How Community Solar Power Projects Support Homeless Housing and Fight the Extractive Fuel Industry (Image by BlackRockSolar via Flickr, CC BY 2.0) New Mexico’s efforts to solarize local venues paint a vision for a future of community energy self-sufficiency. By April M. Short Homelessness has been on the rise nationwide due to the economic impacts of COVID-19, and in New Mexico it was already climbing prior to the pandemic. New Mexico experienced a 27 percent rise in homelessness between 2018 and 2019, which is the “largest percentage increase” in homelessness in the country according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s “2019 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress.”