Albuquerque’s efforts to end homelessness isn’t a one person or one department affair.  The project involves those in city departments, outside agencies, nonprofits, emergency shelters, day shelters, street outreach, housing, volunteerism and public policy work. It’s a tree with multiple roots and branches that can be confusing for a public eager for straightforward information.

The city’s Health, Homelessness & Housing (HHH) department thinks its new online dashboard focused on homelessness data and statistics will help. Officials said Monday that the intention is to keep citizens up-to-date on the city’s progress through key metrics and visuals that will be published the first week of each month.

The dashboard includes the number of people using city shelters each night; families and individuals transitioning into permanent housing; rides to shelters; food boxes distributed; individuals provided with eviction prevention and utility assistance; and actions taken to address illegal camping.

“This dashboard is a great way for people to get updated information about how much work we’re doing to address homelessness,” Mayor Tim Keller said in a statement. “When our teams are connecting with folks on the street and getting them into a housing program or providing utility assistance, they are actively working to get folks off our streets and to prevent more people from becoming homeless. This work makes a real difference in our community and is a critical part of our work to keep Albuquerque safe for our families.”

HHH spokesperson Katie Simon said that to her knowledge it’s the first time the city has shared data in this format so that it can be viewed by the public and useful for city officials. 

“It’s an easy way to compile data from multiple sources into one display,” she said. “All of this data is already collected by us and [Albuquerque Community Safety] and [the] Solid Waste [department] in various forms, but putting these numbers together helps tell a broader story about a lot of different things we’re doing every day.”

The city said the demographic data comes from the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness and other information comes from the Albuquerque Community Safety department’s monthly reports. Albuquerque Community Safety is staffed with behavioral/mental health and social service workers who respond to 911 dispatch calls for nonviolent and nonmedical situations across the city.

According to the dashboard’s most recent January data:

  • 829 people are sheltered on average every night across the city’s four shelters
  • 2,791 “outreach connections” to homeless people took place.
  • 122 families received eviction prevention and utility assistance.
  • 743 families received supportive housing vouchers (fiscal year-to-date).
  • Five families and six individuals moved from a city’s housing navigation center into housing (year-to-date).
  • 1,951 food boxes were distributed to people in need.
  • 1,067 “actions on illegal camping” took place.

Simon said the “actions on illegal camping” figure reflects the number of occasions illegal camping was either reported to the city or “sighted and the teams went out to offer shelter and storage, issue a notice, and ultimately clean up the area.”

The dashboard is divided into three main sections: “What resources exist?” “Who are we serving?” and “How are we doing?”

Resource information includes a map showing the city’s 12 overnight shelters, seven meal sites, six health care facilities, two substance use treatment locations and four health and social service centers. Some of the city’s accomplishments touted on the site include that it has increased its investment in supportive housing vouchers — paired with supportive services — by 250% since 2018 and that city vouchers assisted 1,365 families in fiscal year 2023. Based on previous years, officials said 95% of those families would remain in housing after two years. 


Click here to access the new dashboard.