Jodi Hendricks, New Mexico Family Action Movement
December 22, 2025
The homeless on our streets are a daily, visible reminder of a societal breakdown that we don’t seem to want to talk about. This crisis we’re facing in New Mexico didn’t start on the street, it started much earlier, inside broken homes.
For years, we’ve tried to solve homelessness with programs, funding, and housing initiatives. We’ve built shelters, issued vouchers, and expanded services. And yet the number of people living on our streets keeps climbing. The number of people sleeping on the streets in Albuquerque has nearly doubled in the last two years alone. If spending alone were the answer, we would be seeing real progress by now, but instead, we’re watching the problem grow.
Right now, more than 42% of children in New Mexico live in single-parent households, one of the highest rates in the country. At the same time, our state ranks near the top for child poverty, teen substance abuse, and youth homelessness. Those statistics point to a breakdown of the family that has consequences far beyond childhood.
Children who grow up without a father are four times more likely to live in poverty. They are more likely to struggle in school, more likely to experience abuse or neglect, and more likely to end up involved in the juvenile justice system. For many, those early wounds don’t heal, and years later they show up as addiction, untreated mental illness, and isolation on the streets.
Spend time talking to people who are chronically homeless and the pattern becomes clear. Many grew up in foster care or experienced abuse or abandonment. Many never had stable adult role models who corrected and disciplined them, or even just showed them how to live with responsibility and purpose. What they lack isn’t merely housing, it’s a stable and healthy foundation in their lives.
Yet nearly every public conversation about homelessness stays focused on housing alone. Build more units. Open more shelters. Expand vouchers. Yes, those tools can matter, especially for families who hit an unexpected financial crisis. But they don’t address the reality of chronic homelessness. You cannot fix a lifetime of habits born out of a lack of strong family or community bonds with a lease agreement.
The family is the original safety net. Long before there were government programs, it was families, churches, and tight-knit communities that caught people when they fell. When those relationships collapse, the burden shifts to systems that were never designed to replace them. The result is what we see daily: people struggling to break out of addiction and other patterns on the street.
That’s why the conversation has to change. If we truly want to reduce homelessness, we have to rebuild what holds people together. That means strengthening marriage and fatherhood. It means removing policies that penalize intact families. It means allowing faith-based organizations and community mentors to step in early and act preventatively.
There are limits to what government can do. A housing voucher won’t teach a young man how to be a father. A caseworker can’t repair decades of trauma. That kind of healing requires real relationships, accountability, and time.
We absolutely have a responsibility to help those who are already homeless. But we also have a responsibility to ask harder questions. What broke long before they ever slept outside?
If we want to end homelessness in New Mexico, we have to stop treating it as a housing problem alone. It’s a family and societal fabric problem first. And real solutions will only come when we’re willing to rebuild the family again.
