Housing Any Way You Cut It

A housing project once again lands on the Santa Fe city councilors' desks this week, and their Wednesday meeting will see officials reviewing a proposed new development that's a radical shift from current rules on affordable housing.

Las Soleras, a complex of 300 market-rate homes, is requesting exemption from the Santa Fe Homes Program affordability requirement. Rather than provide 20 percent of the development, or 60 homes, at prices tiered for those making below or just up to area median income of $52,900, developer Pulte Homes instead wants to donate six lots to Habitat for Humanity to construct homes on and set aside a 4-acre parcel for a 60- to 72-unit low-income housing project. The developer makes the case that being forced to build those affordable homes in southwestern Santa Fe would pose an "extreme hardship."

Members of the city's Community Development Commission saw this alternative as better meeting Santa Fe's needs by providing more affordable rental housing and asked the developer to increase the size by half an acre and pay for up to $100,000 of the costs of doing the preliminary design, engineering and environmental assessment work for the proposed low-income housing project. The land would be turned over to the Housing Trust to operate, like the existing Stage Coach and Village Sage projects.

Of the proposed 300 units that make up Las Soleras, 160 are planned as a gated, active retirement community for buyers ages 55 and older, and 140 would be targeted at young professionals and families.

During a Community Development Commission review, Commissioner Silas Peterson pointed out that with only six affordable units, that makes just 2 percent of the project affordable, and there's no inclusionary neighborhood at that level. He also mentioned the sense that the city is essentially paying $1 million for an additional half an acre to add to the 4-acre donation to the Housing Trust.

The proposal will also require rezoning and a master plan amendment to realign roads; reconfigure open space, trails and reduce parks; and relocate transmission lines. Trails would be realigned to skirt the age-targeted community, and three of the primary streets would be realigned. The original master plan called for 20 acres of park area, but the proposal allocates 7 acres of park and an additional 10-acre school site.

Those adjustments to the master plan as well as the rezoning, which would lower the density of housing for the area, are among concerns with the project for Councilor Ron Trujillo, who chairs the Community Development Commission.

"We wanted to make a subdivision that was going to house locals in Santa Fe," he tells SFR of the work done on the master plan for that part of the city, and what those locals will look for is a "thriving neighborhood" with amenities that include schools and parks like the one this development may either cut into or obliterate entirely. He expects the City Council's discussion of the proposal to center on those rezoning requests and the broader question of how this proposal fits with the need for affordable housing in Santa Fe.

If the transfer of the 4 acres to the city is approved, the Housing Trust would move forward with an application for a low-income housing tax credit project for a January 2016 deadline. The earliest construction could begin would be August 2016, says Sharron Welsh, executive director of the Housing Trust.

"It's not a downtown infill, but it's pretty darned accessible to retail and jobs and state offices and everything, so we think that it would be very popular," Welsh says of the proposed development, which would be situated south of Governor Miles Road and between Cerrillos Road and Richards Avenue. The Housing Trust's Village Sage project, about a mile away from the proposed site for Las Soleras, has a waiting list of more than double the number of units available and is almost always 100 percent occupied, Welsh says. This project could see similar demand.

Their clients are low- or lower-income, often younger people or Native families who wouldn't be well-served by a first-time home in a gated community with high HOA fees. They would, however, be the target market for the 4 acres for a low-income housing project.

"The need is so great for rental housing—affordable rental housing—and [in] the tax credit program…the rents are tiered as low as 30 percent of AMI, that's median income, and that's a very low income level," Welsh says. The tax credit project would be offer rents low enough to be deemed affordable for those making 30 percent the median income in the area. If approved, Las Soleras' 104-acre complex would include a gated community for older residents in market-rate homes they've purchased, and market-rate homes the developer hopes to see occupied by younger families, and a separate affordable apartment complex.

"I think it's a real trade-off," Welsh says. "And I think this affords an innovative opportunity. It also sets an urban community design kind of addition to the palette in that community at the early stages."

The New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness Task Force has come out in favor of this 4-acre project for affordable rental units, 25 percent of which would be dedicated to families who have been homeless and have very low income levels.

"Basically what we're supporting is the idea of doing that as the way of meeting their affordable housing obligation, because we see a big need for rental housing that isn't being met through other ways, through the affordable housing ordinances at the city," says Hank Hughes, executive director of the coalition. "This would be definitely a different way of meeting the affordable housing requirements, but it doesn't really make sense to develop an apartment building and then spread it out in a senior housing development. So I think it's inclusionary in that they're all in that same parcel of land, but obviously it's not all mixed in, because that's not the way you build apartments and make them work."

Santa Fe Reporter