BY KEVIN HOLSAPPLE
Los Alamos
[Draft 2026 Comprehensive Plan input, questions, and feedback can be emailed to PlanLosAlamos@czb.org]
Los Alamos is a community defined by its unique environment, pioneering history, and, despite some warts, outstanding quality of life. Yet, as the county drafts its blueprint for the next decade—the Draft Los Alamos Comprehensive Plan 2026 (PLAN Los Alamos)—citizen input has pointed to key challenges. Our critical service-sector workforce is being priced out, our cherished natural landscapes face unnecessary development pressures, and our local businesses continue to struggle. These findings come from community-wide surveys, and it is unclear whether the staff and consultants drafting the plan considered these inputs. In fact, very little information is presented on the County project page about the citizen and community input that was used in developing the draft.
Instead of addressing these core issues directly, the draft comprehensive plan often reads more like a developer’s pitch for community sprawl and expensive residential development. To build a resilient and inclusive future, the County Council and its consultants must completely realign the plan with the repeated, documented feedback of the citizens who live, work, and raise families here.
1. The Affordable Housing Muddle
Our community and local economy cannot function without the daycare providers, school support staff, retail clerks, and medical technicians who keep our daily lives running. This is the housing that our community needs, yet the draft comprehensive plan fails to address their needs, choosing instead to default to standard federal HUD metrics based on Area Median Income (AMI) for their definition of “affordable.
High salaries at LANL artificially inflate our AMI to over $100,000+—nearly triple the state average. The County is always saying they are working on affordable housing, and they are I guess if you consider $2500+ monthly occupancy costs affordable. This “AMI Muddle” has disastrous real-world consequences. It calculates the “affordable” 60% AMI income limit for a single person at a whopping $70,020. Consequently, the maximum “affordable” rent for a 60% AMI studio apartment is set at $1,750.50/month, and a one-bedroom apartment is capped at $1,875.75/month.
For an essential worker earning an entry-level wage of $15 per hour ($31,200 gross annual income), renting a 60% AMI studio apartment would devour an impossible 67.3% of their paycheck. For a worker earning $20 per hour ($41,600/year), it consumes 50.5%.
I do understand that it is more attractive for developers to build and easier for the County to subsidize high-priced homes, but our community needs them to work harder than that. Vague goals supporting general “workforce housing” typically end up subsidizing homes for higher-paid, entry-level lab employees while largely ignoring the essential service workforce. The final 2026 Comprehensive Plan must establish a dedicated policy prioritizing county land, staff time, and funding exclusively for supporting housing for workers earning $15 to $20 per hour. We must codify a strict 20% inclusionary zoning set-aside for multifamily developments, establish an immediate localized rental voucher program, and mandate that no public land or developer subsidies (MRA or LEDA) be granted unless they include guaranteed workforce units. All of the same Federal rules and subsidies are available to lower-priced units.
2. The “Conservation Residential” Oxymoron: Protecting Our Natural Infrastructure
Our surrounding canyons and forests are the crown jewels of Los Alamos. In local surveys, an overwhelming 87% of residents rate passive open spaces as “very important” to their quality of life, and 83% cite them as a primary reason they choose to live here.
Yet, the draft comprehensive plan introduces a jarring contradiction in terms: a new “Conservation Residential” policy category. This designation proposes studying County-owned open spaces (currently protected under Open Space zoning) for potential residential development. Let us be clear: “Conservation Residential” is an oxymoron. Once a forest edge or canyon is rezoned and developed, its open space value is permanently destroyed.
What makes this proposal particularly egregious is that, by the County’s own information, it appears to be entirely unnecessary. The August 2024 Affordable Housing Plan estimates that from 2024 to 2029 we need 1,300 to 2,400 new housing units to meet local demand. According to the County’s June 2026 Housing Production Update, the county already has a pipeline of 2,395 housing units, including units that have become available since 2024 and potential units on appropriately zoned parcels. This does not include housing being discussed in the old Mari Mac plaza area. This means we can achieve 99.8% of our current housing goals using underutilized and vacant developed land, eliminating the need to consider encroaching on open spaces.
I was a member of the Planning & Zoning Commission in the early 1990’s that initiated the idea that an open space zoning category needed to differentiate community land that should remain open from land for potential development. The community eventually agreed. At that time, our open spaces were considered “land awaiting development” and were continually infringed on. The new draft plan wants to backslide to considering some open space as “surplus land” for development. Considerable public input has suggested that the county should contain growth within existing town centers and protect and preserve our open space. The final plan must remove the “Conservation Residential” designation discussion as it pertains to existing open spaces. Also, it should suggest permanently rezoning parcels that were part of a promised a hearing during the resolution of the Golf Course compromise. The County failed to follow through on that promise. These include rezoning lower Bayo Canyon, the forested tracts south of the golf course, and land adjacent to the Canyon Rim Trail—to Passive Open Space (OS-PO). This rezoning recommendation was supported by the Golf Association. Finally, to restore community trust, we must explicitly mandate a policy making it “very difficult” for the local government to rezone designated passive open spaces—a protective measure backed by 56% of OWSG survey respondents.
3. Support for Local Businesses: Beyond Real Estate and Process
A vibrant downtown requires a thriving merchant class, yet only 14% of residents currently rate our variety of local business and service establishments positively. Our business owners report that the primary roadblock to economic vitality is an overly restrictive, cautious county bureaucracy that routinely prioritizes “saying no correctly over saying yes to opportunity”.
Shockingly, the draft comprehensive plan ignores the comprehensive public input and strategic recommendations provided by the September 2025 Local Business Coalition Report & Idea Book. Instead, the plan limits its focus to traditional, real-estate-oriented master planning. We do not need more real estate speculation; we need systemic code reforms and creative support for local business. I have seen no indication in recent years that the County is capable of successfully facilitating real estate deals that have produced strong community benefits. Getting them involved in even more of those deals is a bad move.
A Call to Action
Los Alamos does not suffer from any shortage of plans; we suffer from a chronic gap in execution. I don’t see any particular improvements in the draft plan over the existing Comprehensive Plan. I do see very limited public involvement in formulating the draft. The current County government seems to be continually cherry-picking justifications for their initiatives from the myriad of plans and manipulative surveys they are always doing and approving. That makes Council rubber-stamping easier. Some of these initiatives have demonstrated community benefit, but many or most struggle to do that. We must demand a Comprehensive Plan that values the human infrastructure of our community—our entry-level and essential service workers and local shopkeepers while also fiercely protecting our open spaces.
The County Council has a historic opportunity to steer Los Alamos away from suburban sprawl and bureaucratic paralysis. Let us make sure they hear our voices. Join me in demanding a comprehensive plan that actually puts our community first.
Letters to the editor represent the opinions of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or editorial stance of the Los Alamos Reporter. The publication assumes no responsibility or liability for the factual accuracy of statements made by contributors.