Around a hundred people gathered at Genoveva Chavez Community Center on Tuesday night to listen to a presentation by the Santa Fe Office of Affordable Housing. Faviola Chavez, the director of the office, acknowledged that a significant portion of the city’s housing is too expensive for most residents to afford.
“About one in four Santa Feans are struggling to pay their mortgage," she explained. "Home ownership here is still expensive and out of reach for many households.”
Chavez said that the city is working to address the issue by pouring millions of dollars into affordable housing developments, with a specific interest in multifamily housing. She pointed to the example of the Nueva Acequia housing development, which is located on Camino de Jacobo on the south side of the city. The residents of Nueva Acequia all make 80 percent or below the median income for the area.
Chavez also spoke about Community Development Block Grants, which are funds that the city gives to developers and nongovernmental organizations. Recipients of the block grants include the nonprofits Habitat for Humanity and Homewise, as well as the Santa-Fe based Housing Trust.
Affordable renting is a more complicated situation. Chavez noted that the city has created 243 affordable rental units in the past two years. But there’s still a lot of work to be done. In Santa Fe, she said, “nearly half of all renters are spending more than thirty percent of their income on housing.”
One of those renters is Matthew Friedricks, who lives with his partner in a rental unit that they struggle to afford.
“I think we have a situation where lots of people are renting, lots of people can’t afford that big down payment," he said. "And that’s certainly the situation that I'm in right now. I would actually love to own a house, but, properties around here—I can’t drop a down payment right now.”
City Counselor Alma Castro, who represents District 1, agreed that the city needs to invest more resources into finding out who is renting and how the city can best assist them.
Castro said the city has a permitting system for short-term rentals but needs to implement a similar system for long-term rentals.
"First and foremost, we need to know who is renting in the City of Santa Fe," Castro said. "I’m working with a group of other counselors on rental registry, just to know what is available in the City of Santa Fe so we can better understand the landscape.”
Another question is how the city will continue to manage the problem of homelessness. Chavez told KSFR that her office has relied on nonprofits, such as St. Elizabeth Shelters, to assist homeless residents. These organizations receive city funding and report back to the city on how many people they’ve helped, but they are not run by the City of Santa Fe.
