BERNALILLO COUNTY, N.M. — There are people working day and night at the city, county and state levels to help homeless people in the metro.

Often, they’re so discreet that we don’t even know they’re there. Still, they’re chipping away at the issue, one family at a time.

Something as simple as playing with his dog and his son is a big deal for Anthony Sharp. This time last year, his life looked a lot different.

“I was drunk constantly. I’d wake up and drink. I go to bed, I was drunk. If I was sleeping, that was the only time I wasn’t drinking,” Sharp said.

Until he wasn’t anymore.

“One morning, I just woke up. I looked in the mirror, scraping up change for alcohol. And in the mirror I said, ‘God, I can’t do this anymore,'” Sharp said.

That was Aug. 18, 2023. Sharp committed to change and landed a spot in Bernalillo County’s Family Wellness Shelter.

“For the first week or two, I kind of treated it as a vacation,” he said.

It took the work of program leaders, like Benton Chavez, to change his mindset. Chavez is the shelter’s program supervisor, and he let Sharp know that he had to put in the work.

“There’s people here to help you you’re not you’re not everybody’s against you. But you got to want to do it,” Chavez said.

Chavez knows. He went through his own mental health struggles.

“I needed some assistance. So I gotta give back. I want to give back. It’s good for us, all the citizens, to give back to the community,” he said.

The Family Wellness Shelter itself started as an emergency winter shelter. Then, in December 2022, the county decided to keep it open year-round. Today, 86 people fill 23 rooms.

“We’re hearing from people more and more that what we’re doing to help them is appreciated,” said Sharp.

They measure their success by how they’re able to get people into permanent supportive housing, a job to support themselves, or moving to another shelter. The current success rate is just above 50%.

“There’s a ton of help out there, but the individual family or the individual person has to be ready and willing to go and help himself,” said Sharp.

Anthony Sharp considers himself a part of that 50%. He moved out of the shelter months ago.

Today, he’s sober, paying for his own place and building an at-home bakery called Bread of Life.

“I started selling just small things at church, and I was making a couple $100 a week at church. I’m like, ‘This is awesome.’ I’m thinking, ‘What else can I do?'” Sharp said.

Amanda Caserta hopes to follow in his footsteps. She’s been at the wellness shelter with her teenage daughter for seven weeks.

“It was on one of the pamphlets that I was handed on my journey, trying to figure out where to sleep, trying to figure out where the next meal might be,” Caserta said.

Caserta was 13 years old the first time she experienced homelessness.

“I’m somebody who was kind of raised by my community. So I don’t have a lot of the same resources that a regular person might have,” she said.

Caserta graduated high school and got into college. Then came her diagnosis. Shortly before the pandemic began, she found out she had Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. It’s a collagen disorder that can cause complications, like weak limbs.

“I suffered a mental breakdown. I was in school, I was sick, my relationship was falling apart. And I, for the first time in my life, experienced psychosis,” she said.

Caserta was hospitalized and spent a few weeks on the street. Still, she never gave up, and the wellness shelter welcomed her.

“I was able to focus. And I was able to sleep,” she said.

Now, Caserta is on the road to a college degree and a better life.

“I can’t imagine how, if, any other shelter would have been able to help me like they have,” said Caserta.