Homelessness increased again across NM since last year, according to latest ‘point-in-time’ count

An American flag hangs over a temporary homeless encampment at a parking lot near Coronado Park in Albuquerque in July 2022. Homelessness increased significantly in Albuquerque and across New Mexico since last year, according to the latest "point-in-time" count estimates released this week. (Photo by Patrick Lohmann / Source NM)

The number of people living on the streets of New Mexico increased to the highest level since at least 2009, according to a new “point-in-time” survey released Tuesday by the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness.

The survey sends volunteers out on a single night in January once a year to speak to people on the streets and collects data about people living in shelters across the state. The survey has many limitations but still likely represents a significant undercount of the total number of homeless people in the state, according to the report authors.

In Albuquerque on January 29 of this year, 1,231 people were counted experiencing unsheltered homelessness. That’s a 14.5% increase over last year, when 977 people were counted.

In the rest of the state, 1,011 people were estimated to be living on the streets that same night. That’s a 62% increase from the 623 people counted during last year’s survey, according to the report.

Albuquerque is throwing out the belongings of homeless people, violating city policy

There are a lot of moving parts to the “point-in-time” count, according to the authors, and the survey results vary based on how many people are willing to sit for a survey, how many volunteers the coalition could recruit and how responsive shelters are to survey requests. This year, for example, nearly half of 2,079 people contacted by the coalition refused surveys.

One factor that affected the Albuquerque count, according to the report, was the increasingly common sweeps of established homeless encampments.

“The city’s aggressive decommissioning policy leading up into the night of the count still caused surveyors to arrive in surveying zones, previously identified as having been heavily populated with unsheltered individuals, with no one to survey,” the authors wrote.

They noted, however, that surveyors reported that the number of police-led clearing of encampments did appear to be an improvement over last year, when more camps were cleared around the time of the count.

The surveyors asked respondents what types of property they lost after sweeps by police, and how often they occurred. Of 786, respondents, 497 said their encampment had been swept five or more times. A significant position responded “every day” or something similar to that, according to the survey.

Nearly 90% of respondents said they’d lost identification or a driver’s license in the sweeps. More than three-quarters lost a phone or tablet. More than 70% said they lost a personal or sentimental item. More than half said they lost prescription medications, according to the report.

Other methods for counting the number of homeless estimate that as many as 20,000 people are unhoused in New Mexico over the course of the year, a figure that appears to be increasing.

The survey cited a recent ProPublica article interviewing people about what they lost in sweeps. They said the ongoing clearings just make it harder for those experiencing homelessness to improve their situations.

“No one’s ability to exit homelessness is improved by repeatedly having their belongings stolen or thrown away,” the authors write. “The only lasting impact of such initiatives is to prolong episodes of homelessness and inflict additional suffering on an already extremely vulnerable population.”