Enough housing? Yes, even in Santa Fe

The lack of sufficient housing for working families and young professionals in Santa Fe is one topic on which everyone can agree. There are not enough places to live. With Santa Fe anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 units short — some estimates go as high as 6,800 — a growing movement is seeking to make workforce housing an important priority for the city. This is an issue whose time has come.

There is increasing need, including expanding workforces at arts collective Meow Wolf and high-tech firm Descartes, as well as a new Presbyterian medical facility on the south side. Either those workers will find homes here or they will join the thousands of commuters from Albuquerque or elsewhere. Keeping them in Santa Fe and bringing back many workers who felt they couldn’t afford to live here, including teachers, police officers and firefighters, will improve the city and county tax revenues and enliven the town.

There is increasing coalition-building, with the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce, Santa Fe Area Home Builders and Santa Fe Association of Realtors joining together to put on a series of community conversations about the need for more choices in housing. This time, the focus is less on affordable home ownership, and more on the need to build multiple units, increasing density and improving rental choices.

There is a concerted effort to find a way to leverage dollars so that housing can be built — good, solid housing — quickly. And there is the alluring possibility of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design campus. Could the land and buildings be transformed into an economic driver midtown, including more living spaces?

All of this is happening as a campaign for mayor and Santa Fe City Council gets going. On Thursday, when the homebuilders group had a breakfast meeting to discuss the approach Albuquerque has taken to build more workforce housing, mayoral candidates and current council members were in the audience, along with builders, housing experts and policy wonks. Among those speaking were former Albuquerque Councilor and current Bernalillo County Commissioner Debbie O’Malley, University of New Mexico associate professor Claudia Isaacs.

O’Malley helped fellow Councilor Isaac Benton write the Workforce Housing Opportunity Act for Albuquerque back in 2006. Approved in 2007 by voters, a Workforce Housing Trust has helped finance housing projects using proceeds from a voter-approved general obligation bond. The key to success is that Albuquerque dollars fill in the cracks — that is, provide the last dollars needed to complete a project, leveraging bond money over the years to finance some $230 million worth of projects. The presentation was a guide to how Santa Fe, should it desire, might follow in Albuquerque’s footsteps. It was most persuasive.

Still, many questions remain to be answered. Are general obligation bonds to set up a Workforce Housing Trust what Santa Fe needs? While still too early to say, the issues being raised are crucial to the vitality of the city going forward. At the conversation last week, the builders association asked attendees to ponder whether they would advocate for the sale of bonds to bring in $2.5 million a year to be used to fund affordable housing projects. Those dollars could be combined with private dollars, federal grants and other monies to stretch further and build more units. Most of all, they would provide a constant source of funds.

All of this is in the discussion stage, but builders, Realtors and business people deserve praise for moving this conversation forward. So often, big initiatives in Santa Fe come from political leaders — that’s not a bad thing, but it is refreshing to see citizens grabbing this issue and pushing it. Heck, it appears some business owners aren’t even cringing at a possible increase in property taxes to pay for the bonds. That’s definitely welcome.

Now, let’s expand the conversation. Neighborhood groups in Santa Fe notoriously do not like infill or any changes to existing cityscapes. Some of that must be overcome, else new housing will be pushed to the edges of the city. We do need the right kind of infill, especially in areas that will support local businesses and help fill seats in underenrolled midtown seats. While Santa Fe can’t lose all its open space, there’s no reason to cling to vacant lots full of trash when essential living quarters can be built.

There needs to be more discussion about how to provide funding for this initiative as well. Could any of the city’s capital improvement program dollars, for example, be repurposed for workforce housing? How can Santa Fe best support building projects and how fast can units be built? (And how fast do we want them built? Where?)

Then, there will be the important decisions to be made about how best to use the space at the soon-to-be-vacant college campus in the middle of the city. While losing a university is a blow, the chance for more housing and an expanded film industry presence, for example, are easing the pain.

This is a moment of opportunity for Santa Fe, in other words.

Good for citizens who are seeking out new approaches to this age-old problem — making it affordable for working people to live in Santa Fe. This time, we might actually make progress.