An Albuquerque nonprofit shelter has reopened its doors to kids who may have nowhere else to go.
The New Mexico Dream Center is once again engaging in efforts to fight local youth homelessness in hopes that it can address the problem early on.
Executive Director Shelley Repp told KRQE that the objective was to tackle homelessness at an early stage so that it doesn’t become a lifelong problem.
“My philosophy with a lot of this is if we were to kind of pour in the money that’s poured into all of the adult homeless services for these young people, well then, we would really look at flipping the script for chronic homelessness,” she said.
After the pandemic began, the center had to shut operations, but its drop-in center is currently operating in hopes of aiding young people experiencing homelessness, according to the station.
“Did you know over half of child trafficking victims have been at one point in the child welfare system? This is not okay!” the center recently posted on its Facebook page.
The nonprofit’s objective is to "fill in the gaps in services, not recreate a program that already exists. Therefore we will stand in the gap for these children and develop and support them as we work on ensuring that these gaps get filled and stay that way.”