The experience of housing insecurity

Part 4: “People have it pretty good who can live indoors”

Published 3/29/2024

Story by Stephanie Nakhleh

Photographs by Minesh Bacrania

This is the fourth and final in a series on homelessness and housing insecurity in Los Alamos County. The first three articles can be found here.

“The final group in our typology of cities are boomtowns—currently illustrated by the cases of Boston, Seattle, and San Francisco. These cities embody the perfect storm of housing instability and homelessness: high growth, low supply elasticity, high housing costs, and extremely low vacancy rates. It’s in this manner that homelessness can thrive amid affluence.”
-Gregg Colburn, “Homelessness is a Housing Problem”

Shibli’s two dogs don’t know they are homeless, but their owner does, and he is trying to get his “family” through a third hard winter in a broken-down car in a Los Alamos parking lot. “People have it pretty good who can live indoors,” he says, as one of his dogs climbs on the picnic table and finishes Shibli’s lunch.

The stereotype of Los Alamos is that everyon…