[Music]
cancelled your life.
Good afternoon. Welcome to the work
session. Today is Tuesday, October 14th.
It's approximately 1 pm. I am Mayor Eric
Enriquez. We will start with a moment of
silence for the brave men and women of
the United States Armed Forces as they
protect our interests around the globe
as well as our courageous men and women
of the Los Cruus Police, Los Cruus Fire
Department.
If you join me in the pledge. I pledge
allegiance to the flag of the United
States of America and to the republic
for which it stands, one nation under
God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.
Okay, the first thing we'll start out
with is the pets of the week. Carol, if
you want to come up.
Thank you. I'm Carol Nelson, digital
content specialist with the Animal
Services Center of the Messia Valley.
This week, our dog of the week is Hulu
89471 to look her up on the website.
From the moment I wake up, I'm ready to
share love and cuddles with my humans.
Once I feel safe, my sweet and playful
nature shines bright. I've been
practicing my leash manners, and I love
checking in with my humans during our
walks. I'm also learning to keep all
four paws on the ground and how to sit,
and I'm making fantastic progress. And
my athletic ability to leap over objects
is quite a sight. If you're looking for
a loyal companion who enjoys walks,
cuddles, pets, and tasty treats, I'm the
pup for you. And this week, we actually
don't have a cat of the week because the
one we selected got adopted before we
could even promote her. So, it's good
problem to have. Um, and as always, we
like to highlight our long-term
residents. Just as a reminder, the
longer they stay at the center, it's
harder for them to thrive. So, we would
love for them to get out sooner rather
than later. COET has now been with us
280 days. Cookies and Cream 270 days.
Dexter 265,
Finn 255. I've spent time with all of
these dogs. They're really great options
for adoptable pets.
And our upcoming events this weekend, we
will be at Petco uh from 9 to 12:00. So,
definitely come by. And then prepare for
our drive-through vaccine clinic at the
end of the month. We will be at the
Field of Dreams parking lot October
26th. That is a Sunday. and we'll be
there from 9 to 1 um doing microchips
and lowcost and free vaccines. So
definitely come on by and as always feel
free to check out our website or our
social media for more information and
you can also reach out to the center.
Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Carol.
Next is agenda item 2.1, addressing
housing insecurity and exploring
alternative
living options. Uh Natalie Green.
Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, members of
council. Natalie Green, your housing
administrator for the record. Um today
we are doing uh a presentation on
uh some of the discussion items
requested for uh by council at the
August 4th uh council meeting. Uh it'll
cover uh housing and security and then
exploring some alternative housing
options. Um with that, I'd like to
introduce Jen Lopez with Project Moxy.
It's the consultant that we've engaged
to support us in this work.
Good afternoon, Mr. for mayor and
council. It's so nice to be with you
again. And for some of you, I'm I'm new
to you and you're new to me. So, I'm
excited to to learn more about you and
your interests and how we can support
you in this very important mission of
serving those who are unhoused. I'd like
to tell you a little bit about me for
folks who don't know our work. I am Jen
Lopez. I've been doing affordable
housing and homelessness work for 25
years. I am a graduate of UNM. Don't run
me out of the room. Um, but I think it's
important to know that a lot of the work
in the beginning was really driven by
New Mexico models. And so I always
welcome um coming back to New Mexico
because I'm currently a resident of
Durango, Colorado. Um, we have a small
consulting firm. Uh, there's a few other
folks that were involved in this project
and we're on calls, Josie Butler and
Sarah Mangi. and we partnered with Scott
Shields with Soul Mining, a consulting
firm that has so uh Scott has a ton of
experience with um operating across a
continuum in a region in uh Denver to
help families who are unhoused and u
youth aging out of foster care. So, he's
always a great partner. And so, that's a
little bit about us. Is it just a click?
Oh jeez. Um I will say a couple more
things. We um this is hard work and
again we've been blessed to be able to
work in New Mexico. We've been working
in Los Cusus since 2017 18 we met and um
it is always a pleasure to come back. We
also work in Tao Santa Fe County,
Albuquerque. We work with uh Department
of Finance and Administration and the
Office of Housing. So again, I think we
are not experts on your community, but I
think we bring some interesting
perspective. The last thing I'll say is
we've learned a lot. We've done some
really great stuff and we've also made
mistakes. We'd like to help you avoid
them. So, that's part of our mission as
a consulting firm is to help communities
um not have to go through the pain
points we've had to go through.
We have a lot to cover in this agenda. I
do talk fast. My apologies. At any time
if you have a question, you can, you
know, interrupt. Um and it might be more
effic more efficient, Mr. Mayor, if we
hold questions to the end maybe. Okay,
we'll do that. Uh it's a lot of
information to try to convey as a sort
of level setting session around uh what
we heard from folks that uh our team
interviewed about the issues around
homelessness
as well as um talking about what is
happening happening postcoid in housing
markets in the federal government and
housing policy and being aware of what's
happening so that as you think about
potential solutions moving forward you
have that back context which is really
uh challenging and really important
right now. We also always do a quick
refresh on best practices. We know how
to end homelessness as a country. We
just haven't had the political will to
fund it to the level, but we know how to
do it. So again, um the issue isn't how,
the issue is how much, and we haven't
had the support to get those funds. A
lot of communities um like to have some
kind of framework to be able to make
decisions. So we'll talk about and give
you some ideas around a potential
framework for future investments. And
again, we'll talk about the current
funding environment.
We'll dabble a little bit and introduce
the concepts of crisis response versus
permanent housing models, how those are
funded and when you do which. Um we'll
uh talk a little bit about cost um cost
to these different models and sort of
the the challenges and opportunities we
see in those models and then we'll
suggest some potential next steps for
consideration.
So we want to start with the interviews.
So again, these are high level themes
that we heard. There were seven, eight u
electeds and leadership from the city
that were interviewed. Um again,
homelessness is a societal problem that
Los Cusus needs to address for the
health and quality of life for unhoused
individuals. Number one, and the health
and safety of the community.
Acknowledging that there's tension
between addressing public nuisance
concerns and supporting unhoused people.
This is not an uncommon theme we see in
a number of communities we're in right
now.
Community-based providers and the city
team are important assets. They're
effective partners in their stretch to
capacity. I am so glad to see my friend
Nicole Martinez here. I have been
calling Nicole since 2017 for advice.
She actually helped me set up the safe
outdoor space program in Colorado during
COVID and also came to Durango right
before CO and tried to help me do it in
my own community. So, you have some
incredible talent here as well as
Natalie Green. and you have other
service providers that I know are here
in the room that uh want to be part of
the solution.
There's a sense that came out in the
interviews that residents are fatigued
with the issue of homelessness. Um they
don't want to see people experiencing
homelessness, you know, on the streets
struggling and despite um efforts and
great progress, it feels like it isn't
enough or that we're not adequately
meeting the city's needs. So those again
are just themes from the interviews.
um acknowledging housing is the primary
homelessness solution and it's a social
determinant of individual and community
health. Los Cusus is to that point. You
you all adopted an investment strategy
in 2024 that guided geo bonds and other
funding and you were trying to leverage
as many new housing affordable units as
you possibly could. Very impressive. Um
and you still have a shortage of
probably 5,000 units. I am going to tell
a little vignette because it's very uh
powerful. Natalie wanted me to see
Patrina. We went over there and we're
touring and somebody was walking up the
stairs and it was a gentleman that had
been sleeping in his car and in the
parks and Natalie's like, "You're you're
housed." I mean, that is what this is
all about, right? So, again, you're
doing some really great work here.
Other themes, um, I love this. It's
really important to be clear on what
role the city plays in this work if you
want to be really effective with limited
resources. So folks told us that you're
a convenor and an investor in solutions,
not a direct service provider, and that
some primary populations that need help
are seniors, people with severe and
persistent uh mental health challenges,
people with substance abuse um
challenges, domestic violence survivors.
uh more from the interviews, identify
gaps, obtaining accurate data,
demonstrating collective impact, system
coordination, clear framework and
direction.
Uh and then kind of the big point of
this work session I think is that there
is a lack of consensus on additional
solutions to supplement current efforts
um and if there's a need or how you
would go about developing new
initiatives. And um two are on this
slide, tiny homes and um accessory
dwelling units because those came up in
the interviews.
But we do want to talk about we always
want to ground these conversations and
the data we do have. And I will say that
um homelessness data is really hard to
use if you're not a homeless service
provider. It's it's complicated data,
but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
It just usually means that it's not been
disseminated in a way that other people
can understand it. Having said that, in
uh 2025 point in time counts, you've got
about 267 folks experiencing
homelessness. This data is coming from
Missia Valley uh meal Nicole shop. Um
and then you at the same time have about
800 units of affordable housing
anticipated to come online in the next
two years. That's a lot of production.
That's a big number, right? So, um I
think you can start to really put those
things together. Again, Messia Valley
Community of Hope housed 1857 people
served that number of people in the LA
past year. And they've got great data on
their programs and their outcomes. We
put them in the white paper, but it's
also on their website. And there was
about 194 folks that went through Camp
Hope while they waited to trans
transition into stable housing. We did
not have the opportunity. This has been
a very quick engagement about six weeks
to gather data from other providers. Um
but would welcome that data and see a
way for the city to kind of uh coales
data from different providers and put it
out in a form that would explain what
you're working on.
National and state context. These are
lots of data points. I'm going to focus
on the one that I think is re that are
most powerful.
Um, and I maybe I'll maybe I'll also
give a caveat. So,
we have had a housing shortage in this
country since the great recession in
2009. We have not caught up on
production, right? Um, we all know this
and we all feel it differently in our
local communities. It shows up
differently. And then we had COVID and
CO also put us back in terms of
production. And so, a lot of communities
are still trying to recover from COVID,
right? I mean, we saw the cost of
construction of housing go up 40% during
COVID and we weren't able to do that
much typically, right? So, it's a really
challenging time. How that shows up is
that you see, I'm going to go with that
last bullet. In New Mexico, 76% of
renters that make less than 50,000 are
cost burden. The majority of renters in
New Mexico making less than 50,000 are
probably living paycheck to paycheck. My
point is we've probably never been in a
worse situation unless you go to the
Great Depression, right? So, we are in
really precarious times. I'm I'm a very
optimistic person, but my job today is
really to put some reality on all these
conversations because it's going to get
worse and I'm going to explain why.
Um, this is again, uh, we talked about
the point in time count. There was a 20%
increase um, from 23 to 24 and we know
that's an undercount. Housing New
Mexico, a lot of folks don't know,
actually also provide funding for a
match for the contin of care for
homeless programs and they have their
own documents and their own data and
they're saying they think it's probably
closer to 19 to 20,000 New Mexicans are
experiencing homelessness currently. So
these are big numbers.
Um, your own affordable housing strategy
you adopted last year again called out
the need for about 5600 affordable
units.
So costs are higher, people are um
feeling the pinch. We have every reason
to believe the numbers are already
indicating homelessness is going to
increase. And then the federal
government changes a lot of its
programs, its budgets, and it's
happening so rapid fire. I'm paid to do
this for a living and I can't keep up
with it. So it and my biggest fear is
that this stuff falls back on local
governments and you all have enough to
do. So, we want to try to give you some
words of advice and ways to think about
this. So, we're in the federal
government shutdown. You're probably
already all feeling the impacts of that.
The administration and Congress are
cutting SNAP. They're cutting Medicaid.
They're threatening house HUD vouchers,
which are um probably one of the most
popular programs out there um and
currently already underfunded. Um and
then when they're not cutting programs,
they're shifting how they can be used.
and a lot of their addendums to their
grants are very challenging at best and
communities are not feeling like they
can sign on. So again, we're moving into
an era where the federal government,
which was the main way that we funded
homeless programs in this country and
housing programs, is backing out of
these programs. Does anybody want to
guess how much continuum of care funding
comes to New Mexico every year?
17 million. When Nicole comes to speak
later, I hope she talks about how much
of her budget is continuing of care
versus the you all because this is what
we need to start planning for.
Um,
again, we know how to solve the issues.
We know how to address homelessness and
you've already got a a pretty robust
infrastructure in Los Cusus and Dunana
County. There are a few gaps. We have
some slides if we have time we can show
you or ask Nicole to walk you through
like what what we have and what we have
gaps around still. But I just want to
remind that in times of crisis with
limited resources we always start with
what we know works. So rent assistance
eviction prevention hugely powerful. I
don't know how much funding is coming to
I don't know how much you all are
funding these interventions but these
are very lowcost interventions and they
keep people in their house in their
current houses. Again, you have a pretty
robust strategy of creating affordable
housing. This bullet, increasing
inventory of deeply affordable means not
just affordable housing, but we got to
have more vouchers as well, right? So,
our lowest income households still need
a little rent assistance even if they
get into some of our affordable
properties. Again, tracking success
using data from HMIS. I'm sure that
Nicole's got tons of data. I think other
providers may or may not be using HMIS
based on whether they are required to
with HUD. And I just want to say this,
our providers are working so hard right
now to do all these things and they're
usually not funded for data collection.
So, you know, like just saying if we
want to have um access to data,
sometimes we have to fund it differently
and be able to do things with it. It's
also a barrier for um new providers
getting in and wanting to use the
system, right? It it costs money and
staff to be able to do that. Um, and
then again, most of our communities
we're working with right now, we're
focusing them on the funding that is
available right now so that they can
leverage their dollars, right? Does
anybody want to guess the one program
that got a raise this year from
Congress? There was one program that
actually got more money. Does anybody
want to guess?
Low-income housing tax credit program
and private activity bond models. Those
got a raise. I know that they are not
always very popular because they're are
very complicated programs, but that is
where the money is right now. And so,
uh, you know, we are telling a lot of
our communities, make sure you're
maximizing that because it's there.
Doesn't mean it's going to solve all
your problems. It's not, but just make
sure you're maximizing those dollars.
So, does anybody want to guess or does
anybody know how much you're spending
right now on homelessness? City of Los
Cruises, what is your budget? Does
anybody know?
Okay, we'll come back to that. I'm sure
that Natalie can tell you, but I think,
you know, when we think about new
solutions, it's really important to be
like, what's our current budget? What
are we investing in now? And then if we
have more funds, what's the framework to
make a decision? This is something our
team came up with based on best
practices and work we've done other
places. You could say, "We love two of
these, we hate the rest, but we just
want to give you something to react to."
So this framework says any new dollars
invested in homelessness really needs to
follow best practices, we need to be
working on dec pre preventing and
decreasing homelessness right now and we
need to know that our dollars are going
to do those things. Um again, I'm
concerned that with the COC funds at
risk that you're going to lose some of
the great programs you already have. So
taking a look at what might get lost is
an important activity for communities. I
was we just started working with
Albuquerque and I was in the mayor's
office last week and we had one little
crisis and the next crisis was this
conversation. They're doing an analysis
of what programs they partner with that
might lose federal dollars and they're
preparing for that. Um
again, leverage what we do have state
funding is really interesting to me. New
Mexico, you do state funding
differently. It's not good or bad. It's
just different. What do I mean by that?
I mean that you had 120 million or
something last year, one-time money, had
to use it in a year. Um, if we want to
solve these problems, we need multi-year
funding. So, we it's predictable, right?
So, I know you all got a chunk of that
money and used it very well. But what
I'm saying is I can't look at a lot of
my funding charts over here and tell
you, yeah, state of New Mexico, these
are the you can fund this initiative or
that initiative. It's not there's not
very many reoccurring funding sources in
the state of New Mexico. and we'll talk
about that a little more if we get into
certain interventions.
Um, and then this is the one that kills
most projects. What do I mean by
projects? We're going to get into crisis
response in a second versus housing, but
um, a lot of the sort of uh, emergency
response initiatives that we learned how
to do during COVID, they were really
powerful, right? We did pallet shelters.
We did motel conversions. We did um
vouchers. We did motel vouchers,
short-term vouchers. Um we did tiny home
models. We did a lot of interesting
stuff during COVID and it worked because
it was funded by the federal government,
right? Um now we're seeing across the
country a lot of these models are
winding down because the funds aren't
there to operate them. So
operating and having a comfort level
that you've got about five years of
operating before you fund something new
is really important. What you don't want
to do is fund a new intervention and
then within two years you realize we
don't have the million dollars to keep
this thing going. You got to ramp it
down, right? That will happen, but you
don't want to start with that. You want
to really make sure you you can see the
future of what you can control. It helps
to have operators that have experience
because then they not only can make sure
that the project is successful, but they
probably are really good at fundraising,
too. So, we're going to need a lot of
partnerships with local government to
figure these models out. Again, is it
eligible for state or local funding?
This is a big one. Is it flexible if
funds go away? Can the property be
repurposed? One of the best projects I
got to work on during CO was with a
church in Aurora, Colorado. They had
about eight acres of dirt in front of
the it was a church and a shopping mall,
but it's an area that's getting
gentrified very quickly. And what they
did is they said, "We're going to do a
safe parking and we're going to do some
pallet shelters, but we know the money
is going to go away in three years. So,
we're going to start working on a
permanent affordable housing project to
take the place of these interventions.
And so, that was really cool to be
involved in that because they were able
to do something immediate, but then
transitioned into a permanent solution.
And then, and so that's what I mean
about being flexible, like if you do
this, do you have three other ways to
take care of this in case those funds go
away? And then everything really needs
to be trauma-informed.
I'm not a trauma-informed um expert at
all. And so when I do housing work and I
do intervention work, I partner with my
service providers and I let them guide
me through that process. Um, but I've
been doing this work for a very very
long time at the policy level. I was a a
director of homelessness in Colorado for
Governor um Hickinlooper and I learned
that uh people have been kind of case
managed to death and they don't trust a
lot of stuff and they've got a lot of
barriers to getting into housing and but
we know if we get them housing with the
right level of services 80% 90% success
rates and so we know how to do this. We
just it's a lot of work.
In your packets you saw
a lot. And again, this is not this is a
high-level snapshot. This is not a
specific to Los Cusus implementation
model. That would be a feasibility
study. But what we were trying to do
here on the left was talk about these
different types of interventions,
estimated costs, potential funding
sources, comments, what would Las Cruis
need to invest if they wanted to do
this, population served, etc.
Um, and again, one of the key factors
here, and I've got a slide that I think
will do a better job than this chart,
but is that tiny home villages, pallet
shelters, emergency shelters, great
interventions. Who pays for the
operations? Big conversation. So, um,
operations can, you know, run anywhere
from for tiny homes, it can be 20,000 a
year. For operations of a shelter, you
know, 50 60 bed shelter about 900 to a
million a year. These are big numbers.
you cannot go to the state of New
Mexico. There's no pot of money now,
right? Back in COVID, we could do all
kinds of stuff. I don't know of a pot of
money. And so, if your staff does, I
hope they tell me, but I would
anticipate if you want to do one of
these interventions, you're going to be
writing the check directly. So, that's
one of the sort of considerations of
this conversation.
Um, I already did this. I do want to
talk a little bit about crisis response.
I kind of said it earlier, but I want to
play with this a little bit more because
I hope it's um going to get questions
rolling because we're almost to the
questions slide, which is the fun part
of the presentation.
Um crisis response, I've heard other
people call it like temporary housing
solutions. Um but it's where do we put
people when they're outside that we want
them to be somewhere so that we can
engage in services. You have Camp Hope,
which is a model nationally. Um but if
you were to do something else, right?
Um, so again, there's congregate
shelter, there's non- congregate
shelter, there's tiny home, there pallet
shelters, there's safe parking. Um, all
of those programs again like the cost of
doing them, the capital might be
slightly cheaper. The operating is not.
So you're trying to figure out how am I
going to operate these things long term.
Permanent housing programs, eviction
prevention, um, homelessness prevention,
rapid rehousing are your biggest bang
for your buck. You'd be spending
anywhere from 800 to three grand to keep
somebody who's already housed housed.
So, if you're not funding those programs
here, I highly recommend you take a look
at that. That's just the best leverage.
And again, Nicole, if they are, I'm
sorry, but I just And then, you know, we
talk about permanent supportive housing
and affordable housing. And again, in
this model, um, and you you all do this
quite a bit and you're seen as experts
in New Mexico, right? You got developer
of the year from Housing New Mexico.
What I want to say to you about that is
there's funds to leverage there. So
you're gapping your new apartments like
Padrina, right? You know, you're and
Natalie may have to do the math here,
but you're providing like 20,000 per
unit in gap. You might have waved some
fee wavers, right?
That's a that's a pretty amazing
leverage. 20,000 per unit for 250,000 or
270 of somebody else's money, right? So
that's why communities that are trying
to solve homelessness and housing make
sure they maximize that program because
it does have the leverage.
Tiny homes came up at least in one
conversation, maybe two. And so we just
wanted to have a slide ready to talk
about this a little bit more. Um my
staff did some research um nationally
and then there's a tiny home village in
Bernalo. I actually have a tiny home
village down the street from me that my
friend runs. Right. So they're pretty
common right now. But what I want to say
is um who are you trying to serve and
how does it look? Because it's going to
look different. So my neighbor down the
street, beautiful rural, there's
chickens and dogs. It's a place for
people who are renting or working
seasonally in the valley. I live by the
um the ski resort. So I've got friends
that have lived in the village. It's a
great place to start out in Durango.
Really nice. But you know, I don't think
they're staying long. my friend was
going to have a baby so they had to move
out. My friend when he created that that
was his idea. I want there to be a place
where people can start in Durango,
right? So that's what it works. So my
point in all that is we have to be
really clear about who you're trying to
serve and what you're trying to solve to
figure out which model is going to work.
So again, this is just, you know, 50 to
100,000 for a tiny home unit. Some
include bathrooms and kitchens, some
don't. Uh you still have to factor in
land and infrastructure. This was a huge
lesson during COVID when we cited the
safe the pallet shelters. I don't think
you're doing those down here. They're
doing them up north. But we spent
hundreds of thousands of dollars trying
to get water, electricity, and sewer to
these sites. We had no idea how
expensive it would be. So, you do want
to pay attention to that. Um, we also
had pretty big um issues with people
opposing the sighting of those projects.
Um, Santa Fe just did a 10 unit pallet
shelter about a year and a half ago and
they're really struggling to get the
next one because it's very contentious
where where they're going to site it.
Operating again about 20,000 a home
include services, rent assistance. Um,
and again there's one in Bernalo County.
Has anybody seen the one in Bern
Bernalo?
Have you? Cool. I'd love to hear about
it. Um, so again, that's a little bit
deeper dive into the tiny home model
and then we are going to do questions,
but our team just wanted to suggest
different ways you might move forward.
Um, and of course these could all change
after the conversation, but again, we're
urging our clients right now to look at
the federal funds coming into your
community and come up with plan A, B,
and C. Um, continue the work that you're
already doing that's innovative. Amador
Crossing, work with uh NMSU, you work
with Nicole, work with other groups, but
don't, you know, think twice about
starting something new. Like again, the
funds are going to go away. Make sure
you can finish what you've started. Um
again, HMIS data, um it feels like the
data is here, but maybe not being
provided in a format that people can
understand what's happening. Again, once
that translation happens, um you can use
that data for more advocacy for the work
you want to do and maybe to increase
resources so you can invest more. think
about flexible housing solutions and or
leveraging um federal resources and then
think about adopting an evaluation
framework if you are going to make new
investments.
That was a lot.
Thank you so much for your time and
attention. I'd love to have questions.
Oh yeah. Oh wait. Oh, I'm sorry. You
know what? Let's have Nicole come up.
[Music]
Okay. Sorry. I have one more, but I want
to stop. I want to take questions.
Natalie, did do we want to do do
we want to do questions now
or or was uh No, I'm not. Okay. or was
um
Nicole part of your presentation or how
did how did you wanna
um it's really up to the council if you
want to maybe start the discussion and
then we can also open it up to Nicole
and other members of the public who want
to speak.
Okay. Were there a question? Uh Council
Mccclure.
Hi. Thank you guys for coming. I am
really excited to talk about this. I
have a lot of notes and a lot of
questions, but maybe I'll just kick it
off for kind of I funneled down as you
were talking. Um,
going back to our comprehensive plan,
Elevate, I'm just curious as to when
this became shifted from housing
diversity to crisis modeling. So, if we
go to page 169 for um in Elevate, I'm
just going to do a little bit of
reading.
Housing diversity refers to the mix of
housing types such as single family,
detached, duplexes, town homes, multif
family, mobile homes, etc. As the and
this goes back a little bit to what you
were saying too with, um, who's the
audience for this, right? And it is a
shifting in audience, right? Uh, as the
baby boomer's age and the millennial
generation, hi, um, starts families,
housing preferences are changing. Many
empty nesters seek to downsize and live
in housing types other than single
family homes. Alternatively, many
millennials want to live in a setting
that is walkable and close to
destinations, which oftentimes doesn't
translate to single family
neighborhoods.
And
we had goals attached to that. We had
timelines attached to that. I'd like to
see where that is going. This is this is
approved. This was a plan.
What is it that
this is our comprehensive plan?
Yeah.
From 2020. And granted, global pandmic
like I I get it, but I'm curious to
start there right now. And that would be
a Natalie question. I did not refer to
your comp plan for this. What I was
responding to was a conversation around
homelessness concerns and then just
giving you a framework for thinking
about is is our solutions if we were to
do them a crisis response solution or a
housing solution. So it wasn't really in
relationship to that. But if you would
like Natalie, that'd be great.
Um, Mr. Mayor, uh, Councelor, uh,
Mccclure, uh, in terms of the
comprehensive plan, I would honestly
defer to community development. They're
really the the implement of market rate
housing. So, um, if if staff is going to
do affordable housing, we're going to do
it in, um, and it's not to say that we
we can't do some of those. We're
actually uh exploring a townhouse kind
of quadplex duplex situation in the um
infill near Nevada Street. Um so it for
our programs it really becomes a economy
of scale right so where that investment
can be made where there's funding
sources so um I think we talked about
the LITC program that's the biggest
funer of affordable housing in the
entire country so I can take something
like a million dollars or $2 million and
leverage that with LITC and get several
hundred units where I can take that same
amount of money and I can invest it in
single family housing But I'm at that
point, depending on the level of subsidy
for each family, then I'm only building
10, 15, 20. So I um I I think staff
would need a little more direction on um
what affordable housing projects you
would like us to work on. Um if that but
the comp plan would be a whole different
um discussion. I will add to council
that um our consultant root policy uh
has been reaching out to folks. Uh they
will be here next week. We will be
hosting a community and housing needs
open house in anticipation of redoing
the affordable housing plan which is the
plan that primarily guides the work that
we do in housing and neighborhood
services. So that'll also be an
opportunity to put in some of those
additional goals. Um, and while I'm up
here, I'll just tell you that's uh
Wednesday
from 3:00 to 7:00. It's open house.
People can uh pop in and out. Uh, we did
post on the city's Facebook. I will make
sure to send a separate email after this
work session to you all. Um, and that'll
be at the Los Cru's Homebuilders event
hall um off North Main Street. And so,
uh, we are certainly exploring single
family, duplex, town homes. Um but again
it becomes for what population and uh we
would evaluate how we finance those.
I'm going to push back just a little bit
because we actually do mention tiny
homes in this. So and I know we've met
with culde-sac tempe. So I was looking
to see what what has been requested from
some of my constituents and a lot of
times it's carfree to a large degree.
It's it's a it's a matter of what what
other models can we look at. So we had
discussions with that and then funnily
enough they they were really interested
in Los Cruuses and part of this too was
partner with NMSU to provide additional
off-campus student staff and faculty
options. Things like this is kind of
what I wanted to see. I I really do
appreciate all the information on the
unhoused and want to support that effort
continually. But my question is why
aren't we doing some of the things that
we said we would be doing and um yeah
just bringing those back. We had two
meetings with that. Like to see where we
can go with that action plan two had
adopt clearer building standards
specific to tiny homes. Why are we not
using some of the ideas provided by
realize? That's what I'd like to see as
well.
Great. Let me take this one on. This was
my last slide, but I think this is where
you want to go, I hope. So, um, it might
say it in a a a planning document or a
strategy to do tiny homes. You still
need all of these things to happen,
right? So I'd love to just this is sort
of an outline of feasibility we do every
time we do a project and um and I just
think it's a great exercise and it leads
to clarity about can we do this for who
and who would be a partner and who's
going to do it. So right we say get
consensus on the problem you're trying
to solve. Be clear on the target
population to be served. So tiny home
solves what problem being very clear who
in the community sees that problem the
same way that you do and what is that
population that wants to have a tiny
home as a solution. Right? That's that's
we do a lot of um environmental scans
and just like we did a baby one for this
work session but it's not rocket science
it's just a lot of conversations right
to get it's I'm teaching a class up
north with 12 communities and I my first
session I say you need to check your
assumptions with community right and you
need to do it in a way that you are
going to end up with the right housing
for the right population and it takes a
little bit of time and then if you
everybody says yes like my friend Chris
yes I see a need for folks coming to
Durango who want a small rental to get,
you know, I see the things. Um, he was
willing to do it. So, the question
becomes, if you do tiny homes, who does
it, right? Is there a provider? And
that's great. If there's a provider,
then you've got somebody to be a thought
partner on it, right? I'll be really
blunt because that's my job. When I work
with local governments, I'm trying to
mitigate your risk. The best way to
mitigate your risk is to make sure
there's a partner can take things on so
that it's not on you, right? Because you
have limited staff capacity. So, who
could do it? Um there's an operator
perspective potentially maybe not right
so my friend Chris just manages his own
property right so it depends on who
you're serving um but just getting
really clear on all those roles for your
project and then how much will it cost
so again we have high level numbers they
don't mean anything we can't really do
feasibility and we do this all the time
unless we have a very specific site so
we can say yes it has water it has sewer
it has zoning right it has all the
things we can put an actual cost to that
there's a proforma to it um who's going
to build the tiny home, what does it
cost, right? So, you really want to have
a pretty strong proform about it um and
then is there an operating cost? So,
again, if you're not um serving people
who need services, then the operating
cost might be very low. It could be just
like a some kind of HOA structure or
whatever. And then where will your
capital come from and how long will it
take? So, again, just a little
feasibility checklist. So, I think maybe
the question is um this maybe hasn't
been, you know, flushed out. uh vote no
to HOAs. Just as a side note, um
I agree to that actually. Thank you very
much, counselor.
Part of the the question too is um we do
want to do a survey. I think the mayor
has talked about, you know, what what
does the status look like right now? We
have a lot of unknowns partially because
we don't share data. You know, there's a
lot of you know, if there if you read
siloed in there, it is absolutely
siloed. You know, we don't share data in
any meaningful ways that make people
understand what we are doing. To a large
degree, we're doing a lot of good
things. But the thing is those 5,000
homes that were still missing can look
like a lot of different things. So
multigenerational housing, yeah, I might
have done tiny homes, but I had my mom
with me. So I'd like to have a a look at
what can we do stipens on that. What
what does that kind of programming look
like? And I think realize has enabled a
lot that we can do and I'd like to look
into that.
Thank you, counselor. Are there other
questions? Uh anything that was
surprising or anything that you want
clarity on? Anyone
else?
Councelor Gr.
Yeah, I'm not promising that I won't
have other questions, but just building
on what councelor McClure said. Also,
thank you everyone for being here, those
we've heard from and those who we are
yet to hear from. Um, and I think
what councelor Mccclur's comments are
making me think about, um, it's it is so
hard to characterize this population
because it's so multiaceted.
And right now I'm thinking in the
simplest terms, the very simplest terms,
we have an a housed population and an
unhoused population. And then we have
people who are kind of in this liinal
space, housing insecure on the bubble.
Um, and I think your presentation showed
us very elegantly that that population
is growing as we sit here. And I
appreciate all the materials you gave us
in advance. Um, you know, and I think as
you're saying, who who are we serving?
who is the who is the audience as my
fellow rhetorician was framing it and
recognizing that for again and my my
vocabulary isn't perfect here when we're
talking about a higher a higher needs
population. So, people who are perfect
for permanent supportive housing, who
need services, who need support, who
need on-site access to counselors, who
need, we all need trauma-informed care,
but who are especially
in need of trauma-informed care.
Permanent supportive housing is the
answer. It also takes a really long time
to make it happen. And the concern that
I'm feeling is while this liinal space
of people who are housing insecure are
potentially falling into being unhoused,
where are places where we can move
faster
um to to serve that population? Also
recognizing that once you become once
someone becomes unhoused
their needs are going to rise
precipitously because of the trauma
because of you know I've learned so much
in my four short years here about the
that oftentimes it's the effects of
homelessness that people attribute to be
the cause of homelessness. Oh, you you
know you became homeless because of
substance use disorder, because of
mental illness, when in fact it's being
unhoused that leads to that situation.
So, sorry, huge word salad to say and
and if I'm mischaracterizing what you're
saying, Council Mccclure, please jump
back in. But for a less high needs
population, where are spaces where we
can move more quickly than permanent
supportive houses housing tends to take?
No, I would say that's not a
mischaracteration. Definitely transition
in that way. Yep.
I'm going to do this, but I also want to
invite Nicole up at any time. You're
welcome to come up anytime.
Um, so my response to people um who have
less um service needs but are living on
the edge, it's not another housing unit,
it's an eviction prevention program or
rapid rehousing. It's money and nine
months to 24 months of stability
counseling. Cheapest intervention you're
ever going to find. So I think that's
one piece of it, right? So maybe I'll do
this because um Natalie put this in
here. I mean we're talking about your
continuum, right? And um you know again
we came in thinking there was more of an
interest in talking about people who are
unhoused but we can talk across that
continuum. I and I'm sure that staff has
data on the different interventions
across that continuum. What I'm trying
to say and this is my my um well I'm
trying to be as helpful as possible is
be prepared for the unhoused to grow.
Like if I you know you only have one
thing you can work on. be prepared for
that to grow and look at resources to to
get ahead of that and you will save
yourself thousands of dollars as a
community if you can do that. Um,
but yeah, this to me this work session
was on homelessness. If you want to do
one across the continuum, I'm sure
Natalie would do that.
I mean, I really want to throw out
things like we had a developer come who
wanted to build downtown. He wanted to
build a grocery store with livable
spaces up on top. These are the things
where it's like maybe it's not something
that everybody wants but somebody will
choose it
for themselves and we're not giving them
th those options right now. That's what
I'd like to see and we're not I'm not
finding that. I feel like realize has
enabled a lot. Right. I'm beating this
dead horse again. But the thing is is
look, do we do accessory dwelling units
and help them with stipens? Right. My
neighborhood has big areas where I can
put probably two more on there.
Great.
I'd love to do that. I'd love to have
that availability to do stuff like that
where we're helping not only homeowners,
but we're helping people who could live
in more flexible living arrangements.
We have um done a ton of research on
ADUs. Um in Colorado, we've um gone a
little uh hog wild. I'm from Iowa. I can
say stuff like that. No, we've gone a
little crazy on a bunch of different
interventions and we're we're learning
in real time and again, some of it's
failed and happy to talk about that.
ADUs. We found that you can allow ADUs
by right, but you also have to provide
financing for the home buyer to be able
to afford to actually build the ADU. And
that's not a bad thing, but again, it's
a great intervention model, but it's got
to be a full package. So, you got to
have funding and then and then the
plans, right? You want to have like
pre-approved plans. So, that's sort of
the trifecta. So, again, I think
there's, you know, pilots that could be
adopted.
Yeah. Yeah, and that's exactly what I'm
aiming for is pilots right now for
different types of ideas that I know
that our housing staff can come up with
and I'd like to see options like that.
Great.
Councelor Cor,
thank you and thank you for the
presentation and and all of this
context. I I agree. I think I would love
for us to keep expanding what what is
possible in terms of that that end of
the continuum. Um and and leveraging
realize and getting a public bank and
trying to figure out ways to fund things
in in more systematic localized
approaches. Um, but coming back to the
what you said about bang for the buck
and and what that is, my sense of what
you're saying is keep on with
considering how we're engaging in the
building, right, which is a different
place on the continuum and really
important, but
invest more resources in eviction
prevention, rapid rehousing, and I'm
guessing landlord risk mitigate
mitigation, which isn't among these, but
I think that's part of this package
perhaps um of
just keeping those folks on the edge and
in whatever way is possible. Um, and I I
think we have some models for this, but
I don't know that they're the places
where we invest the most money. So, it
sounds like, you know, if we're taking
$2 million to say we don't want more
people to become unhoused in the next
year. Those are the two places where we
would put that most effectively and
affect the most people and keep people
out of the system that that
Thank you, counselor. I think so, but
I'd love to hear from Nicole. Let's hand
it to the local expert. Thank you. Thank
you for for paraphrasing.
Good afternoon, council, Mr. Mayor,
members of the council. My name is
Nicole Martinez. I'm the director at
Msia Valley Community of Hope.
Um, I do have words prepared, so I won't
be speaking off the cuff so much today,
but I do want to answer a lot of your
questions. I've been taking some notes
and I would love to answer some
questions at the end.
I think I also thought that this was
going to be about like homelessness and
housing and things like that. So, I'm
going to give you a little bit more
information than probably you wanted on
that, but I think that it's important
that you understand how complex the the
data and the systems are and how much we
do want to partner. And I am not here
for dramatic effect and I'm very sorry
that it seemed may seem that way. I'm
actually really happy to be here today.
So, I wanted to touch deeper on some of
the things that you've heard from the
consultants. And I think a lot of times
when people think about Community of
Hope, they think, "Oh, it's that place
that runs that throws people in wooden
shelters and sometimes gets them into
apartments. We're doing so much more
than that." And I wanted to kind of
touch on some of those systems and data
points because I think it's a lot more
complex than people understand. A lot of
times when you see me up here, I'm just
throwing data out because it can be hard
to get that data to you in meaningful
ways. So I'll be saying things like, oh,
it takes us 26 days on average to house
a homeless veteran, which I think is
pretty significant for us. But as you've
heard earlier, we are beholden to a much
larger and complex data system called
the homeless management information
systems, HMIS. We've been using that
program since about 2007 and 8, and it
is clunky.
Lately, there's talk of creating a
statewide data system that may be coming
forward with all of the governor's new
initiatives toward housing and data. And
we're most willing to work with the
state and city on how to best aggregate
that data and share it responsibly.
We've been somewhat cautious about
having a parallel data system because
it's a lot to have to enter into two
systems, especially when you're dealing
with people in crisis. But we're hopeful
that the systems will work together in
some way to include all programs and all
outcomes, not just our federal programs
and HMIS. Currently, we also utilize an
internal database for all other programs
that we operate. We have at least 20
different types of housing and homeless
related programs.
I also recently received some private
foundation funding for us to build
capacity in our data even more. So,
we're internally creating a new
Salesforce data collection program for
the agency to help us determine what our
strengths and our gaps may be. One of
the things we're excited to come from
that is having kiosks in our lobby to
help reduce some of the duplication that
we might be having in our data. You've
also heard about the coordinated entry
system. And this is a little bit into
the weeds, but it's a requirement for
our federal funding. We're the grant
recipient for the southern part of the
state. And this tool is used for
prioritizing housing for people. So my
case managers can't just say like, I
like you. I think you're going to do a
great job. you have to go through this
whole coordinated entry survey and then
people get prioritized and actually
ranked. It's a sticking point for sure.
How do you rank somebody's vulnerability
and homelessness? But this is what comes
from our our housing funding.
It's also been a large part of our
success and that we can prioritize our
own clients for housing immediiacy. For
example, the New Mexico Coalition to End
Homelessness does coordinated entry for
most of the rest of the state. So you
take somebody in Gallup has to do their
survey at an agency and that survey gets
sent to the coalition another agency far
away has to get scored and then the
number gets sent back. Client gets that
number and then the client gets to go
find a housing agency and figure out
what voucher is appropriate for them.
We're doing it all in house. They come
in, they do the coordinated entry, they
get prioritized. Are you going to rapid
rehousing? You going into permanent
supportive housing? You need one-time
assistance. We can figure all of that
out internally.
You've also heard of the continuum of
care. Just real briefly, the continuum
of care is a pot of funds that are just
like the section 8 from our housing
authority, but it's set aside
specifically for people experiencing
homelessness. And I know Jen touched on
this. I apply for these funds and
compete against the entire state uh and
all the agencies to annually bring in
over at least $1.3 million inounding
funding and staffing funding for the
community of hope. I do want to switch
gears a little bit because a few years
back I heard someone at a summit say
that people in agencies are working in
silos and I was like what who doing
that? Are we doing that? Is that us?
What's happening? No way. We partner
with everybody on the campus. We work
with FYI. We have Linica they familiar
and our linkages grants on so many
coalitions across the street, the state
and statewide initiatives and meetings.
I do think that silo is a little bit of
a buzzword. It is not without its
dangers and I don't want to be siloed
agency because lately I have seen a lot
of newcomers come in with newcomers come
in with ideas that to me have been
siloed. There have not been ideas of
collaborations. Some of them are ideas
of the past that have been shown time
and again to not work for communities.
But since time has passed and people are
new or unfamiliar with best practices,
they're a bit more willing to throw out
some of these ideas. This can be the
time for pilot programs. But they should
be ones where we are strategic and we
are talking to each other, not over each
other, and certainly not revisiting
programs that do more harm than good.
This is the time to utilize things we
know work. And we know housing works and
we know that the city is making great
strides in this department and not just
the city. We're partnering with the
county. Jamie, I know you're right
behind me on a new pilot for people
exiting incarceration to homelessness.
Chief, I need to revisit that with you.
I know we've had one conversation. We're
getting closer and I do want to keep
that conversation going. We also work
with the assisted out outpatient
treatment program and the RISE program.
I hear lately the return to the idea of
the emergency shelter, the idea of
discharging someone from jail to
shelter, sending our families to
shelter, getting people hidden off the
streets, people exiting recovery to a
shelter. But the peril in this is that
you are all saying, "Let's keep people
homeless and let's spend a ton of money
to do it." I started at Community of
Hope in 2006 to run the family shelter
and it did keep people homeless.
Staffing that was a nightmare.
It was at the time that the director and
I decided to ask HUD if we could instead
move people out of the shelter and into
their own apartments. And I went out and
met as many landlords as I could. And I
moved every single family out and only
had one family that returned. I said,
"Let's do more than this. Let's get
people off the streets permanently. We
did this ahead of the curve. A few years
later, HUD stopped focusing their
funding to shelters and instead made
permanent and rapid rehousing the focus.
But the focus has changed again. We have
heard from our current federal
administration that they want more
shelters and not housing for people. Are
we following that playbook when we know
it's wrong?
We all want a simple fix, but this is
not that. Another shelter is what you do
when you don't have what we have in Los
Cusus. This new pipeline for housing. We
must also increase the wraparound
resources and housing, including
substance use treatment and mental
health solutions. Solutions, what is
working? We've heard consultants say
things like Amodore Crossing, also Camp
Hope, which still doesn't utilize any
city funding uh and is affordable. We've
also been utilizing motel. They haven't
worked for every community. We have some
really great motel partners,
but that should be something that's very
short term. We served 166 people in
motel last year with 489 stays. That's
how many people you would have seen
outside on the streets with our
emergency responders going out. We
weren't working with them in the
shelters.
We use counting funding for motel and we
use our family basos motel funds while
looking for the long-term housing
solutions. We also have the great work
of the Grada Huckabe Fund. I heard
recently that it can be upsetting to
have families living in motel. But I
would prefer to have a family there than
living outside or sleeping in their car
as long as we can make sure that that's
short term. Using motel means that the
motel is also paying their own staff.
City's not paying for the staff. The
agencies aren't paying for the staff.
They're paying for those operations and
it could make better sense than possibly
starting a new shelter. I also wonder
who would run the shelter if we brought
one in. Would their work orders get
attended to ours more quickly? That's my
own little selfish piece right there.
That's it. Would the city bring in an
out of town company to run it? Because
we all know how well that has gone in
our state, in our own community. I think
we should be looking at some motel
conversions. Those are some new ideas.
We also have the community of hope
10-year master plan so we can better
respond to things like natural disasters
to refugees unforeseen circumstances.
The kitchens has plenty of design
opportunities at this point to address
some of this. We're also talking of
building a new Hardin. What will we do
with our empty Hardin? We can do
whatever we want that makes sense and is
in lease, but we have ideas and we we
should be talking about those things and
how we can smartly use the assets that
we have. Some of my fears for the
future, homeless prevention and
permanent supportive housing are
threatened to be cut. Last year, we
housed 2,869
people. That's including 1004 children.
If you reduce that, you get the number
that Jen presented to you earlier. But
overall, we're housing families and
adults. We need to preserve what we
have. And if we use all of our funds on
things we know don't work, what have we
done? How will we provide any safety net
for those affected by these times? And
just to comment on when I hear things
like what we're doing is not working.
I've heard that from the state level
top. I've heard that locally. I
immediately conjure the knowledge of how
we got here. And I think it's important
to dredge up a brief history lesson. In
the 80s, institutions were shut down.
The promise of compassionate
community-based clinics were supposed to
be opened and that didn't happen. The
institutions were indeed shut down, but
there was no safety net for folks who
could not manage living on their own and
still who did to this day struggle to do
so. So, we are left with our most
vulnerable on the streets. That's what
didn't work. That and skyrocketing
housing prices. On a more micro level, I
will say that what we're doing is
working for many of the people. In fact,
our funding depends on that. Imagine if
we hadn't housed over 2,000 people last
year. We are meeting the thresholds and
in most cases exceeding them. We also
have programs like Mono Mano and
outreach which have been invaluable
solutions to addressing people surviving
on the streets. We do not want to see
people wallowing in substance use on our
streets or even in the privacy of their
own homes. I think about recovery all
the time and that's why I constantly
reach out to my partners at Amadore
Health Ideal Option Linica. I'm not the
recovery specialist, but if I'm not
thinking of how to incorporate it, I am
failing. We have ideas on how to bring
more recovery units to our town and I do
want to partner on this. So, please talk
to me about it. Council, please do not
full steam ahead anything, but let's
keep talking. I'm open for one-on- ones
anytime or calling me to the mayor's
office. Whatever we need to do, just
know that I want to be part of the
solution. I ask that you lift us up so
that we can keep lifting up our
community with hope. That ends my actual
comments. Thank you. But I do want to
address just a couple of things. I will
say we were awarded Grow money from the
state um and we got $200,000 which is
discretionary funding. And I asked I
asked for that funding for onetime
assistance. So I didn't have to use
clunky old HMIS and we could just house
people who were coming in like I need
one month, I need three months. And we
spent that 200,000 that was for two
years in less than a year. We over spent
it and we ate a bunch of that money. It
was very useful for people. It's so hard
to say no. But those that was an example
of something where we had this pot of
money and we made sure that we could say
but for our assistance you're going to
be able to stay housed on your own once
we're done. Um I know that coordinated
entry can take a long time once somebody
gets scored to get into housing and so
it makes it feel like there is a gap. I
do understand that sometimes it can be
really quick like with our vets it can
be really quick. With rapid housing that
can be really quick. A lot of times it's
it's been dependent on our landlords,
but we're so helpful hopeful with
Amodore Crossing that that wait time
will be much much faster because we'll
issue those vouchers and they'll get to
go right in. And then with some of the
other affording affordable housing
complexes that are coming online, the
landlord risk mitigation funding, that's
what I applied for when we had ARP
funding that came through. So, we were
the first in the state to start that
type of funding and it's also been an
invaluable resource. It's helped us with
people who do come in who might just
need that gap money before they need to
have all the wraparound supportive
services. You know, like somebody who is
in a housing authority voucher, they
don't have to have case management. They
can take care of it on their own, but
they are experiencing poverty. So there
are programs that we can do that get to
that level if we can use some of these
targeted uh programs that we're doing.
Now the art money from the city of Los
Cusus for landlord risk mitigation is
quickly drying up. But I did pitch it to
Secretary Nyer and she has agreed that
some of that funding is coming to
community of hope and sees that it
obviously has a valuable place here in
this community so that hopefully we can
quickly address as many people as we
can. And I'd like to stand for any other
questions you may have.
Mot.
Thank you, Mayor. Um, I don't have
questions for you specifically, Natalie.
I also want you to sit down. Uh,
Nicole,
if you can. Oh, Nicole, I'm so sorry.
All the time.
Um, all the time. You're right. Um,
first of all, I want to thank you for
being here and just very happy to see
you. we've been worried about you and so
I just really am genuinely very happy to
see you. Um, and thank you for being
here. Again, if you'd like to maybe sit
right here and the mic
for questions. Sure.
Yeah, I think that'd be good.
Thank you. Um,
thank you for your comments. I, you
know, I don't have any questions
particularly on that. I do want to talk
about some specific things that you
mentioned um Jen, but just before I get
to that, I want to just uh real quick
address the conversation happening right
now. And if I maybe a little honest, um
I think I'm a little bit surprised by it
because
um I would I think I think it's
incredibly important that we focus our
time and resources into diversifying
um housing options, right, at all of
these levels, but particularly at the
transitional, supportive, and up level.
Um
I I think that that's the goal. I mean,
I think that's what realize we hope for
it to do, right? I would love that. And
I I think I just want to zoom out a
little bit because I fear I feel like
the last year or two there has been a
push by some members of this council and
some advocates for us to focus on crisis
modeling. Even if experts, even if data
is saying that's the wrong way to go, I
feel like that shift has happened. Um,
and I feel like
I mean I don't agree with that shift
necessarily, right? And I sometimes I
fear that the desire to do crisis
response is more of a desire to fix the
visibility of homelessness versus the
pro the like root cause of homelessness.
And um I I right like I think we have
gotten stuck in that in the past, right?
We did a shopping cart ban. There's
political fodder about a a camping ban.
Like all of these things are sort of
things that are going backwards and that
are like crisis focused as opposed to
long-term focused. So, I guess I'm not
surprised by this presentation that you
came with some of those things because
um I have noticed that shift as well. Um
but I do appreciate you naming the
realities of a lot of those, right? That
a lot often crisis intervention may seem
like it's quick, but it's also very
expensive and it's not durable, right?
Um and so I do appreciate that. That's
all I say I'll say there. I think um
with this conversation, it feels like
what needs to happen is that we just
need to be clear and you did note that
so it might have been me from this
report that it seems like we just need
to be clear about the plans we have with
the public um and more direct about it.
Right? And I think um even just from
this conversation, it's clear that we
need to be clear about the roadmap to
address um homelessness right now in the
short term. Um and then that road map to
like transitional housing and then the
rest right like how do we keep people in
their homes and then how do we make sure
that um we are diversifying
uh housing and I think it's important to
name that across this entire spectrum
there is still push back against all of
these against all of these ideas. So,
I'm not entirely sure what some folks
are looking for. Um,
but I think we just have to learn how to
navigate that and talk about this a
little bit better. Um, and part of it I
think is a narrative shift. Um, I do
want to name three things that I think
in terms of like pilot programs that
I've heard already sort of um like
bubbling and I think I do think you know
motel conversion is we've been talking
about this for a long time. It felt like
in the past maybe that it wasn't the
right time or it wasn't uh perhaps the
right opportunity. I do feel like with
the MASS um potentially that could be a
really good opportunity or with some of
the recent news coming out of some
motel, right? Because I know you have
some good motel partners, but there's
also some bad motel partners um and
neighbors. And I think there is a
pathway where we can sort of um navigate
and negotiate with those partners that
aren't as good as neighbors um
to figure out a potential strategy. So,
I do think there's something to be
worked out there that I do hope happens
in collaboration. I recently talked to
Harden Los Nños and they're very sad
they couldn't be here. Um, but they have
some a great idea for some housing
options for single moms that I think we
should consider. I don't want to speak
on it because they're not here and it
should be up to them. Um, but again, to
me, it's about following the lead of a
service provider that already has a
plan, right? That is just looking for
additional funding. Um, and then I
think, you know, if we were going to
beef any sort of program up, um, it
would be landlord mitigation, right? In
your report, you talk about it says in
New Mexico, 76.6% of renters that make
less than $50,000
are cost burdening, meaning they spent
30% or more of their income on housing
costs such as rent or mortgage payments
and utilities. To me, those are the
folks that are most at risk for becoming
homeless and potentially an area where
we should be hyperfocused on so that
they don't lose housing and become
unhoused. So, to me, those are three
takeaways that I'm take t that I'm
taking. Um and
um you know I I do want to say to the uh
tiny home uh pilot, there was an
organization last year nonprofit that
was thinking about doing something like
this with um like DAC and some high
schoolers that would make the tiny homes
and they were really interested in it
and they were sort of really wanted to
make it to a specific population which
was um actually youth exiting the foster
system and what that could mean for uh
building a community like that, but
there but they couldn't find uh a
nonprofit that was sort of willing to
say, "Yeah, that feels like it could be
part of our mission." Or and I don't
think that's like a shameful thing. I
think people are being very clear about
the increased burden that they have. I
think people are being very clear about
uh the federal landscape and what is
going to mean for a lot of our nonprofit
partners in the next few years. And so I
do think that there's um
I think people in our community have a
lot of ideas and I and I want to make
sure that we are um fully exploring as
many as possible and you know
recognizing that none of them are like
the silver bullet magic wand solution
and that um sometimes it does take time
um and while that is frustrating um I
think doing it right is better than
doing it fast. So, I guess I didn't have
any questions. Um, but uh maybe as for
next steps, I would like to learn more
about motel conversions and the way that
we could do that responsibly
um for potentially that like
transitional piece. Um
I think that is it for me. I do want to
know Natalie how much we are investing
now. That was a good question and I
think maybe we all failed that quiz, but
councelor Korn and I were very excited
that we knew the litec answer. So I
wrote it down. Uh Mr. Mayor Natalie
Green for the record and I lost it.
Where did I do it? Um I will say if you
don't take into account mono since most
of the funding goes to uh the residents
it is $281,250.
So that's what we invest in homeless
services.
And that's inclusive of both Usia Valley
Community Hope and then some of the
shelter services we fund through
Lacassa. Um I did want to take an
opportunity um I think the piloting
stuff can happen through the MRA. I just
wanted to invite Chris up real quick to
talk about Realize and the opportunities
in the MASS um because I think that's
really where um those pieces come out of
not out of housing and neighborhood
services but in collaboration with
community development economic
development and the MAS.
Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council.
Chris Favor, community development
director for the record. Um yes, thank
you for including me in this
conversation, Natalie. There's there's a
lot of roads that kind of lead back to
and through community development. Um,
starting with um, Elevate Los Cusus,
there there were definitely some things
and goals outlined in Elevate that were
taken into account when we went through
realize Los Cusus, which for those in
the audience that may not know, that's,
you know, when we redid the land
development code that was adopted this
past February. um it's been up and
running this year and and we've seen
we've seen a lot of interest from um our
development partners that are looking at
a a wide range of things
um both you know your traditional single
family homes but also we're seeing a lot
of interest in redeveloping within the
MASS and there's still some additional
tweaks that we can make to realize that
will make that even easier and and
potentially more affordable. Uh I was
just having a discussion with Natalie
about some options this morning. So
among staff, we're we're continuously
trying to work to find ways to to
further those those developments. And I
know Elizabeth Teters and her team are
working real hard on programming for
those MAS. But specifically, you know,
realize a couple things that really kind
of lend itself to some of the the
redevelopment options I would say would
be um the increased density that we've
allowed in all of the residential areas.
Um some of the the restrictions that
we've we've removed from lot sizes,
right? So now you can increase that
density and those sort of things work
hand inand within um the the infill area
or those specific MASS. Uh one other
thing I would actually just throw out
there too and as you all know we're
really just getting the NAT program off
the ground but I do think that over the
next couple of years we're going to see
a lot of um vacant land opportunities
specifically within the MAS that may
allow some of these pilot projects to
come to fruition. whether it is um
working with some hotels that that um
could you know could be doing a little
bit better or with land that becomes
vacant through demolition or or however
that process would work. But I do think
we're going to see some opportunities
there whether it's for tiny homes or
other types of things. But we have seen
really good response from the
development community. They do seem very
interested in redeveloping in the MRA um
in the infill area. And I would say even
more than I was expecting to see within
the first year and as we all know there
was some uncertainty with it realized
when it was adopted and then the time it
was put on hold but since this summer to
now we've actually seen quite a bit of
interest um and I would just encourage
you know everyone to keep working
together um you know to keep making
realize you know the best it can be to
address some of these housing options
and I guess I too will stand for
questions. Thank you.
No other questions. Okay. Well, Natalie,
uh, Jen, thank you for the presentation.
Chris, thank you for your comments and
me mentioning the NAT program. That's
that's uh also something get that can be
utilized and and something in the
future. Nicole, thank you for all that
you do. I really appreciate everything
that's going on there. Um, one of the
things you know that, um, that last
slide where you talk about the
feasibility and all those things, that's
really the next steps, uh, councelor
Mccclure had mentioned, uh, the survey
that's going to take place. We're going
to gather uh some grant money that was
provided to us from the government to do
a survey and to include the stakeholders
in the community, which is police, fire,
the hospitals, the Los Cusus public
schools, our court system, um recovery,
nonprofits, community of hope.
Absolutely. For sure. We we we're we're
looking at, as you mentioned, it's only
going to get worse. So this is to you
know put put the resources where we get
the best return on our investment and
get some results for the problems that
we see. Some people may already see it
as a crisis and others may say it's a
crisis ready to happen. Either way we
need to do something. So this is to
build on and also developers partners
will be involved there so that you know
it's just it's just not a city problem
as an organization it's a community
problem and we all have to come together
as stakeholders to see how we can combat
this and come up with the best solutions
and never never am I saying that we're
not doing good or we're not doing
something right because we are and you
are Nicole it's how do we build on it.
How do we supplement? How do we
complement? That's what we're trying to
do. And that would be the next step to
make sure that where we're putting the
resources, it goes to something that's
that's correcting the issues that are
taking place. Because if you drive
around the city, you see people camped
out throughout and we want to get them
housed. We we we want to find them a
place and that's what the survey will do
with the stakeholders. So, as Mayor uh
Prom stated, we want to get the
community input. We want to find out how
what are you dealing with? What issues
are are you faced with and how we can
support that. So that would be the next
thing. So again, thanks for your
presentation and uh adding some of those
because we don't know what the answer
is. Is it converting hotels? Is it tiny
homes? What what what is the answer?
Let's get the input from the community
and find out what are the issues and
what direction do we go best into. And
with that, I don't know if there was
other members of the public that wanted
to to have a few minutes to come up and
speak. Yeah.
Yes, sir.
Yeah. Come on up.
Thank you.
Uh my name is Cleave Hattersley. Uh I'm
a four-year resident here, although my
wife's family has been here for 40 40
years or so. Uh we lived in Austin where
I was a member of the entertainment and
political communities for about 45
years. Uh involved with all sorts of uh
homeless issues as well as political
issues. I am a member of the Austin
Music Hall of Fame and I also managed
Kinky Freriedman's gubanatorial
campaign, the first candidate to ever
get on the ballot as an independent
candidate. I wanted to ask everybody in
the room if you are familiar with the
term flying signs.
Can you tell me what that means to you,
Mayor? Yes.
Uh yes, I believe you're referring to uh
panhandling with a signing.
That is correct. That is correct. And
the fact that only one person actually
offered that tells me that there is a
certain disconnect with that community
and the rest of us. And I wanted to
offer a suggestion. Uh we have recently,
some friends of mine and I have recently
discovered a program being run by one
man in Los Angeles. It's called Soft
White Underbelly. And what he has done
over the last few years is taken his own
personal fortune and given all of these
underserved, underprivileged homeless
people a chance to speak. He films them.
He lets them tell their story. He asks
them what their specific needs are. Now,
I intend to do that here in this
community. It's private, but if the if
the city council understands what this
does, not only focusing and
understanding these people better, but
also giving you a format for promoting
because once the community sees people,
real people just like the rest of us,
maybe with unfortunate circumstances,
when they tell their stories, they feel
better about doing something for them.
And that's what I think needs to be
done. And that's what we're going to do.
I think it's here. I think the hearts of
these people are in it. We congratulate
them for doing the work they're doing.
But the money has to be used faster. It
has to be used more efficiently. And the
best way to do it is know whom you are
serving. That's it. Thank you.
Yeah. Now I'll I'll add to that when I
was talking about the survey. It's not
only getting the stakeholders, but it's
it's it's working with NMSU and their
students and their research to create a
survey so we can go out to the
individuals out in the public in the
streets that are are suffering at this
time and find out exactly what's going
on in their lives. So, there's another
component to that survey as well.
So, bring them in to a studio, let them
film it. You can use it.
Okay.
Go ahead, sir. State your name.
Mr. Council members, my name is Jeff
Curry. I am a for-profit developer, born
and raised here in Los Cusus. We have
developed over 70 properties in the
southwest. We manage over 160
properties, all affordable housing.
That's about 7,000 units. And I've had
the opportunity to see in multiple
states developments uh and and how they
are handled. And I wanted to start by
just saying that Los Cruus is top-notch.
You guys are doing an amazing job. Um, I
serve on a federal home loan bank board
called the uh, Affordable Housing
Advisory Council. I happen to serve with
Nicole and we get to tour in other
states what are considered best
practices for dealing with homelessness.
And what they've shown us is exactly
what Nicole is doing when dealing with
homeless people. uh they're showing us
what is the best practice and that is
what Nicole is doing. Also, I want to
accommodate what Nicole, sorry, what um
Natalie has been doing, changing the
zoning standards and removing barriers
to creating additional housing is great
work and I want you to I just encourage
you to keep on that road. Uh for me I
had one cautionary tale and that was
that uh during the pandemic of course we
were trying to address these emergencies
of homelessness. Um I was brought into a
project in Santa Fe and said what can we
do quickly? Can we do a motel conversion
quickly? We had tons of money and the
idea was to do a motel conversion. I
said yes absolutely let's do this. It
seemed like a slam dunk, but because it
was new, because we were dealing with
groups of people that haven't done this
for years, uh, or didn't deal with
housing, it stagnated. And I have now
been working on this since our first
award of $4 million in 2021. And now I
have $11 million. I still am trying to
close the final gap so I can start
construction. Now, it is not easy to do
something new. What the city can do,
which I feel like is the most bang for
anyone's buck, is to follow the process
of ensuring that developers have an easy
access to put on more housing, but the
federal tax low-income housing tax
credit program is the most bang for your
buck to guarantee more housing in a
community. Um, so anyway, that's that's
my biggest recommendation for you all
and what I see from the outside.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, mayor, members of
council. My name is Jamie Michael. I am
with the county's Health and Human
Services Department. I'm just going to
start off with a little bit of data. The
um county over the last several years
has invested just under 700,000 a year
in um homelessness services. It's a
combination of county gross receipts, um
grant funding, and state appropriations.
Um, and that money is awarded through
Community of Hope through a competitive
RFP process and a contract we have with
Community of Hope. So, just under
700,000 kind of average over the last
three years. Um, we are um, as Nicole
said, in the process of developing a
transitional supportive housing project.
Um, we looked at data and during 2024
there were 450 bookings into the county
detention center where the individual
listed no home address and they were
misdemeanor crimes that they were booked
into the detention center for. Um, we
also have been um operating several
different criminal justice diversion and
re-entry programs over the last eight
years. And collectively across all of
those programs about half of the people
in those programs um are also
experiencing homelessness. And those
programs are all for people who have
substance use or other mental health
disorders. So that's the combination of
housing and um and mental health
services. And that's why we've decided
to do the transitional supportive
housing. Um it will be on Motel
Boulevard right across from the county
government center. There is a vacant lot
that the county purchased with money
from um the governor last year and we
also received some grant funds from the
state to develop the land to make a lot
of outdoor living space. Um and we will
be utilizing two uh we're repurposing
two modular buildings that were
previously used by volunteer fire
departments. Um each of the units has
four bedrooms and four bathrooms and
then a common living and kitchen space.
So those will be moved from the outlying
areas to that location. Um and each will
be able to house four people. At this
point it's for adult males in diversion
programs. Um there is quite a bit of
space there for future expansion. Um
that is the the update on that. And you
also mentioned um emergency housing like
during a a crisis either if we have more
people here who are seeking asylum or in
a natural disaster emergency. I don't
have all the details but I know that um
the county is also working and creating
those types of shelters out at the um
fairgrounds. So there are some resources
for that type of emergency during like a
natural disaster emergency. Just want to
make sure that's on your radar. Thank
you all.
Hello council.
My name is Eric Salceto.
Yeah, if you could speak directly to the
microphone.
My name is Eric Salceto.
Thank you.
And um I am here on behalf of Rembrandt
Alley. He's a local architect that has
done amazing work uh here in the city
and he has a huge heart for for helping
and uh he wasn't able to make it today.
He had an ulcer. So he asked me to step
in for him. So here I go. I have his
first time doing this. It's pretty
interesting how it works. It looks
really cool. But I'm going to set these
down because I have a question.
I don't know exactly who to address it
to, but
was there at a time there was a law
against panhandling
that was enforced here? Was there a law
in Los Cusus that was you couldn't
panhandle? You couldn't and and is that
law no longer in place?
I think our city attorney
Oops.
Uh the attorney is not here. Uh so uh it
is a first amend first amendment
protected right so people have the
ability to um hold signs. Uh so once we
we can't regulate
one group can hold a sign that says car
wash versus help me. Um however the city
did institute some safety but it's a
time and place issue. So there's safety
precautions uh where folks cannot um
stand on medians of a certain width with
a certain speed. Um and then there's a
few other um they can't enter the lane
of traffic. Um but again it still falls
under certain protections under the
first amendment of the constitution.
Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Just thank you
for clearing that up. And uh the the one
of the reasons why I was asking was when
they when they came up with the numbers
of the homeless people, did they con
take in consideration the like the
professional homeless people that
migrate, you know, with the sun belt?
That was my my my question is that there
are people that, you know, they follow
the weather, you know, they they have an
end of the summer, but they they don't
want to be in a program that's going to
help them. They they that's their life.
That's their lifestyle. They travel.
they they make a living out of it and
it's a mix of there's the need and then
there's the people that are taking
advantage of you know the public's
kindness but does that get uh mixed in
with the surveying?
Um we have considered that. One of the
things we're actually planning hopefully
for this spring is I'd like to bring um
Greg Cobburn. He did um a data analysis
on homelessness across the country and
pulled a lot of data and and and did an
assessment of those um things. Is it the
weather? Is it drug use? Is it uh
financial insecurity? Um and he scatter
plotted them all across um graphs. It's
a it's a great book. I have a copy
should council want to see it. Um and
the one consistent data point is that
was the vacancy rate. So homelessness is
a housing issue. Um, there was lots of
communities that have great weather but
have low levels of homelessness. There's
lots of communities that have very
terrible weather. Um, for example,
Boston, freezing cold but yet has high
rates of homelessness. So, there wasn't
any consistent data that weather is a
contributing factor to experiencing
homelessness. Um, but yes, and I don't
want to take up all your Oh,
thank you, Natalie. And then just really
quickly, um, what I do have here is, um,
there's a
different recommendations uh from Mr.
Alli. He's took it upon himself to go
ahead and draw these out and he has
found um areas within the city that are
vacant that he suggested that these
would be possibly used uh for for
combating um you know the the the need
for the homes. And um you know just to
just to show a few there's there starter
400 foot tiny homes. He has it all
detailed here. uh town houses layouts
and uh again he's got a huge heart to
help our community and um you know he's
a he's a very very notable architect.
I'm going to leave these with uh Natalie
Green and if anybody would like to take
a look at him to get any ideas of he
does have a hotel style uh floor plan
that was very successful in San
Francisco and it's detailed in this as
well. So I'm going to leave this with
her and I appreciate your time. Thank
you so much.
And I'll just add real quickly, um, one
of the projects we are doing, um, we're
actually partnering with Mr. Elli on the
property on Nevada. So, it's, um, a
piece of property that the city had
purchased, um, quite a while ago that's
not being used. So, we're working on the
subdivision. So, we'll take that piece
of property, subdivide into six lots,
and then do some home ownership. We've
also taken some of the nap properties
and have been able to subdivide um some
of those. Um we will likely be coming
back as part of the housing plan with
some recommendations um around infill
and some of the fees for infill because
that um six lot subdivision. Uh if we
weren't the city, we would have to incur
probably about 30 to $40,000 worth of
fees just to to get started. And so that
could be a detriment to some development
in the impill and the MRA.
Um yeah, very similar to this, but long
um I'll send you guys an email.
Good afternoon, mayor and counselor. My
name is Cassandra Gand, former mayor
prom, and I'm here to speak to you on an
urgent strategic need to expand
Lacassa's housing capacity through 100
plus bed emergency and transitional
housing facility. At this very moment,
30 women and children are being
sheltered in hotels and 20 more remain
on a waiting list waiting for safety and
stability. In addition, Lacassa is now
housing several senior citizens, a
growing and often overlooked population
experiencing homelessness due to the
limited income, displacement, or the
loss of family support. To meet those
needs, we are proposing a comprehensive
housing strategy, one that integrates
emergency shelter, transitional housing,
and supportive living options. Our plan
includes the conversion of underutilized
hotels into trauma-informed transitional
housing and the expansion of our voucher
program that provides flexible immediate
housing options for families, survivors
of domestic violence, and seniors. In
partnership with the county, Lasa also
exploring the purchase of dedicated
homes for seniors, which would allow us
to serve at least eight additional
seniors who are currently unhoused or at
risk of homelessness. homelessness. This
smaller community-based setting offers
stability, dignity, and access to
essential services such as health care,
case management, and social connection.
The broader vision is a state-of-the-art
100 plus bed facility that operates with
a continuum of care combining shelter,
repar,
behavioral health, and workforce
development. This aligns directly with
Donian County resilience leaders
framework and advances our shared goals
of ensuring every resident, child,
parent, and senior have a safe place to
live and thrive. We're asking for the
city's continued partnership through
planning, investment, and inter agency
collaboration to move this vision from
strategy to action to there. Together we
can end the cycle of crisis and create a
stronger, more compassionate loss cus
for all. Thank you for your leadership
and for standing for those who need us
most. Thank you.
I will just add there's eight vacancies
at Padrina. So, uh they are taking uh
applications for seniors. So, we still
have eight units left at Padrina and
then we'll be fully leased up.
Oh, let me uh did councelor Florus were
did you have something?
Okay, Mayor Pro Tim,
thank you. Just before we wrap this up,
I wanted one more request and maybe
you're already on it, Natalie, and the
uh federal landscape team that we have
at the city, but I was very concerned
about the continuum of care funding. I
feel like that's not really being talked
about. Obviously, state legislators are
addressing Medicaid and SNAP, but I fear
this is not being talked about. I
Natalie if there's an analysis we can
then take and sit down with um chairman
Small around this I think that's very
important before the 30-day so that it's
honestly on their agenda if you haven't
done this already.
Uh Mr. Mayor, Mayor Prom, that was
exactly on our mind. In fact, Jen and I
just had a conversation around continuum
of care funding. So, we'd love to have
that meeting with Representative Small.
Um we are tracking um what's happening
at the continuum of care. For for those
who aren't familiar, there's two
continuum of cares of New Mexico.
There's the Albuquerque continuum of
care and then the balance of state
continuum of care. Um
so the balance of state covers um Los
Cusus and then everywhere else in the
state. Um I will say I am the chair of
the balance of state uh continuum of
care of both the executive board and the
membership board. Um, so we do track
that fairly closely and we'll continue
to uh communicate um that back and
forth. So,
thank you, Natalie. U you wanted to
speak as well, sir. Okay, come on up.
State your name, please.
Hi, everybody. My name is Tony Watkins.
I'm the housing director for Lacassa,
Inc. And I just wanted to build upon the
question about the continuum of care
because um we have uh about 66% of our
voucher funding for rapid rehousing is
continuum of care funding. Um and so the
concern about that going away would hit
us very hard. So I just wanted to bring
that back down to the local level.
That's how that's what it would look
like for us. It's about 45 vouchers. Um
and we don't have enough vouchers to
serve the people coming out of our
shelter. So we have a 90 bed shelter, we
have about 70 vouchers total. And when
and then when you combine the the risk
of losing those vouchers with the kind
of arduous process of the coordinated
entry system, you can see how people get
hung up in that system or just not being
able to serve. So we have a major
capacity problem with that as well as
needing more hotel vouchers. And then I
just wanted to thank you for the for the
conversation. You know, I think it's a
great great meeting of the minds and I
look for I look forward to
being a part of it in the future. And
I'm looking forward to that survey and
especially as the gentleman said,
bringing the voices of people with lived
experience to bear on how we move
forward because they're going to see
things that that we don't see. So, thank
you.
And I'll just do a quick shout out to
Tense to Rents who uplifts the voices of
our unhoused in our community. Is that
what you were going to say?
No, thank you. I did just want to say
even though um Mayor Prom stepped away
uh for our continuum of care funding, a
lot of it is um is tied up in the
coordinated entry grant that we have
rapid rehousing and then permanent
supportive housing and some of what
we've heard from that's being proposed
from the federal government is to do
away with permanent supportive housing
that they would cap it then at two years
and it's specifically funding that's set
aside for people with disabilities. So
that's terrifying um to think that
people who have been on the streets a
long time because there is a chronicity
number that they have to meet how long
they've been outside along with that
disability and it can often take longer
than two years. This is also something
that's been threatened to happen to our
housing authority as well. So people
being capped at two years. Um
don't like to be an alarmist but it
feels like alarming times hearing things
like that. So, those are some of the
things that I'm really worried about. If
we do get capped on our permanent
support of housing programs, then that
means that after two years, we will
start to see a lot of people going to
the streets and we will need to work
with the council on then turning that
funding into homeless prevention. So,
people will stay in their homes, we will
prevent their homelessness. Um, we'll
reabel it however we need to, but that's
what we'll be looking at the state level
and uh from our city of Los Cruus's
partners. I will say that you know um uh
it it is obviously worth exploring the
needs of LASA at this time too because
community of hope does absorb many of
their clients um with a lot of our
permanent supportive housing and rapid
rehousing funds uh which we're here to
do. They are people experiencing
homelessness um but to help them to um
bolster their programs. We're you know
again also part of happy to be part of
that conversation.
All right. Thank you. We'll move to the
next item.
You're asking to come and speak.
Okay. Come on up before we get to the
next one.
Able to sneak away from work to be here
for a few minutes. Don't tell them. Um,
hi council. My name is William Gilman.
I'm a local resident. um small business
owner parent uh wanted to comment on the
report. I came late but I did was able
to read the report. Uh and some of my
noticings like I felt like there was not
a lot of urgency in this report. Uh it
said do nothing. We got it on lock even
though people here are saying all this
funding is going away. There's no saying
we should do x y or z about that or what
possible options are how we're going to
stitch together funding from
philanthropic foundations from the state
from the county etc. Um it was also
pretty light on data like in it one of
its key findings was we should tell
people more about what we're doing.
Okay. Well, this would have been a great
opportunity, right? We had a couple
months to put this report together. Um,
you know, so there's that. Uh, it also
mentioned like Houston is a big success
and I was like, sweet, tell me more
about that. And instead, I had to go
research it myself. But one of the
things they did is they set up their own
continuum of care for the region. It's
three counties. Uh, I think we probably
need that here. Uh, probably just for
Dona Ana County since we're like 120th
the size of Houston. Uh, and we need to
seriously talk about where are we going
to find this money? Like money also
money isn't everything. Like the report
heavily focused on money, but if we're
talking about dignity and housing and
human whatever, uh, money isn't
everything. And also, money is not
always a cost if it's spent, right? We
need to invest and we need to seriously
think about how we're going to invest.
And yes, we want to be strategic. And I
think there's some great suggestions
getting a hotel, running that as
whatever. But I think we also need to
think about having multiple tiers of
overlapping interventions. Um, in
Houston, the average wait time for
housing placement is 37 days. I assume
it's significantly longer here. Um, so
what are people doing for those 37 days
or 60 days or whatever days that we have
here? I think it might be worth
investing in somewhere for them to be
that is quality, dignified, and safe
until they can get placed into
longerterm care. Um,
yeah, that's kind of what I got. I was a
little disappointed. Uh, also like if if
the message is like we need more
outreach, like the these programs have
been running for years. Where is that
outreach? We have this HMIS data that I
assume is being submitted to the federal
government for those HUD funds. like why
is that not available to the council
now? Why is that not available to the
community? Like what are we doing?
That's the other thing that uh Houston
really did is they with that continuity
of care continuum of care that they
built for their region. They have their
own data system that makes it very easy
to identify people's needs, placements,
services, etc. Put everything together.
The city has already made some pretty
cool investments in like the fire
department, mobile integrated health,
the light team. Mobile integrated health
in particular is right in line with
this, right? And so I think it's time to
think about how are we going to invest,
right? We don't say, "Oh, the fire
department, money down the drain,
bummer." We think of that as an
investment in our community and our
safety and our stability. And we need to
really think about how are we going to
do that and where else are we going to
get matching funds for it? And I didn't
see that in this report.
The only thing I'll add before we wrap
up is we did explore looking at our own
continuum of care. We don't recommend it
because we would actually receive less
funds than we're getting now. Um, and
it'll also increase the workload because
you're essentially running a crazy
application and data and um, the
coalition does it much better than the
city could do it.
And with that, I'll turn it over to
Chris for the next item.
All right. Thanks, Natalie.
Yeah. Next is item 2.2, an update on
short-term rental requirements. Chris
Favor.
Hello again, Council Mayor. Chris Favor,
community development director for the
record. Okay. I have a short
presentation here um on some new
recommendations for short-term rentals
within the city of Los Cusus.
Uh so in a nutshell, what is a
short-term rental? Uh basically it's a
dwelling unit that is being used or
rented without the intention of becoming
a residency. Typically you will find
them available on thirdparty websites
Airbnb uh VBO those types of sites and
this is not uh talking about hotels,
motel or bed and breakfasts.
Uh so the intent here really is to
provide a mechanism to um track and
ensure that these uh units are are are
safe whether it's through an inspection
with fire or or through um other means.
But the purpose is to ensure safety,
security, neighborhood integrity. Um we
are seeing growth in uh short-term
rental activity across New Mexico, which
Michelle with Visit Los Cusus can speak
to. Um, also trying to balance property
rights with the neighborhood quality of
life. Uh, we do frequently receive
inquiries regarding uh, potential or or
existing um, rental properties within
neighborhoods. Several uh,
municipalities and counties within uh,
New Mexico already have one. Um, Dana
County adopted their ordinance back in
2020. Uh, and this is kind of sort of
the whole crux of the issue here.
There's about 465 properties listed on a
thirdparty website, but only 74 have
registered officially with Visit Los
Cusus. So, we're really hoping to
balance that out to increase the number
that are registering that the city is
aware of and then ultimately um loop
back into Visit Los Cusus' tracking
software.
So, what we're looking to do here is to
require um operators of short-term
rentals to get a business registration
through community development similar to
all other businesses that operate within
the city. Additionally, they would be
registering with visit Los Cusus.
there's software that they use to track
um and so it would sort of be a two-part
process but having them um in you know
have a business registration will sort
of allow them to be or or require them
to be in compliance with building and
fire code. Um there's also a an
insurance um responsibility as well.
This does provide an opportunity and
this is a recommendation from staff that
they notify neighbors. We're
recommending 200 ft, but um that is
negotiable if if council would like to
extend that. Uh also requiring that they
provide a 247 owner operator contact
information. Oftent times just getting
in touch with somebody to determine who
can solve a problem on site is is part
of the issue. This would require that
they provide that information so it's
always available.
Um providing off- streetet parking. Um,
again getting back to the um the uh fire
safety requirements, smoke detectors,
fire extinguishers, egress maps, those
types of things to to show people how um
to safely exit the the premises if
needed be and to make sure that they are
f following safety standards. Uh there's
also recommendations for occupancy
limits, both the number of overnight
guests and capping um uh number of
people for say a gathering. And and
again, a lot of these problems aren't
things that we've seen in Los Cusus
specifically, but um there are issues in
communities where people do rent these
out and have a large party and that does
become burdensome on the neighborhood.
And again, just a reminder to those who
operate short-term rentals that they do
have to comply with all city, you know,
relevant city ordinances, whether it's
noise, whether it's making sure your
trash cans are put back at the end of
your trash collection day, which is an
issue we deal with. Lots of different
things. We can start to make sure that
these owners are aware of the things
that they need to be um uh maintaining
on their property.
Taxes and fees. Again, they would be
responsible for paying lodgers tax, any
sort of state taxes, registering and
paying that fee through the city, and
then through visit Los Cusus when they
sign up through their um short-term
rental registration uh database.
Just some other things that are not
recommendations at this time, but that
other communities have looked at and
maybe conversations for down the road.
But some communities do put a cap on the
number of short-term rentals per
individual or corporation within a
community. Um, some do put a number a
cap on the number that can exist within
a certain area. Um, or a total cap
citywide. I know, for example, Santa Fe
does have a few of these. they do cap
the number of of short-term rentals uh
within the city. Um so that you know
it's sort of a one-in oneout type of a
situation. So those aren't
recommendations at this time. Those are
just other things for council to
consider maybe down the road. Um as I
said, Michelle from Visit Los Cusus is
here. She can speak if you guys have
questions more to, you know, how
prevalent the industry is in Los Cusus.
Short-term rentals aren't a huge part of
the tourist industry here in Los Cruus,
but it is growing. And as you can see,
quite a few were listed. Um, so it's I
think it's time that we, you know, kind
of get a handle on this before there's
too many out there and we sort of lose
sight of how many are actually operating
within the city limits.
So, next steps, I plan to bring an
ordinance that outlines all these
conditions uh by uh in December to have
it adopted by the end of this calendar
year. make it effective January with
enforcement beginning in July. And that
again allows staff to sort of get
everything in place, notify the public,
um sort of put all the materials
together to work with the short-term
rental operators, get with codes and and
work out all those requirements so we'd
be ready to go by the summer of 2026.
And that's my presentation.
All right. Thank you, Chris.
Councelor Flores,
thank you. and thank you very much for
the presentation. How were you able to
gather this information?
Uh
you did did you do a survey or just word
of mouth? How
mayor counselor Flores? Um and Michelle
could speak a little bit more to this,
but they they do have tracking software
that allows them to go out and track
across all platforms. And so that's
where they've compiled this information
from. Mhm. So, you want to uh have an
ordinance that regulates that practice,
mayor, councelor Flores, what the
ordinance would do would just require
them to register as a business and then
also that would put them into the system
with visit Los Cusus. So both the city
can track them from the business side of
things, make sure that fire can conduct
uh proper inspections and then also that
visit Los Cusus can make sure that
they're operating correctly and also
make sure that they're playing paying
applicable lodgers tax which uh they
have to pay as well. So it's tracking
for the city, tracking for visit Los
Cusus as well.
Great. Thank you so much. Thank you for
councelor K.
Thank you. Thank you so much for this.
We were just exchanging emails and
someone seemed to have a sense of what
the rules were before they even came
into play. I was like, "Wait, we do have
this 200." I didn't even know about
this. But I do have a couple of quick
questions. I've I've heard that I've
heard, and I think this is related to
the things that you chose to include and
not include. Um, that most of these are
small operations, right? Like these are
not big swaths of places being bought up
by corporations because that's not what
the market demands, right? I think is
correct.
So that's why that's why those last
things aren't included there. They could
be an issue in the future, but right now
this is really individual people. Maybe
they own one or two or three in in the
city and and are currently doing this as
their side hustle, I would imagine.
Mayor Councelor K. Yeah, that's my
understanding as well. I'm only aware of
a few corporations that own multiple
units.
Um, so one of I I would have a couple of
quick things that I would add. I would
expand the required not the they're
individ they're required to do the
notification. Correct.
Mayor Councelor Creme that is correct.
Yeah.
Um so I would I would like to expand the
notification radius to at least 300. I'm
just thinking you know two houses down,
three houses down perhaps. Um I would
like the radius to be a little bit
bigger because people are affected um by
this. And then I'm I'm I'm all for
making this happen as soon as we
possibly can. and and thank you so much
for working on it and thinking about it.
Um, my sense from people in in that are
experiencing adverse outcomes as a
result of uh short-term rentals in their
neighborhood is that they're being
rented out basically for parties. Um and
those parties have you know hundreds of
teenagers say at them and that that is
the source of a number of police
incidents I think that have occurred and
um incidents of violence certainly
things like noise violations but that's
a little bit that's not I think folks
have have talked about in this in the
context of like shootings um fights
breaking out into the street etc. So,
I'm particularly interested in the
occupancy limits and then also the
consequences of what this means for
folks. So, if someone has
if the police come to someone's house
because they're have they've rented out
a space for a house party um and the
police come, what is the or they're
cited in some way, what is the sort of
series of consequences that might occur?
Um are they allowed to continue? It
really is, I think, one or two
problematic folks who just do this all
the time as as their business model that
that the neighbors are really upset
about. Um, I would like there to be a
model that's sort of educational, which
sounds like the six-month implementation
thing is really of powerful tool for
that. But then I would also like there
to be not that long of a I'd rather
folks experience um the consequences
pretty quickly so that it's not like oh
this is the fifth shooting at this house
that we've had maybe we should not let
them have Airbnbs anymore. So I'm
curious if you can talk about the
followup for what that might look like.
Sure. Uh Mayor Councelor Kren. So we do
have and I was just kind of looking at
draft of the ordinance. I've been
working with with legal on this and the
the overnight requirements that we we're
recommending right now are two per bed
plus uh an additional two people per
unit. So that kind of sets the occupancy
within the house within
what you know you could have a
reasonable number of bedrooms and beds
and that type of thing. And then
specific to gatherings, we put that no
more than 10 additional persons above
the allowed number of renters. Um and so
we you know it's again those are
recommendations. This is just a draft.
If you wanted to increase that a little
bit you certainly could. But the idea
was to sort of mitigate that potential
problem. Yeah. And then we're working
with legal and codes to sort of deal
with the enforcement component on that
and how you know how that would work. Um
you know diff you know cited once cited
twice cited three times. So we're
working all those requirements out right
now. I don't know if Brad
probably not, but we can come back to
that when we do first read or second
read. Yeah,
I would I would love to see sort of a
hierarchy of impact, right? Like like if
there's a shooting, that's that's more
serious than, you know, someone not
having their pool fence locked, right?
Like th those to me are very different
sort of scales of accountability that
are happening with this. And I think um
I I would just like to see that that be
included as as part of that framework of
accountability if if possible. So sort
of what what are the consequences and do
they match the impact on the
neighborhood or the the people around?
So please
mayor and councelor Krena we actually
have you know some of that already
outlined first offense second offense um
and and at what point you know we would
be revoking there. So as soon as we
solidify all that then we will
definitely have that and we can make
that a component of the presentation
when we bring the ordinance back for
sure.
Councelor Gr
uh similar kind of question uh Chris in
terms of the notification process um
then would a neighbor who disagreed with
this plan would they have any kind of
recourse? I I know there's nothing that
the city loves more than mitigating
fights between neighbors and especially
you specifically Chris Favor. Um but is
it just a suggestion or is there
something tied to that?
Mayor Councelor Graham. Yeah, good
question. No, it's just just a
notification right now. So, they do have
to notify. There's really nothing unless
council wants to take that step to
prohibit that. Right now, it's just a
notification that it does um that there
is, you know, a short-term rental within
if we say go to 500 feet or something
like that. So, it's just to put them on
notice. Yeah.
And it might include would it include
the 24hour contact information? That
would probably actually be very useful
if that were a part of that
communication.
Yes, Mayor Councelor Kren. Yeah, we're
going to require that they have all that
information provided not only to us, but
to them when they do provide that
outreach to their community. Yes.
Pro Tim.
Thank you. Thanks, Chris. I Yeah, I
think this is great. I'm surprised we
don't have something like this already.
So, um I think that feels really
important given the dispar disparity
between the number that exists and the
number that are actually registered. Um,
just quick question on the Airbnb side.
Do they like is there a way for the city
to have Airbnb before someone signs up
their home with Airbnb to say, "Hey,
these are the the these this locality's
requirements for a business license."
I'll let Mayor Prommo, I'll let Michelle
speak to that because they deal directly
with Airbnb on that. Don't know
specifically
Rochelle Miller Hernandez for the
record. Um, mayor councelor mayor promo
um everything on Airbnb is very vague a
lot of times and they tell you to
contact your local municipality to be
honest with you even on the taxes. So,
uh, to address your, um, comment earlier
that you were surprised we didn't have
something, we we did enforce the tax
collection quite some time ago. Um,
but then and sent out notices and we do
have some rules and regs on our website,
but this is going to be amazing. Thank
you, Chris, for all your hard work on
this. Um but even on the taxes it says
that they're collecting taxes and that
they're being um submitted to the
municipalities but they're not connect
collecting lodgers tax. So, they're
talking about gross receipts. And so, I
went in, calculated, double checked, and
um
they state when I contacted them, like
as if I was an Airbnb owner, that you
they need to include those costs in
their rental fees and then submit them
directly to us. At one time, Airbnb was
collecting and submitting for the mun um
collecting for the municipalities and
there are a couple agreements still out
there, but they stopped doing that
because um the numbers weren't adding up
correctly and it was causing a lot of
problems.
So, right now the responsibility of that
is on the owner of the
Yes. Just like the hotels have to report
um the owners do too and they're subject
to an audit.
Yeah. if if we see any
okay
um discrepancy the software that we use
does data mining it's really interesting
and it can um predict if you are renting
your unit based on activity and then it
would be up to you to show that you're
not if we're saying you're not paying
your taxes but it we have the indication
that you are renting uh your property.
Wow. Interesting. So perhaps part of the
education uh if this should pass Chris
should include some of this additional
information as well. Um might as well
get that out there.
Sure.
And then I just had another question.
It's not totally related, but somewhat
I'm I just recently heard a legislator,
and again, I haven't been able to follow
up with her on this from where she got
this data, but there's a legislator from
Bernalo County that was talking about
like how much of a problem it is in
Bernalo County that so many single
family homes are owned by out ofstate
corporations, like hundreds or
something. I'm curious in terms of like
these 465 and you sort of said it but I
kind of want to touch back on it. You
don't see that there's a pattern in Los
Cusus for for this
uh Mayor Mayor Prom I can again let
Roelle speak to that. She probably has
more access to that data. I haven't
heard anything anecdotally but I don't
know if the data bears out that there is
a you know a tendency one way or the
other.
U mayor
Mayor Prom. Uh, no. When we went through
the list the other day, I can get the
exact numbers for you, but there were
very few that were owned by um most of
them were just one ons one property.
Interesting. Yeah. And I guess they I
say that, right? Like in in the midst of
a housing crisis, there's a difference
between someone local having a business
versus a giant corporation just buying
up houses to make.
Yes. I don't think I mean my opinion how
much how whatever that's worth is I
don't really think our short-term
rentals are really affecting the housing
crisis in our city.
It's worth a lot to me your opinion. So,
thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks. Anyone else?
All right. A couple of questions, Chris,
on um like when uh someone comes in and
opens a business, they fill out the
business registration application and
they have to have a tax ID number, state
number. Is this the same thing? Are they
going to have to Is that going to be
required?
Yes, mayor. We're going to, you know,
like if you're a restaurant, you need to
show us if you have a liquor license.
Yes. So, we're going to require all that
documentation,
that specific information related to
paying your your taxes, the the contact
information, proof that you have reached
out to your neighbors. We can work with
them to provide them the list of people
that fall within that radius, but then
they have to come back and show to us
that that is what they did provide. So,
we're going to require all that before
we actually issue that business
registration.
Okay. The other one is notification to
the public or the neighborhood or
residents. Isn't there already a
practice in place for a zone change or a
uh development that it reaches out to a
certain area already?
Yes, mayor. We Yeah, there is that
notification process that's done through
certified letter through the city. This
would put the onus on the short-term
rental operator versus the city taking
it on. I suppose if we were finding
sometime down the road that that wasn't
happening, we could come back in and
tighten those regulations up, but but
that would be the recommendation now is
that that the uh the operator does that
outreach.
Okay. Yeah. What the message we don't
want to send is that we're not
businessfriendly and we want to make
sure that someone uh loses an
opportunity to supplement their income.
That's not what this is about. I agree
with it. I believe in it for fire
inspections. building inspection. So,
it's safe. It's safe for the
neighborhood and it's safe for the
tenants as well that are that are there
because I know sometimes the building uh
official will get complaints
after the fact that uh there was no hot
water or the AC unit didn't work and
where does that go? So, this way we hold
them accountable and become responsible
owners. So yeah, not limiting any
potential income sources. We we we want
to see people thrive, but uh definitely
we want we want everybody to be safe. So
thanks for bringing this forward.
Sure.
There
public is there anyone from the public?
Thank you for that reminder.
Mayor and the city council, thank you
for allowing me to speak. I'm Pudma
Valdivit and I am the owner and
qualifying broker of Rethink Real
Estate. Um I'm here today because um
I've talked on the phone uh a number of
times. Um for years uh we have been
trying to figure out a way to pay the 5%
tax.
Could I get you to speak directly into
the microphone so they can pick it up as
they record?
Yes, you bet.
Thank you. Um, so we are a real estate
company that does property management,
but we also do Airbnb management. So I
have a number of questions and issues
that we've been trying to work through
um, as we try to become compliant with
the ordinance that has actually been on
the books for a number of years. Um I
think 2020 is when the original um
request for us to pay lodgers tax was
put into place. There is no functional
way to do that. So
our issue has been and we have been
asking the city we check in with them
maybe every six months for the last
three or four years. Um because
in order to charge that lodgers tax
through let's just take Airbnb in order
for them to do that um we have to have
the business license which we don't take
issue with um in order to put into the
system in an Airbnb. We have to have
that number that corresponds with an
actual account.
So right now you can't we have no way of
charging that tax and then paying the
bill um because there is no fun. First
of all it's not mandatory with the city.
So um I don't know why people would add
5%
arbitrarily to a Airbnb bill when it's
not mandatory that they do so and that
there's no functional way for them to
actually do that. Um, I did actually
have somebody at the city tell me, "Just
come in and write a check.
Taxes don't work that way." So, we can't
just arbitrarily charge 5% onto our
bookings and have Airbnb collect that
and then then what happens to it, right?
So, we did a pilot property um where we
have registered it with the city. We are
waiting and what we're doing is we're
collecting the taxes. We did one
business license and we're collecting
the tax taxes. We still don't know how
to pay them.
So that money is accumulating on that
one particular property. We vary from
about 18 to about 25 properties at any
given time that we're managing.
In addition to that,
we have asked and we haven't been able
to get an answer yet to how does a
property management company
register all of the Airbnbs
in their management system? Do does
every single one of those properties
have to have a separate business license
or do they
do can the business license come from
Rethink Real Estate and then list all of
the properties that we manage? Again, we
don't have a problem with the tax being
collected and we don't have a problem
paying a a cost for each individual
property, but property owners are not
getting paid through Airbnb. Our real
estate company is.
So,
how functionally does that work when the
money is not coming in to the owner?
That's a question we have asked of both
the city and the county and have not yet
gotten an answer to.
So I think that in short, what I'm
asking for
is a clear path to be within compliance
of this ordinance right now. We're not
seeing that. We're not seeing it in the
county and we're not seeing it in the
city. And I think that part of what
everybody is missing is the voice that's
on the other end of this. That doesn't
have anything to do with the ordinances
or making the um properties safe. It
just has to do with the logistics of how
this happens.
So I guess what I'm asking for is a
voice
when you're deciding these from the
other direction. The other thing is that
were this program where you charge
lodgers tax of Airbnbs, if that were
implemented, it's a huge amount of money
for this city. Even if I
um estimate on the low side, it's
somewhere around nine 8 to9 million,
which this city needs. So I am all for
charging that but please I'm asking for
you to do it in a way that makes sense
in the real world and for people who are
you know when I started doing this I was
doing it for myself it was in my
backyard so that was very easy over the
years it's built into a business that
business employs 10 people now so there
is another side of this it's not only
just a backyard person with one
um listing that they're doing. There's a
whole business that is um helping to
support Los Cusus and we just want the
ordinances and how they're set up to
make some common sense.
Thank you. And I'm happy to answer
questions as well. Turn it around.
Oh, thank you for that information.
We'll definitely look into that unless
Michelle you have something to
Yes, please.
Mayor, um counselors, just to address
that quickly. Um we do have a system set
up, so I'd be happy to sit down and
explain it. We do have a page on our
website. We've collected, uh in FY25, we
collected $43,000 in taxes. Um, we've
already collected about 10,000 this
year.
I don't know where the nine million is
coming from, but um, because we only
collect a little under three for all the
hotel rooms that we have in the city.
Um, I maybe if you rented every Airbnb
every night of the year, but on average,
the hotels only a hotel room is only
rented 50% of the time. And um according
to our calculations, Airbnbs are only
maybe 25% of the time occupied. So I'm
not quite sure where that number is
coming from, but
but I'd be happy to look into it. But we
do have a procedure and I'd love to um
sit down and explain it to you
afterwards.
We can meet afterwards. Okay.
Okay. You'll talk to her offline. Thank
you, Michelle. Thank you.
Yes, sir. Come on up.
Hi,
everybody. Um, Tony Watkins from Lacaso.
Uh, coming back. Um, just real briefly,
I um I used to work in that continuum of
care uh agency that that kind of ran
runs the whole thing in New Mexico New
Mexico called Coalition and Homelessness
and um I've been with AASA now about
five months, but it's it's great to be a
great to be part of a community that's
really putting their heads together and
like congratulations on the 800 units in
the Pike. That's really exciting. My
goodness. Um, I just wanted to kind of
uh connect these two issues on on the
agenda because it's it strikes me and
it's it's really kind of out of the box
thinking that that that did not come
from me, but um imagine linking the
auxiliary dwelling unit uh um initiative
that you're facing now with the
homelessness situation. And in the
continuum of care, we used to get points
from HUD for um municipal governments
that would give a preference to people
experiencing homelessness in their
section 8 programs. And imagine if we
did something like that in Los Cusus
with auxiliary dwelling units that we
had somehow subsidized or um or or like
found funding to to encourage owners of
auxiliary dwelling units to give
preference to survivors of of uh
domestic violence. So, I just want to
put that on the table.
Is there anyone else?
That's all I have, mayor. Thank you.
All right. Thank you all. Thank you. So,
look for a motion to adjurnn.
So moved. Second, Graham.
This is on a motion to adjourn the
meeting. Councelor McClur,
yes.
Councelor Matise is absent. Councelor
Graham,
yes.
Councelor Cran,
yes.
Councelor Flootus,
yes.
Councelor Bencoml,
yes.
Mayor,
yes.