Oct. 16—Iesha Larranaga’s home, its yard teeming with plants, is surrounded by the scenic arid plateau that lies south of Santa Fe. She feels much more comfortable allowing her two children outside now than when she lived in the Cerrillos Road area.
“When we moved here, it’s a whole different world,” said Larranaga.
Larranaga, 30, and her husband own one of the roughly 40 homes that have been built by Santa Fe Habitat for Humanity in Oshara Village, a subdivision off Rabbit Road south of the city.
Her daughter, who has autism, has been more calm, she said, since the move. Purchased in 2022, this is the first home she and her husband have owned after living for eight years in an apartment on the “bad side” of Santa Fe. It’s a change of lifestyle and pace she credits with being able to get pregnant with a second child.
“I guess it was maybe, like, the stress of living in a crazy place that I wasn’t able to get pregnant,” Larranaga said. “We’d been trying for so long, and once we moved here, everything changed. We got married right after we moved in.”
Santa Fe Habitat for Humanity generally builds six to 10 homes per year, said its executive director Kurt Krahn, lending the houses to eventual homeowners who have to meet certain criteria. While concerns still linger about the cost of rent rising steeply in Northern New Mexico, homeownership has also become out of reach for many workers.
“It’s still a crisis,” Krahn said.
He said the organization serves as the builder and lender of the homes.
“These are all sold to homeowners,” Krahn said, pointing to some of the houses in Oshara Village. “Currently, all of our homes are sold at zero percent interest, and for all of our homes, the initial payment is 30% of the homeowners income based on area median income.”
Amid the ongoing housing crisis in the region, officials descended on Blue Feather Road in Oshara Village on Wednesday afternoon for a look at the houses constructed for entry-level homebuyers. Members of the group, which included U.S Sen. Martin Heinrich, talked about the challenges of constructing affordable housing. Heinrich has introduced federal legislation, the New Homes Tax Credit Act, aiming to provide credits to incentivize new investments and additional resources for single-family home construction.
“The reason this is so important is, since the Great Recession, not many homes have been built in America, right? So we have a 3 million to 7 million [home] deficit in housing units,” said Mike Loftin, chief executive officer of Homewise, a local mortgage lender.
“Where Santa Fe has made a bunch of progress is on rental units. There have been a bunch of apartment units built, most of it market rate but some of it affordable,” Loftin continued. “Where we are lagging, if you look at the graph of building permits, rental units is [higher] and homeownership is [lower].”
Heinrich touted the $1.1 million he secured in federal spending in March to help with the next project Santa Fe Habitat for Humanity has in the pipeline — a roughly 25-home project on about 6 acres in the West Alameda Street area.
“What we did here with the funding is kind of at the granular level, right, trying to support models that work and then on top of that, we’re also trying to scale things that work to be able to let some of the demand out of the housing crunch,” Heinrich said.
His New Homes Tax Credit Act would be administered under the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, according to a news release. The fund certifies Housing Development Entities, which can be government and quasi-governmental entities, or nonprofits. The news release notes that, following certification, Housing Development Entities will use the capital raised from exchanging their new home tax credits with investors to provide funds for construction companies that build or renovate single-family homes.
Heinrich, a Democrat, is running for reelection against Republican Nella Domenici. Domenici said in a statement Wednesday evening housing policy should be driven locally, criticizing measures such as Vice President Kamala Harris’ proposal to give money to first-time homebuyers and the Housing for All Act, a bill Heinrich co-sponsored to boost federal housing spending with the goal of reducing homelessness.
“Sound economic policies that provide New Mexicans with better paying, stable jobs should be the foundational approach,” Domenici said.
Domenici said local governments should “speed up and streamline” the zoning and permitting process and criticized a recent mandate requiring electric vehicle charging stations for multifamily apartments.
“The recent rising housing costs — like other high costs of living — are driven by the Harris/Heinrich out-of-control federal spending,” she said. “On top of the inflation, high interest rates … have made mortgages difficult for many New Mexicans to afford.”
Addressing the housing crisis has been a priority for 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 could generate as much as $6 million a year. The measure, at least for now, is on hold due to legal challenges.
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 significant increase from past years.
Luz Patricia Rodriguez Marquez, who works at a local hospital, lives in a home with members of her family and five cats in Oshara Village. Out back is what was described as a “cat casita,” where the felines can play in an enclosed area.
“It’s very, very comfortable,” she said of owning her own home. “When they called me, I cried.”