Bernalillo County rental aid program nears end after helping 1,200 families

Bernalillo County’s homelessness-prevention pilot is winding down after paying landlords more than $4.4 million in state funds and helping nearly 1,200 families stay housed, including almost 2,000 children. The program, launched in October, offered rental assistance to households that could show need, with the county paying rent arrears, future rent, or both to keep an eviction from becoming a crisis.

County officials said the pilot drew referrals from schools and faith-based organizations and focused on families with children from newborns through age 22. Deanna Creighton, speaking for Bernalillo County, said it is more cost-effective to keep people in their homes than to re-house them later. With the funding about to run out, the county is now hoping to secure more state money next year to bring the program back.

The stakes extend beyond one county line. Albuquerque and Bernalillo County were already set to receive $80 million for housing and homelessness projects as part of a $120 million statewide allocation announced in August 2025, a sign that state leaders see housing instability as a regional problem tied to public safety, emergency shelter demand and family stability. The City of Albuquerque says homelessness touches an estimated 5,615 households each year, underscoring how quickly families can be pushed from a short-term rent problem into the larger homelessness system if prevention money disappears.

That broader system already includes the Homeless Coordinating Council, formed in 2020 by the City of Albuquerque, Bernalillo County and the University of New Mexico to coordinate responses across agencies. Bernalillo County has also been expanding its housing footprint elsewhere, including a March 2026 expansion of its tiny home transitional housing program amid growing demand. Ponderosa Place, a former hotel converted into transitional housing, can now serve 76 families, or about 300 individuals, up from 24 families before the expansion.

For Sandoval County communities, the concern is spillover. If prevention services tighten in the metro area, more households could move from rental arrears into eviction, adding pressure to shelters, transitional housing and family support services across the region. Bernalillo County’s Family Wellness Program is one more piece of that response, but the ending pilot leaves a question that local officials will have to answer with numbers: did this intervention save enough families, and at enough lower cost, to justify keeping it alive?