Homelessness in Taos is a Housing Problem

Housing Matters By Alexandra Goldman, column originally appearing in the Taos News.

Have you heard the rumor that Taos’ homeless shelter buses in homeless people to increase their numbers? Hopefully it’s obvious to everyone that this is absolutely untrue. But unfortunately when it comes to homelessness in America, our beliefs are so tangled up with ideas of morality, individual failing and stigma that misunderstandings spread readily. 

When you look more closely at the homeless situation in America, a different narrative emerges.  Homelessness is a housing problem. Where housing prices are high and housing is not available for lower income residents, homelessness skyrockets.  

So you can see why Taos does not need to import homeless people, we have our own homegrown homeless problem right here thanks to our high cost of housing.

In their book “Homelessness is a Housing Problem,” researchers Gregg Colburn and Clayton Aldern methodically analyze many of the popular explanations for homelessness in an attempt to explain why some places in the United States see much higher rates of homelessness than others.  They look at substance abuse, mental health issues, and poverty, and determine that while these factors may contribute to an individual’s risk of becoming homeless, they do not explain the difference in rates of homelessness.  For example, Detroit has comparable or higher rates of poverty and mental health issues than Seattle, but has a lower rate of homelessness. So something else has to be causing high numbers of people to be unhoused. 

Another popular explanation for high rates of homelessness is that social services attract homeless people from surrounding communities.  In their research, Colburn and Aldren find no statistical relationship between social services offered and rates of homelessness.  They find that most homeless people stay where they lived prior to becoming homeless. 

Instead, Colburn and Aldern’s research says that the single most important factor in high rates of homelessness is expensive housing and low vacancy rates. The solution to homelessness is to provide more affordable and accessible housing.  It’s not more complicated than that. 

All of this underscores exactly what we see in Taos.  A study by the Pew Charitable Trust shows that median rents in New Mexico climbed 60% from 2017 to 2024, versus an increase of 27% for the United States overall. This rise in the cost of housing has, not surprisingly, been paired with a dramatic increase in homelessness: 87% in New Mexico versus 40% in the United States as a whole.  While Pew didn’t provide this data for our community, we know that rents have almost doubled in Taos in that same time period. 

Data from our state and county tells the same story. In 2023, 15% of New Mexicans experienced a time in the previous year where they could not pay their mortgage, rent, or utility bills. Over 5% of high school students in Taos County reported that they did not have stable housing in the biannual Youth Risk and Resilience Survey - that means at least 90 local young people were experiencing homelessness. This includes sleeping in hotels, cars, shelters, at the home of other family/friends, or just not having a usual place to sleep. At the NEST, Taos’ only emergency shelter, most of the people spending a night at the shelter have been in Taos for over a year; 40% have lived in Taos over a decade. Let’s repeat: Taos’ homeless population is primarily local people who can no longer afford the cost of housing here.

There is a systemic failing at work here, not an individual one. Let’s start by acting with compassion and understanding instead of fear and blame. So many in our community are far closer to being unable to afford housing than we’d like to believe. 

And of course, we need to build more housing.  While new market-rate housing will not be affordable to someone on the verge of homelessness, the more housing we have overall the lower rents will become. As we’ve discussed in previous columns we need to remove local regulatory barriers towards building housing and we need to say YES to housing when we get the opportunity.  

I hope that in the new year, compassion and community care will drive our policy and social decisions! Let’s build more housing and let’s act with empathy.