Oct. 18—To hear Mike Loftin tell it, presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris touting a plan for a down-payment assistance program during a televised debate prompted him to perk up.
“Less than 10% — and I’m going to say this in less than 30 seconds — of the homes that are built in America are for the entry-level buyer,” noted Loftin, chief executive officer of local mortgage lender Homewise, during a Friday roundtable.
Concerns about a shortage of affordable housing continue to simmer in Northern New Mexico, particularly in Santa Fe, where the cost of rent has increased substantially in recent years as homeownership becomes out of reach for many workers.
Panelists convened by Democratic U.S Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández gathered Friday at the Stewart Udall Center for Museum Resources for a roundtable on homeownership. They discussed the challenges that exist with affordable housing, expanding homeownership opportunities and what can be done moving forward.
“We need to flip that script. We need to make it easier to build houses for locals and workers than it is to build a multimillion-dollar mansion on a mountaintop that is actually pushing affordability the wrong way,” said Daniel Werwath, housing policy advisor for the Governor’s Office.
Fernández said “homeownership was something New Mexicans took for granted for centuries,” before people began to move to the Land of Enchantment from other states, driving up prices.
Now, concerns about housing stock and housing in general are continuing to drive political discussions in the state in a major way. Both Leger Fernández and U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich — both of whom are up for reelection this year — held events this week related to housing.
The “Home of Your Own Act,” introduced in Congress by Leger Fernández in June, would expand a limited pilot project to provide a one-time, $30,000 down payment assistance grant to first-time homebuyers who qualify for the program and create a new national homeownership assistance grant program at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. On Friday, Leger Fernández highlighted the pilot program, which she said 35 people have benefited from.
“I don’t think that we will get this bill passed through the House this year, right? Unfortunately, the House this Congress, under Republican leadership, hasn’t done very much,” Leger Fernández said in an interview after the forum.
Leger Fernández said Santa Fe is in the middle of a housing crisis.
“If you cannot figure out a way to make sure that the people who grew up here, who are working … can afford to live in the community, you lose community. … Right now, that is threatened in Santa Fe,” she said.
Former state Rep. Sharon Clahchischilliage, a Republican and a member of the Navajo Nation who is running against Leger Fernández in the 3rd Congressional District race, said in a phone interview she “knows housing is really needed in New Mexico.”
She mentioned how she would work to bring money to “ultra-rural” communities in the district that continue to struggle with electrical infrastructure, something that limits the ability to build. Clahchischilliage also mentioned she believes the economy plays a major role in people being able to own homes.
“We need to get more money into people’s pockets,” she said. “If we’re going to move the economy, people need to be able to spend money. Taking money away from people with increased taxes, with over-regulating, that’s what needs to be addressed.”
Leger Fernández and Clahchischilliage are hardly the only ones expressing concern about the impact the housing shortage is having on communities in New Mexico.
“What really hinders us is we don’t have a housing stock that we can easily go to when we have families that want to come home,” said Jamie Navenma, president of the Southwest Tribal Housing Alliance. “Historically, we tell our kids to go off and come back, but a lot of times, they go and because there are not a lot of homes to come back to, they stay where they are at, and there is this loss of language and culture.”
Addressing the housing crisis has been a goal of the city Santa Fe, which recently released a draft of its five-year housing plan and last year proposed a 3% excise tax on the value of home sales over $1 million to create a revenue stream for affordable housing initiatives. Supporters have estimated the tax, which is on hold due to legal challenges, could generate as much as $6 million a year.
Santa Fe County has also made it a priority to grow the affordable housing stock. Its Affordable Housing Program aims to help make housing more affordable for working families through down payment assistance, roof repair and replacement and foreclosure prevention. County commissioners chose to spend $11 million on the program this year, a big increase from past years.
