In State of the City address, Keller touches on crime, housing and the future of Albuquerque's economy

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller on Saturday touted the city’s milestones under his administration and charted a path forward — should he be elected to a third term in November.

During the annual State of the City address, Keller said Albuquerque had made progress in housing the homeless and drilling down on crime. With thousands more people living on the streets than in shelters and a historically stubborn violent crime rate, he acknowledged the long road ahead.

“Don’t get me wrong, I see what you see, challenges seemingly all around us: addiction-driven crime and homelessness, families worried about rent, guns in our schools, and parents targeted by (Immigration and Customs Enforcement),” Keller said to open his speech. “If there were easy solutions to these long-term problems, I promise you, I would have fixed them in a heartbeat... It takes lots of hard work, but now, alongside those challenges, are signs of progress and of resilience, and they remind us — we can lift up Albuquerque.”

Hundreds gathered in front of the Botanic Garden amphitheater — framed by a large pond covered with water lilies and buzzed by dragonflies — to listen to Keller’s half-hour speech. Unlike the 2024 address, when several people disrupted the speech in various forms of protest, Saturday’s went largely uninterrupted.

The past

Keller began with the progress made over his two terms in crime and housing, arguably the city’s biggest issues and repeated focal points for residents in polls.

“Real change takes time,” he said. “It’s not like just flipping a switch or just trying something new.”

Data provided by the Albuquerque Police Department showed that in 2024 violent crime rose by less than a percentage point, while property crime and crimes against society — like gun and drug offenses — dropped by 2% and 4%, respectively.

He attributed the crime-fighting success to using technology such as license plate readers, increasing the number of APD civilian roles to free up officers and building up the Albuquerque Community Safety Department, which has rerouted more than 100,000 calls from APD.

“Now, when you put this together, the results show this — for the first time in 10 years, every crime category is finally going down. We’ve just got to keep going,” Keller said.

Much like with crime, the mayor said there is a long way to go toward addressing housing and homelessness.

According to annual point-in-time counts, the number of people living in shelters or on the streets rose from 1,311 in 2022 to 2,740 by 2024. Keller said the real number is likely above 4,000.

He said the Gateway System, a network of shelters and resources spread across the city, was keeping up to 1,000 people off the streets every day. He said, with City Council help, he wants to bolster that to an additional 1,000 unhoused people.

Keller said the homelessness problem was amplified in recent years by a shortage of 20,000 homes across the city.

“Unlike most major cities,” he said, “Albuquerque simply never took on this problem directly. Now that’s all changing.”

The present

Keller said the city has built 2,500 affordable homes, and he laid out plans to further boost supply while reducing sprawl.

He said his Housing Now ABQ initiative will modernize zoning codes to allow developments like casitas on underutilized property, strengthen renters’ rights and streamline permitting to use city-owned land for development.

“This means from young adults starting out to families building a life to seniors aging in place, Albuquerque needs more homes now,” Keller said.

Aiming to increase affordability at a time when concerns about tariffs and inflation abound, Keller said his administration would be “freezing fees citywide.” He added that his staff “didn’t know I was going to say that,” but that they were going to work to make everything free — from preschool and zoo trips to restaurant permits and swimming lessons.

The mayor also detailed plans to cultivate community engagement in neighborhoods and keep youths out of trouble, with juvenile crime on the rise, according to local law enforcement.

Keller said they would expand the student-based violence intervention program — which pairs students with criminal records with formerly incarcerated mentors — to every high school in the city.

“We’ve got to double down to reduce teen violence,” he said, adding that participants have gotten better grades and into less trouble.

The future

To roll out his vision for Albuquerque’s future, Keller said, “The next game changer is upon us.”

The mayor said he wanted to make Albuquerque “a global leader in quantum computing,” believing it will soon drive burgeoning industries like artificial intelligence, health care, the economy and national security.

“It will decide the next era of innovation for our entire country,” Keller said.

The mayor said he wanted to put the city front and center of the technology, as it was for nuclear energy following World War II.

Keller proposed that if the city were able to cement its place as the quantum jumping-off point, it could benefit every aspect of his mission: increase economic stability, housing and job opportunities, and the next big wave to ride.

“It’s not always easy to recognize when you’re in the middle of a turnaround that it’s actually happening,” he said. “But the signs of resurgence are in plain sight... For the first time in a long time, we are seeing what is working. And now is no time to abandon the progress that we’ve made.”

Mayor Tim Keller's State of the City Address: Photos