New State Study Suggests Homelessness Far Undercounted in New Mexico

This story by Patrick Lohmann was originally published in Source NM.

The number of people experiencing homelessness recently in New Mexico is two to four times higher than previous estimates, according to a new research paper from the state health department. 

In findings researchers announced Wednesday, nearly 31,000 unhoused people, including 869 children under age 5, sought care at non-federal hospitals in New Mexico between 2019 and 2013. Researchers arrived at that number by analyzing certain fields within 10 million patient visit records, searching for patient addresses being listed as known homeless shelters or simply “homeless,” among other indicators.

Quantifying the number of people who live on the streets in New Mexico is a “pervasive” problem, the study notes. The annual “point-in-time” count, which the federal Housing and Urban Development department requires for certain federal grants, is an undercount and can vary based on numerous factors. 

In what they described as a novel approach to counting the state’s unhoused population, New Mexico Department of Health researchers Hayley Peterson and Dylan Pell determined that 30,882 patients experiencing homelessness visit hospitals nearly 183,000 times between 2019 and 2023, or nearly six visits each. The number of unhoused patients was about 8,000 in 2019 and hit a peak of a little more than 10,500 in 2022.

The researchers determined that their method of counting and analyzing homelessness could help present a clearer picture of an issue that has long plagued the state.