By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com

Los Alamos makes headlines for its number of PhDs, its residents’ impressive salaries and for being an overall healthy community. There is another side to this sparkling image, however; those whose earnings fall below the median income and therefore cannot enjoy the advantages and privileges others receive. These unbalanced scales are spotted in a lot of areas including housing.

As Councilor Randall Ryti said, “There obviously is a lot of information in here (the plan) and it really is relating to how people are able to live or not live so easily and of all the different statistics … one of nine renters are living in poverty. We tend to think of Los Alamos as being a low poverty community, which it is overall, but I just thought that was worth highlighting for people, so people just understand that.”

To take the first steps in evening the scales, Los Alamos County Council unanimously approved to adopt the Affordable Housing Plan during its regular meeting Tuesday night. There were some changes made to the language in Table 28 in the plan, which presents recommended strategies for housing development. The revisions were made to track with the County’s current Development Code language.

Additionally, Council unanimously approved an ordinance to amend Chapter 14 of the Los Alamos County Code, which addresses affordable housing.

Housing and Special Project Manager Dan Osborn explained the plan is a toolbox and the ordinance grants the County authority to provide public financial support for affordable housing.

Osborn, along with consultant Sites-SW’s Carlos Gemora, presented the revised Affordable Housing Plan Tuesday.

There are four goals included in the plan:

• Expand Organizational Capacity – The plan recommends partnering with organizations that can provide housing services. To achieve this, it is suggested to have public/private, regional and institutional partnerships, take an active role in land banking for affordable housing development, provide staffing at the County to manage housing efforts and collaborate with private landowners and developers to build new and convert existing housing with permanent affordability.
• Increase Housing Affordability – It is argued throughout the Affordable Housing Plan that a low supply of housing with demand from high, medium and low-income families means that available housing will naturally go more towards higher income families. It is also argued that while priority should go to low-income households or those who make less than 80 percent of the average median income (AMI), eligibility should expand to moderate income households or those who make less than 120 percent of the AMI. There are two suggested strategies: provide resources and services to low- and moderate-income households to get into or remain in affordable housing and create and conserve units that are affordable to low- and moderate-income households. The County can offer optional agreements that would provide incentives or something of value in return for reserved affordability, partial ownership or options to acquire the property or provide policy requirements for new housing to contribute to affordability goals either through actual affordable housing or supporting affordable housing efforts.
• Support Additional Housing Development – It is reported in the plan that housing supply is one of the most significant factors affecting the accessibility and provision of affordable housing. The general strategy to increase housing supply is to identify and reduce regulatory barriers to development and to incentivize the development of more housing within core areas through higher densities.
• Develop Program Funding and Resources – To increase organizational funding and implement affordable housing strategies, additional funding or resources are needed, according to the plan. There is a need for more service providers, regional and public/private partnerships as well as more County staff to address the issue.

Wednesday, Osborn explained to the Los Alamos Daily Post how this plan will help the County achieve more affordable housing.

“As you know, housing supply significantly affects the accessibility and cost of housing,” he said. “The plan will unlock additional tools to help kick-start development of housing for low- and moderate-income housing and provides production targets. The plan allows the County to directly participate in a wide range of interventions in support of affordable housing including the latitude to provide or pay all or a portion of the costs of acquisition, development, construction, financing, and operating or owning affordable housing in our community. Hopefully, we can start to unwind the bottlenecks in land acquisition, labor, materials, access to lending and capital markets, and other issues that have been building over the last generation or so.”

While it is stressed that more housing stock could lead to more affordable real estate, Osborn touched on where all these units would be built since available land is limited.

“…although we’re surrounded by open spaces and land, much of it isn’t being put to productive use, from my perspective,” he said. “That’s a challenge and that will require creative thinking. The plan does offer solutions like moderate increases to density in our core areas and using infill development, in addition to tools like ‘buy downs’ for affordable units in exchange for permeant affordability, etc.”

It is not just the land that needs to be considered; housing needs the infrastructure, too: water, streets, electricity, etc.

“We do have the water and infrastructure to support housing,” Osborn said. “We might need to make improvements in those areas, but that’s one of the exciting aspects – it gives us the impetus to upgrade aging infrastructure and add amenities in support of affordable and market-rate housing. Development can be a benefit to the local community and economy.”

Touching on the partnerships that the County would need, particularly with its Homebuyer Assistance and Home Renewal programs, Osborn said things are in motion to find a new provider to help run the programs since the Los Alamos Housing Partnership is not longer providing services to the County.

“While it’s true the Housing Partnership is no longer providing those services to the County, we do have other options in the works,” he said. “We’re in the process of selecting a new provider who will offer similar services in addition to an expanded range of programing for not only low- and moderate-income households, but first-time homebuyers, seniors, and those wishing to make improvements to their homes … the Community Development Department will report back soon and are excited by what we think will be a great opportunity to grow our capacity in this area and to introduce additional programs for consideration.”