USBC Teams Up with UNM to Expand Affordable Housing Options in South Broadway

In 2018 Albuquerque scrapped its neighborhood-based Comprehensive Zoning Code for an Integrated Development Ordinance (IDO) that favors developers and investors.

Presented as a path to increase affordable housing and prevent homelessness, the IDO three years later, in 2021, showed less than stellar results for the City’s poorest residents.

USBC has worked with the UNM-CEC Public Ally program to survey one such neighborhood, South Broadway, to assess the potential for tax benefits through infill development, opportunities to increase resident income, and strategies to attract young, first-time homebuyers.

According to data published in 2021 by the City’s Housing and Neighborhood Economic and Development Fund (HNEDF), Albuquerque’s poorest neighborhoods,[i]three years after the IDO went into effect, were suffering from lack of investment, with little to no population growth, while the county at large grew 24%. According to the report, “Increasing demand and rents indicate that the real estate market is growing, but these conditions have not improved local residents’ economic prospects.” [ii]

The HNEDF was established in 1987 from loan repayments of federal grants.

Similar imbalances showed up in unemployment (14% v. 12%), median income ($28 thousand v. $52 thousand), and poverty rate (30% v. 16%). Three-quarters of residents were paying more than a third of their income on rent, with a third of that number paying half or more of their income on rent.

“The current neighborhood residents are the first investors in these neighborhoods,” says USBC’s Diana Dorn-Jones, “yet they are being squeezed out under the new IDO. We want to reverse that trend.”

Ninety three percent of residents surveyed in Albuquerque’s Pocket of Poverty cited the need for a living wage in order to survive.

As reported in USBC’s June e-newsletter, Albuquerque’s South Broadway neighborhood, the birthplace of USBC, has been a center of the City’s Black community, culture and history since the late nineteenth century. Over the years, South Broadway has remained one of the city’s most affordable places to live, evolving to a predominantly Latinx population with significant representation of White, Black, Native American and Asian families.

Today, South Broadway’s desirable near-Downtown location and generous lot sizes haves sent sales and rental prices soaring. The trend threatens housing stability for older residents with modest incomes, and has excluded a new generation of young residents just starting out.

In response, United South Broadway last fall teamed up with the UNM Community Engagement Center to explore South Broadway’s housing assets. Of special interest are lots with existing auxiliary buildings that could be rehabilitated as much-needed affordable rental housing. Income from the units would help existing homeowners facing pressure to sell due to rising maintenance and repair costs.

Says USBC Executive Director Diana Dorn-Jones, “This is both an aging-in-place strategy to generate income for existing homeowners to maintain their current housing; and a way to quickly create affordable ‘new’ rental housing. We see the importance of maintaining South Broadway as a medium-density, economically-independent community, where much of the income generated by residents is reinvested, promoting housing stability,” she said.

USBC and UNM tapped UNM School of Architecture Master’s degree candidate Charles Scott to conduct the survey. He and Joe Garcia, also of the UNM-CEC, completed a street-view survey of more than 50 properties identified in a 1986 City report as of historic or cultural interest. The walking survey documented whether each building continued to exist, and its apparent condition. The findings will be shared with the South Broadway community.

Community residents pointed during the survey that these buildings are more than shelter. The original owners – the “first investors” – were not only building houses but a community, with deep lots to accommodate gatherings of family and friends, and connecting alleys that contribute to neighborliness.

Says Diana, “We need to keep community values and community memory alive; not simply by preservation, but by building up the architectural heritage here. This project promises to do that.”

The ADU survey was carried out under an agreement with the Public Allies-AmeriCorps program ( https://publicallies.org/), with funding from the National Fair Housing Alliance.

[1] Albuquerque’s poorest neighborhoods are concentrated in what was designated in the 1980s as a federally-designated “Pocket of Poverty,” meant to benefit from increased investment. The area covers an 11 square mile tract, from Los Griegos Road in the north to Rio Bravo Boulevard in the south. (See map COA HNEDF Draft Report Page 12)

[1][1] Ibid., page 15