Young Adult Campus
The City of Albuquerque is prioritizing the needs of our homeless young adults by creating a dedicated housing navigation campus with age-appropriate services for this vulnerable population. City Councilors Brook Bassan, Tammy Fiebelkorn, and Renee Grout are collaborating with the Health, Housing & Homelessness Department to spearhead this effort.
Vision
The Youth Assistance and Housing Navigation Campus (YAHNC) will serve approximately 30 young adults aged 18-25 at one time, an estimated 120 per year. A young person will utilize the facility for approximately 90 days with the goal of accessing permanent housing. During their stay, a participant will have access to a wide range of services and tools to become more self-sufficient.
A preliminary location search and design for the YAHNC is currently underway.
The City Councilors have appropriated $7m in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds for the YAHNC and the City has been awarded $1.5m in funds from the Congressional Delegation, thanks to the work by Representative Stansbury and Senator Ben Ray Lujan. Currently the City is seeking additional funding from the State Legislature.
Above: Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury, Mayor Tim Keller,
City Councilors Brook Bassan, Tammy Fiebelkorn, and Renee
Grout celebrate the initial funding for the campus.
Background
The Youth Housing Continuum, a subcommittee of the Homeless Coordinating Council, focuses on identifying gaps/needs and high-impact strategies for youth housing. In collaboration with the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE), the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and the University of New Mexico (UNM) Office of Community Health, and a Youth Advisory Council, a Comprehensive Needs Assessment of Young People Experiencing Housing Instability and Homelessness in Bernalillo County was published in February, 2022.
The needs assessment called for a youth housing navigation campus (YHNC)to address the community’s gap in emergency shelter for young people 18-25. This facility would be for young adults facing homelessness to receive shelter, clothing, food, wrap-around services, and a path to housing.
In July 2022, the Albuquerque City Councilors held an initial stakeholder engagement charrette that brought together representatives from the City of Albuquerque, New Mexico Children, Youth, and Families Department (CYFD), Albuquerque Public Schools (APS), the University of New Mexico, the Pacific Institute of Research and Evaluation, and numerous youth and young adult service providers. Collaborative efforts produced a preliminary design program, facility adjacency diagram, and a weighted scoring tool for location identification. A final report from the charrette included key themes for design considerations as well as key location considerations.
See CABQ's Visioning a Future Facility for Young Adults Experiencing Homelessness.