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Albuquerque is trying something new in its fight against homelessness. On Sept. 15, the Albuquerque City Council voted unanimously to launch the city’s first housing voucher program that requires people to stay sober.
Resolution R-25-179 establishes a one-year pilot program, called the Continuing Sobriety Housing Voucher Program. It will cover rent for 25 people leaving treatment who commit to maintaining sobriety. Sponsored by Councilor Renée Grout, the program marks a shift from the city’s longtime “housing first” model, which doesn’t put conditions on sobriety. With more than 2,700 people experiencing homelessness in Albuquerque, supporters say it fills a big gap for people leaving rehab with nowhere stable to land. Critics, though, worry it could lock out those who relapse.
“We have lots of different vouchers, but we don’t have any for sobriety,” Grout said at the meeting. “There are a lot of people who come out of treatment detox, they have nowhere to go and we need to give them more of an opportunity to be successful.”
Program details
The voucher program is the city’s first designed for people leaving treatment. The city doesn’t currently offer a housing option to help Burqueños in recovery transition back into the community.
“The city lacks a dedicated housing voucher option for individuals who are transitioning from rehabs, treatment centers, or detoxes into housing,” according to the resolution.
Participants must stay sober, submit to routine drug and alcohol screenings, continue recovery programs like Alcoholics and/or Narcotics Anonymous or outpatient treatment and work with case managers to remain in the program.
“This resolution is a crucial step forward in our city’s strategy to address the complex issue of homelessness,” Grout said. “By offering a pathway to stable housing for individuals committed to sobriety, we are providing a critical bridge from treatment to long-term success. This pilot program will give us valuable data to show that targeted, outcome-based approaches can be a powerful complement to our existing efforts, helping people get back on their feet and stay there.”
The pilot will test whether linking housing assistance to sobriety produces better outcomes than the city’s low-barrier housing approach. Officials will track participants’ housing stability, employment, and engagement with services compared with people in existing housing-first programs.
The resolution directs the Department of Health, Housing and Homelessness (HHH) to submit an implementation plan and budget to the City Council, within 60 days from the passage of the resolution, meaning the plan is due to the council Nov. 14.
Rather than operating the program directly, HHH will contract with a qualified provider to handle screening, voucher administration, case management and compliance monitoring.
After the one-year pilot ends, HHH must present a detailed evaluation report comparing participants’ outcomes with those in existing housing-first programs.
Policy Debate & Relapse Concerns
The pilot departs from Albuquerque’s “housing first” approach, which moves people into housing immediately without requiring sobriety or treatment.
A systematic review from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Community Guide found housing first programs cut homelessness by 88% and improved housing stability by 41% compared with programs that require sobriety.
The new pilot sparked debate at the council meeting over whether sobriety requirements could create unnecessary barriers for people in recovery.
“Recovery is not a straight line. Relapse is a part of it for 85% of people who are in recovery in the first year,” public commenter Anami Dass, a member of the city’s Human Rights Board, told councilors, warning against policies that could return people to homelessness after a slip.
Dass questioned whether Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, cited in the resolution, are evidence-based, calling them “faith-based” rather than science-backed.
She suggested (Self-Management and Recovery Training) SMART Recovery, a secular, science-backed program that uses cognitive-behavioral tools to help people manage addiction, as an alternative.
Councilor Tammy Fiebelkorn expressed strong concerns about the sobriety requirements, pointing to local precedent for failure.
Bernalillo County “had a lot of money put into a tiny home village that had these types of requirements, if you can come here, but you mess up once, and you’re out, and they didn’t have people move in,” she said.
“I do feel very uncomfortable setting up something that, in this resolution, at least the way it’s written, says that if you relapse, you’re not in the program anymore,” Fiebelkorn said. “I do really strongly encourage HHH to think through what that can mean.”
Even Councilor Nichole Rogers, who has worked with Grout on voucher reform, questioned the timing of launching a new program.
HHH “has had a lot of funding to come up with how we administer all of our voucher programs,” Rogers said, and the city should get “a handle on the vouchers that already have stewardship over” before adding new ones.
“I personally don’t think that adding another one to that until we figure out our processes on our current ones really helps us,” Rogers said, suggesting the council should have multiple departments develop competing plans rather than defaulting to HHH.
Ellen Braden, HHH deputy director, told councilors that drug testing will be used “as a therapeutic tool” rather than punitively, noting it’s common to use tests and other markers to support recovery in treatment settings.
Grout pushed back on concerns that participants could be evicted for a relapse, saying, “Literally nowhere in this resolution does it say we’re going to kick the people out with a lapse.” She said the council is giving HHH “wide latitude” to develop the plan and create “successful models” for participants.
The resolution requires HHH to report on “rates of compliance or termination” after the pilot ends but leaves the specific approach to handling non-compliance to the implementation plan.
Funding the voucher program
Grout said the pilot program won’t cut funding for existing vouchers and noted opioid settlement funds could support it.
The city has access to “approximately $80 million over 18 years” from opioid settlement funds and allocated about $12.4 million for various housing voucher programs in fiscal year 2025.
Grout said the program has already won landlord support, noting, “ I’ve reached out to the Apartment Association, and they are excited about this program.”
She acknowledged some landlords usually hesitate to accept vouchers because “sometimes they can be rough on the apartment themselves,” but said sobriety-focused vouchers make them more willing.
Grout added that residents in voucher-supported housing have shown interest, hoping for “new neighbors that don’t have those bad habits” that sometimes come with traditional voucher recipients’ social circles.
