BUILDING UP OR TEARING DOWN?
This is a frustrating time for most people to find a place to live in Santa Fe. It's been a seller's market for home ownership for at least a couple years, and a landlord's market for rentals for a decade. For those with no place to call home, it's a daily battle with little in the way of transitional housing to get them on their feet.
Depending on who's doing the math, estimates of the shortage in housing stock can run to 8,000 or more.
About 1,500 multifamily homes-from duplexes to apartment developments- are in the city's pipeline for new construction with another 1,200 in early planning stages.
It's grim.
Today, just about any new home options will help. Getting new development wrong, though, threatens to yank at the cultural fabric of Santa Fe for future generations by exacerbating inequity. Community groups, developers and elected o?cials all seem to want to avoid that, but without a plan, Santa Fe could further splinter into a less recognizable city.
The tip of the iceberg is multifamily housing. Generally speaking, that's anything that is not a single-family home. Those properties are the most likely to be rented, and there are almost none available.
The shortage of both a?ordable and market-rate apartments crystallized this spring, when a local man o?ered a storage shed in his backyard for rent on Craigslist. The
According to
"I think it all begins with quality of life. People want to live there,"
That only sounds like a nice problem to have if you already have a place to live.
It's not useful to think of occupancies above 95 percent as a 5 percent vacancy rate, he says, because it doesn't really indicate a vacancy. People move out, they move in and there's always a little lag time that does not translate to availability.
The CBRE survey measures large apartment complexes, so there's an ungauged segment of the market for casitas and compounds. But those homes don't make for a hidden glut of places for rent that would push the actual occupancy rate down to something sane.
The fact is, very few people or companies are building multifamily housing. Even in a city with a demonstrated need and a desire to issue a permit in a matter of months, getting a multifamily project built takes years. Today, added time means added cost.
"We've been averaging a 4-5 percent increase on construction costs annually," says
Aside from the cost of raw construction material, subcontractors are hard to find, and many are based in Albuquerque.
"There's about a 10 percent premium for construction in Santa Fe. You're asking those subcontractors to commute. And when they're commuting, they're not working," he explains.
Still, Titan is building the Broadstone Rodeo development o?
"It's gotten nutty up there," he says. "There are places with popcorn ceilings that rent for
The industry groups apartments into class A, B or C based on age, condition, rent and amenities. Class A is in good repair, has professional management and goes for market-rate rent or above. Class B is maybe 15 years old and due for an update; rent reflects that. Class C apartments are the oldest and in need of repair.
With hardly any class A apartments in Santa Fe, rent is out of whack. That dynamic costs the city both residents and money. People who live here spend money here. Around 80 percent of the city's budget comes from gross receipts tax. Most estimates are that at least half the city's workforce doesn't live in Santa Fe. Many people commute from Albuquerque- where they pay most of their taxes.
"You'd be blown away at the di?erence in quality between Albuquerque and Santa Fe," Rogers says. "The consumer looks at that and says, 'I get so much less for my money. I'll just make the commute.'"
He says Titan spoke to
If Titan can stick to the
If new apartments aren't much more expensive than older ones, those landlords will be forced to drop rates. They could also spend money on repairs or new appliances to make their property more competitive.
In an ultra-tight market like Santa Fe, though, it's often just the lucky few who snag a new place and settle in. That's the case at the Railyard Flats development o? Cerrillos and Paseo de Peralta, which is in its first leasing cycle.
"I don't think we expected our apartments to go as fast as they did," o?ers
The 58-unit property, which focuses on scaled-down, convenient urban living, began renting in February. By the time the doors opened in May, the complex had four units left.
"It's a pretty competitive rate," he tells SFR of the units, which start at
Though Railyard Flats is competitive with smaller downtown apartments, it commands a rather high price per square foot.
"We call around [to apartments] all the time," Titan's Rogers says. "When people pick up the phone and you tell them you're looking for an apartment, they don't say, 'Let us tell you about our community,' they say, 'Yeah, when are you looking?' It's that full."
It's a hot Thursday evening in late June. In a gallery space at the
They're interested not just in houses, but in homes-safe places to play and pray, to cry, laugh and grow.
As far as Santa Fe meetings go, it's a diverse crowd. There seem to be as many 20-somethings as there are people in their 60s. A few heads of green and pink hair are scattered among the gray.
In many ways, the room around them is a simulacrum of Santa Fe's housing market: It's a beautiful space, but ine¥- cient. By the time organizers move the gathering outside after the sun sets, more than a few people will call it quits. The building can house the people, but it can't really accommodate them. They can't thrive.
The evening's exercise is to look at housing through the lens of science fiction; to imagine Santa Fe in the year 2068 as a city where housing is plentiful and affordable. Free of some of the normal constraints of problem-solving, organizers hope to bring new voices to the conversation, and to connect the individual e?orts around the community.
"A lot of the books, a lot of the movies that thought about solutions, came about years and decades before [those solutions] came to fruition," Creative Santa Fe's
It's the first dialogue in Creative Santa Fe's Disruptive Futures series. The arts-centric group has brought in urbanist and designer
There's a temptation in addressing a?ordable housing, Ogbu says, to think of the fix in terms of "units" rather than "homes." Successful projects don't just stop at a roof and four walls; they build those thriving spaces that can sustain a historically diverse city like Santa Fe.
Success also means seeking voices from the communities that will be impacted. Ogbu recalls meetings she's held for a?ordable home projects where residents stand with arms folded, exuding doubt and distrust, waiting for what's next. For people who typically aren't represented at the table, there's a fear of being run out of a neighborhood or a home that has been in a fam- ily for generations. In housing, Ogbu says, the people closest to a problem are often closest to the solution.
"The lack of aordable housing, the increase in community gentrification, the concerns about community displacement, the loss of cultural memory, places constraints on a lot of people to imagine possibilities," says Creative Santa Fe's
The consensus at Disruptive Futures is that those things need to be acknowledged to move forward, not ignored in favor of something that only looks like progress.
"I was really nervous to talk about it, because it's an emotional topic," City Councilor
For Santa Fe's Native population, says
"Only rich settlers can aord our traditional homes. Passive solar adobe homes. Who doesn't want that?" she asks a chuckling group. It's funny, but there's genuine hurt in those words.
A slapdash approach to any housing development threatens to worsen those injuries and drive a wedge deeper into a community that is already divided. Santa Fe has grown for wealthier, older second- home buyers, but it's failed to provide enough housing options for the next generation of locals and new workers.
"How do you honor the traditions that have always made Santa Fe special and unique ... while still keeping the door open to change and to innovation and to increased diversity?" Conn muses to SFR a week earlier. "Collaboration moves at the speed of trust."
Sometimes, that's slow.
"Trust has to be built," says Tomás Rivera, who heads the Chainbreaker Collective, an economic and environmental justice group. He says, as Ogbu does, that it's di?cult to convince people you're listening. He points to the city's effort to find the next use for the former Santa Fe University of Art and Design, which could include a housing component. "It's really hard to have a trust-building session in three months. We've been doing this for 14 years. That's why people open their doors when we knock."
He's doesn't think the city is acting in bad faith, rather that solutions take serious commitment.
"How we build our city reflects our values," Rivera says. Slowing the process, eating a bigger chunk of the
"There's absolutely a risk of doing it wrong. That's kind of what's gotten us into this mess in the first place," he says of the housing crisis.
It's a point not lost on Villarreal, who represents
"People need to understand the complexities of our housing situation. When people get to share their story about what they've experienced, it helps us understand what we need to do better," she says.
The history of displacement-pushing out traditional uses of place in the name of progress-breeds resentment. Villarreal says it's not a problem
"I don't think government is equipped to [handle conversations about cultural loss]," she tells SFR. "Groups that are community-based and address social and racial inequities in the city, not just healing, but di?cult policy decisions and choices" can better inform the government.
Rivera, Conn and others are anxious to have those conversations.
"If you want to talk about cultural harmony in our city, you don't necessarily need to have a panel discussion on cultural harmony," Conn tells SFR in the organization's o?ce in an old house on
It's an o-the-beaten path approach, but it's not as though conventional methods are working. Creative Santa Fe would know. It's working with
The
It's slated to include performance, exhibition and "micro-retail" space, a shared workshop and a classroom with programs such as entrepreneurship training to help residents transition to sustainable living and find connections to social services.
It's not cheap. The
The majority of the homes would rent to artists who earn less than 50 percent of the area median income-no more than
For all its ambition, the project has yet to win a federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit that would cover 60 percent of its construction cost. Developers found out this month that
Backers are adamant that
Santa Fe Mayor
The mayor thinks that's prescriptive.
"We have to find solutions that don't require somebody else to lose. ... We have to not just build housing for the sake of housing but livable, attractive neighborhoods where people want to put down roots," he says. He will need to try to do it without tearing up the roots that are already there.
His housing advisory group says there needs to be a plan: Find a sustainable funding source and use city land for ardable housing. The group will keep meeting.
"It's not easy," Webber ors. "This is the hard stu This has been the hard student America for as long as I've been alive."
There are success stories. Both the
The Soleras Stations project is being developed by
The homes will be available to applicants who earn "all the way from 120 percent of AMI down to 30 percent," Thomas tells SFR. Planning 14 apartments to be ardable even for people who earn above the median income for Santa Fe indicates how expensive it can be to live in the city.
Like the Broadstone Rodeo project,
From developer to home hunter, it's hard to find someone who is seriously looking at the problem who isn't passionate about it. Builders want reliable funding streams for ardable projects, and market-rate developers crave predictability from the city. Residents who fear being shoved out of their traditional neighborhood in favor of redevelopment are crying to be heard. Santa Fe is becoming more financially and racially segregated with each passing year.
There's certainly the will to solve Santa Fe's housing crisis. What the city needs next is the way.
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