Image: Rent for a particular 250-square-foot apartment in Los Alamos. The average rent in Los Alamos is $2,250/mo; for a one-bedroom, it’s $1,575/mo. Image and data from Zillow as of Sept. 11, 2025.

BY STEPHANIE NAKHLEH
Member
Los Alamos Planning & Zoning Commission

The rules that decide what gets built in Los Alamos—and what doesn’t—shape whether your kids can afford to live here, whether downtown hums or sits vacant, and whether teachers and firefighters can live where they work. This is true for all towns, in fact. Yet most of us have no idea how these decisions get made.

Like many residents, I didn’t either until I was appointed to the Planning and Zoning Commission in 2020.* In my experience both as a commissioner and as a journalist who writes about housing and cities, I’ve learned that the rules shaping our neighborhoods are often invisible to the people living in them.

This monthly column aims to change that. Commissioners, councilors, and staff hear the same questions at public meetings—often the same ones I had before I joined: Why is housing so expensive? Why can’t we just put a bowling alley or a Trader Joe’s in that one place sitting empty? Why can’t we just require more affordable units? What does “affordable” even mean?

The Los Alamos Reporter is carrying this series because the answers matter most to the people who live and work here. My goal is to explain how local land-use decisions actually work, in plain English.

Caveat: I’m not a lawyer. If a lawyer wrote this, you’d have more Latin, more precision, and about 10,000 extra words. I’m simplifying so the big ideas are clear. For precise legal language about what can be built, where, and why, planning staff or the county attorney are the right contacts.

Today’s topic: what planning commissions do—and don’t

What is the Planning & Zoning Commission?
 P&Z is an all-volunteer commission appointed by County Council. We serve three-year terms (max two consecutive). We’re regular residents who stepped up. P&Z meets the second and last Wednesday of each month at 5:30 p.m. in Council Chambers. Meeting packets are posted 72 hours in advance on the County agenda page.

What the commission does:

• Apply the rulebook. Staff does detailed checks first; when a case comes to P&Z, we apply the approval criteria in the Development Code and Comprehensive Plan to determine whether the case meets those criteria.
  
  
• Hold public hearings. We take public testimony, but we must weigh it against the legal criteria.
  
  
• Advise on policy. For rezonings and code changes, we forward our recommendations and findings to Council.
  
  
• Keep the process open. Meetings are noticed, public, recorded, and documented.
  
  

What the commission doesn’t do:

• Set rents or sale prices. Those reflect land, materials, labor, financing, risk, and supply/demand (or program formulas for subsidized projects).
  
  
• Pick the builder or owner. Applicants bring projects; we don’t recruit or choose among them.
  
  
• Negotiate side deals. We can’t bargain over rents or finishes outside what the code allows.
  
  
• Override zoning. If a project fits the zoning and meets the criteria, we can’t deny it because it’s unpopular; if it doesn’t, it must go through rezoning first.
  
  
• Choose tenants or buyers. That’s not our role.
  
  
• Control subsidies. Programs like LIHTC (DP Road apartments) or USDA Rural (North Mesa apartments) set income-based rents under federal rules.
  
  

Why housing meetings can feel frustrating

Residents sometimes ask why commissioners “approved” expensive housing when teachers, firefighters, and cashiers are struggling. It’s a fair question—but it misunderstands who controls what.

Think of us like referees.
 A planning commission is like a ref: we don’t pick the teams, set ticket prices, or change the rules mid-game. Our job is to enforce the rulebook on the field. If the ball crosses the line, it’s a goal—regardless of how we feel about it. If refs call fouls based on which jerseys they prefer, the game falls apart.

Common requests we legally can’t grant on a case-by-case basis:

• “Require X% affordable units.” That’s called inclusionary zoning. Our county’s code doesn’t let the commission impose it project-by-project. If the community wants that tool, it has to be adopted by Council in the code. For those intrigued by this tool, I recommend reading about Santa Fe’s history with inclusionary zoning here: it’s instructive.
  
  
• “Only allow single-family homes.” If zoning allows townhomes, duplexes, or apartments, we can’t reject them because neighbors prefer detached houses.
  
  
• “Ban ugly designs.” We can only apply objective standards stated in the code.
  
  
• “Only permit ownership, not rentals.” Tenure (rent vs. own) is up to owners, developers, and lenders.
  
  
• “Make developers cut prices in half.” Apart from constitutional problems with controlling private profit, trying to fix prices would drive builders away and shrink supply. Shrinking supply hurts affordability.

Each of these is complex and deserves its own column! I’ll tackle them in turn.

Why this distinction matters

When you see new housing that seems expensive, it’s not because the commission “approved” the rent or sale price. Our lane is enforcing the rulebook. Prices come from costs and market conditions (or from program formulas in subsidized projects). The big policy choices—what’s allowed where and whether to add affordability tools—are made by County Council in the code and the Comprehensive Plan. Each of these rulebooks is made with community input. In 2026, the County will begin holding public meetings for a Comprehensive Plan update. The Development Code (Chapter 16) already had a major update in 2023, but smaller updates regularly come to P&Z and Council.

How to plug in (and be effective):

• Start with policy. Policy has a lot to do with affordability and is a lever the community has in its control (unlike, for example, interest rates). Policy change happens when Council updates the Comprehensive Plan or Development Code.
  
• If you’re curious about a specific project, learn first. Read the staff report or ask Planning staff what the decision criteria are and what’s already required. I’ll publish a plain-English “how to testify” guide later in this series.
  
• When affordability policies come up, speak up. If you support evidence-backed tools—legalizing “missing-middle” homes, voluntary density bonuses with real offsets, clear review timelines (“shot clocks”), modest upzoning, or calibrated fee relief—tell Council when those items are up for debate. (If those terms are new, no worries; I’ll unpack each in future columns.)

I’m keeping each piece brief, so I’ll circle back to questions in future columns. Send your questions to stephanie.nakhleh1@gmail.com. I can’t discuss specific pending cases, but I can explain rules/process and point to public documents.

* Written in my capacity as a planning commissioner; I do not speak for the commission.

About the author: Stephanie was raised in Los Alamos, where she lives now with her husband and dog. She has two adult kids. When not sitting in meetings, she can usually be found on the trails or writing for her Substack, We Can Have Nice Things.