn’t really get any better than that. … The solidarity with our community partners is important,” said Christine Winfield, one of Comunidad de Colores’ co-founders.
Comunidad de Colores and Villa Therese Catholic Clinic — a decades-old free medical clinic that moved to Hopewell Mann a few years ago from its longtime spot at the downtown Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi — initially planned to share space on Hopewell Street.
However, Villa Therese ended the deal in January after finding some of the services the new clinic will provide — such as medication-based gender-affirming care for people who don’t identify with their gender assigned at birth and family planning services like birth control, medication abortion and long-acting reversible contraception — clashed with Catholic doctrine.
The two clinics are among very few options available in Santa Fe or New Mexico for patients who can’t afford care.
With the lease signed and planning for renovations underway, the free clinic’s “very ambitious goal” is to open by the end of 2026, said Dr. Kim Nguyen, a physician trained in internal and addiction medicine and another Comunidad de Colores founding board member.
“We’re really hopeful,” said fellow founder and nurse practitioner Kate Nelson. “We’d like to do it as soon as possible, but we’d like to do it really well — so we’re balancing that.”
Comunidad de Colores’ new space will be two stories, with a patient reception area, a lab and two exam rooms downstairs, plus administrative offices on the second floor.
Nguyen said renovations will focus on transforming the space — formerly an open-concept tattoo studio — into discrete rooms in addition to plumbing upgrades.
“We will be adding the necessary plumbing and finishing work internally to make it healthcare-ready and to help meet the requirements that the state puts on primary care clinics,” Nelson said.
Nearby organizations are already looking forward to welcoming Comunidad de Colores to the neighborhood.
“We are thrilled to have them as neighbors,” Susan Tarver, executive director of Bienvenidos Outreach, said in a statement. “This development strengthens local capacity and connection to other community resources like ours.”
“We’re really happy that they chose to join us here,” added Chainbreaker Executive Director Tomás Rivera.
The organization has been doing anti-displacement and tenants’ rights work in the Hopewell Mann neighborhood for about 20 years, with many of the residents they serve asking for information about healthcare options.
“Now we can say, ‘Go next door and talk to those folks.’ … That’s how a community should be planned — based on the needs of the people,” Rivera said.
Consistent with Comunidad de Colores’ name — which means “community of colors” in Spanish — clinic organizers said the community has rallied around them. Nguyen said Santa Feans have donated financially as well as contributed their expertise and time to make the clinic a reality.
“Of course, we wanted to be open like yesterday, but it’s important for us to be in a community [where] our services are most needed,” Winfield said.
She added, “We know in the long run it’s going to pay off. It’s going to be where we need to be, where the people need us to be.”
