Los Alamos Reporter

LTE: Fresh Ideas for Our Housing Challenge—A Response to County Council Candidate Snapshots

BY KEVIN HOLSAPPLE
Los Alamos

After reading the recent Los Alamos Reporter candidate issue snapshots on affordable housing and preventing housing displacement, I have one takeaway: the County Council candidates recognize that our current housing approach isn’t working for our essential workforce.

Candidates (including two incumbents) say they are interested in solutions to this problem that touches every part of life in Los Alamos and White Rock—from local business staffing to school employee retention. I am offering ideas.

  • What if there were a way to generate housing units that would be permanently affordable housing units for our essential workforce? The current county government definition of affordable housing cost for a single-member household seems to be $2,555. That figure is at least double what our baristas, retail staff, beertenders, restaurant staff, admin staff, healthcare workers, school staff, and restaurant crews earning $15 to $25 an hour can actually afford.
  • What if the approach could address other community priorities at the same time? Things like downtown blight reduction through thoughtful infill, improved downtown vitality, and permanently affordable & ownable space for local businesses to start or expand into.
  • What if the approach could build permanent, tangible community wealth and benefits instead of using public money to give big subsidies to private developers to increase their wealth?

An Invitation to Explore Ideas

In the spirit of offering practical ideas, I researched solutions used in other communities with similar problems. I am sharing what I learned as a workbook that provides a conceptual framework (with examples) for a different approach our community could take to achieve more useful results. This framework is offered as a concept for discussion, not a rigid prescription. My highest hope is to bring attention to the problem and open a community discussion about viable, legally sound solutions to our affordable housing problem.

Even if the Community Land Trust idea doesn’t interest you, we still need to change our definitions to focus community resources on affordable, essential workforce housing.

Whether you are running for office, already part of the government, running a local business, or simply living or working in Los Alamos, I invite you to examine the details in the PDF file at https://tinyurl.com/AffordableHousingLA. It is not light reading, but the details matter for understanding the ideas. There is also a YouTube video (25 min) where I discuss the slides and ideas.

See link above to video.

Let’s use this election season to move past unfocused strategies and start building permanent affordability for an important part of our community.

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 Reporter assumes no responsibility or liability for the factual accuracy of statements made by contributors.