My op-ed submission for the Albuquerque Journal arguing for more housing freedom. Send your support as the Albuquerque City Council contemplates upzoning measures to relieve the housing crisis.
We live in a fairly extreme version of this in Los Alamos, particularly in White Rock. There are simply no starter homes to buy. Most of the housing stock is fairly modest, but of the 3BR, 2BA variety, and priced well over half a million. That means coming in you need $50-100k to be able to afford a down payment. Who has that kind of money right out of school? And in the meantime, there's very few rental units available.
They recently built a new subdivision and filled with the relatively large, suburban-style homes like you see developing along the I-25 corridor south of Albuquerque. Space is limited for development here, but that location, near to the White Rock town center and a road to LANL that can only be used by employees, would have been well-sited for apartments or other high-density dwellings. The county, with heavy influence from the lab, decided a long time ago that what people here want is a suburb, with no "urb." This is pushing people outside of the town into long commutes. The pay is good enough to justify that for some, but the quality of life is massively harmed. It's not uncommon for people to commute all the way from Albuquerque now, which should be embarrassing for our leadership.
Meanwhile, despite the residential population increasing, storefronts are more empty than ever because small businesses can't afford the rent. The lack of retail is sometimes blamed on big box stores and Amazon, but those businesses can't be blamed for a lack of restaurants. We don't even have food delivery here in White Rock. The Dominos in Los Alamos doesn't deliver. There is no Uber Eats. We have had a few food trucks pop up in recent years, after those previously being regulatorily prevented from operating, and while it is a nice addition, a food truck being in the parking lot of an empty commercial building is incredible irony to me.
And we seem to have a system that allows commercial property owners to just sit on fallow land for years. I have trouble fathoming that because whenever I consider business ownership, I can't help but worry about losing money on the venture, but this seems to be of little concern to the current owners.
It's incredibly cheap to sit on empty property in Los Alamos. You should send this to County Council and Planning and Zoning, Alex. Neither body is hearing this, not in a way that connects the dots like this. It's comprehensive plan time. You just know the status quo defenders will be writing emails every day, showing up at every planning meeting, saying to keep everything exactly as it is.
We live in a fairly extreme version of this in Los Alamos, particularly in White Rock. There are simply no starter homes to buy. Most of the housing stock is fairly modest, but of the 3BR, 2BA variety, and priced well over half a million. That means coming in you need $50-100k to be able to afford a down payment. Who has that kind of money right out of school? And in the meantime, there's very few rental units available.
They recently built a new subdivision and filled with the relatively large, suburban-style homes like you see developing along the I-25 corridor south of Albuquerque. Space is limited for development here, but that location, near to the White Rock town center and a road to LANL that can only be used by employees, would have been well-sited for apartments or other high-density dwellings. The county, with heavy influence from the lab, decided a long time ago that what people here want is a suburb, with no "urb." This is pushing people outside of the town into long commutes. The pay is good enough to justify that for some, but the quality of life is massively harmed. It's not uncommon for people to commute all the way from Albuquerque now, which should be embarrassing for our leadership.
Meanwhile, despite the residential population increasing, storefronts are more empty than ever because small businesses can't afford the rent. The lack of retail is sometimes blamed on big box stores and Amazon, but those businesses can't be blamed for a lack of restaurants. We don't even have food delivery here in White Rock. The Dominos in Los Alamos doesn't deliver. There is no Uber Eats. We have had a few food trucks pop up in recent years, after those previously being regulatorily prevented from operating, and while it is a nice addition, a food truck being in the parking lot of an empty commercial building is incredible irony to me.
And we seem to have a system that allows commercial property owners to just sit on fallow land for years. I have trouble fathoming that because whenever I consider business ownership, I can't help but worry about losing money on the venture, but this seems to be of little concern to the current owners.
It all just feels... broken.
It's incredibly cheap to sit on empty property in Los Alamos. You should send this to County Council and Planning and Zoning, Alex. Neither body is hearing this, not in a way that connects the dots like this. It's comprehensive plan time. You just know the status quo defenders will be writing emails every day, showing up at every planning meeting, saying to keep everything exactly as it is.
Grout is my councilor and I'm in no shape to go anywhere tonight :(