Affordable Housing for Grant County NM

08/27/2026

"Studies that compare affordable and market-rate buildings find that soft costs are where a large share of the cost difference originates. Affordable projects tend to have significantly higher soft costs, even when the buildings themselves are similar. In other words, much of what makes an affordable apartment expensive isn’t the building – it’s the financial and regulatory machinery wrapped around it.

How Colorado breaks the pattern
So why does affordable housing cost less to build in Colorado? The RAND study points to where and how it gets built. Unlike their counterparts in California and Texas, Colorado’s affordable developers built for less, per square foot, than the state’s own market-rate builders.

In Colorado, a key distinguishing factor is land: Developers paid just $1.50 per square foot, against about $23 for market‑rate builders, often on public land offered at little or no cost. That cheaper land, along with lower-cost building sites, more than offsets the higher soft costs that affordable projects still carry everywhere, Colorado included.

What actually lowers costs
In recent years, Colorado has passed a series of laws aimed at easing the frictions that inflate housing costs, especially for subsidized projects, making the state a real-time test of what works. Research already points to several promising levers, none of which requires weakening the protections that keep homes affordable.

The most powerful lever is land. Cities and states across the country are increasingly offering public land at little or no cost, reducing one of development’s biggest expenses."

Op-ed: Lower land costs and new statewide housing reforms have made Colorado an outlier.

07/23/2026

"Another set of provisions is less about what states regulate and more about who executes on the ground. Nearly all of it assumes a community development financial institution (CDFI), a housing nonprofit, a community bank, or a land bank is doing the work while the federal government eventually sets funding in motion. States don’t need that funding to start building the partnerships these programs will require.

The new law’s Whole-Home Repairs pilot funds grants and forgivable loans for low- and moderate-income homeowners and small landlords, and it is explicitly designed to run through local and tribal implementing organizations rather than the federal government itself. Another pot of funding supports grants to preserve existing manufactured home communities, which are often sold to private buyers as soon as they hit the market. These local partnerships will be crucial once the federal grants open up – and states can identify and prepare organizations and partnerships now. That way, they’ll be ready to apply the day the pilot opens, rather than starting that search after the money is announced.

The same principle applies for vacant buildings and rural housing. A pilot program to convert empty offices, malls, and motels into affordable housing only activates in years when HOME program funding clears a specific threshold, so states with land bank authority can build vacant-building inventories and pre-qualify nonprofit redevelopment partners now rather than wait on the trigger. As the law makes it easier for nonprofits to acquire aging USDA-financed rural rental properties, state agencies can get ahead of it by connecting at-risk properties with preservation buyers before they are lost to market conversion.

The new law shines a light on one of housing’s most overlooked challenges: financing low-cost homes. While the CFPB studies solutions, states can act immediately by working through state housing finance agencies in partnership with community banks and CDFIs to make small-dollar mortgages viable, unlocking affordable housing opportunities that are especially critical in rural and lower-cost markets."

https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/washington-may-take-years-to-implement-the-new-housing-law-states-can-act

Op-ed: The new ROAD to Housing Act could take years to roll out federally, but here's where states can start making immediate progress on zoning, permitting, financing, and partnerships.

07/18/2026

What do you think is the most promising strategy to create more affordable housing in Grant County, NM?

05/21/2026

“This toolkit is about making sure that the wealthiest and the most profitable corporations in our communities are paying their fair share,” says Angelo Pis-Dudot, policy counsel at Local Progress Impact Hub and coauthor of the resource."

A resource guide from the Local Progress Impact Hub and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy provides working case studies for progressive revenue.

05/19/2026

Nearly half of all New Mexico renters and 20% of homeowners statewide are “cost-burdened,” meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent, mortgage payments and other housing expenses, according to a new government report.

https://sourcenm.com/2026/05/18/nm-housing-authority-finds-nearly-half-of-renters-statewide-are-cost-burdened/

05/12/2026

We dodged the bullet on Donald Trump’s proposed radical dismantling of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), a la Project 2025. So far. But these attacks are not going away.

It’s time to create a state-based system of housing finance that can withstand future HUD cuts and supplement the federal help that does exist. This can be done by creating new cross-jurisdictional finance authorities through interstate, regional, and even inter-local compacts. These authorities can emulate the traditional affordable housing finance roles and flexibility of the federal government.

Like the federal government, the new authorities can be structured to pool public revenue collected from multiple jurisdictions, issue public debt, sidestep strict budget-balancing rules that affect member jurisdictions, and provide capital and operating subsidies to participating partners while respecting their sovereign powers over land use and control.

Housing markets don't stay within state boundaries. Why should housing finance agencies?

03/05/2026

Livestreaming now!
Join Terner Labs and the National League of Cities for our annual housing innovation symposium, online on Thursday, March 5.

For more and more people, the United States' housing shortage is putting safe, stable housing out of reach. We need policy alignment and capital deployment powerful enough to meet this massive need.

During this livestreamed event, we’ll dig into where policy, capital, and innovation can most effectively work together for housing affordability, equity and access.

We’ll explore questions like:

Which innovative ideas have the most potential to change housing for the better?
How should policy evolve to support their potential?
What can local leaders do to influence their communities and the national landscape?
How can we access the resources we need to build opportunity?

Join us to hear candid discussions among leaders working to challenge the status quo and meet innovators pushing the limits of our current housing system.

Speakers include:
*Leila Bozorg, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning, NYC Office of the Mayor
*Shaun Donovan, Chief Executive Officer & President, Enterprise Community Partners; former Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget
*RuthAnne Visnauskas, Commissioner, New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal
*Jeff Lubell, Senior Fellow, Urban Land Institute
*Chris Chen, Executive Vice President, Arnold Ventures
*Julie Mahowald, Chief Financial Officer, Housing Trust Silicon Valley
Ventures from our current Housing Venture Lab cohort

Join us online now for Aligned Action for Housing Solutions, a livestreamed event focused on building shared strategies for housing affordability, equity, an...

02/21/2026

In many parts of the world, a cooperative such as this is not some kind of utopian dream. Actually, it’s the primary means societies from Scandinavia to South America use to provide housing for people who can’t afford outright market rates. Zurich is fast becoming a modern exemplar of how to use this model to build a different kind of city.

One in every five citizens in Zurich now lives in a cooperative – meaning they have bought a share in the company that built and owns their apartment block. This means that despite being a major global financial hub and pleasantly located on the edge of a large lake, poorer, younger people, families and students can still find somewhere they can afford in the centre of the city.

One in every five citizens in the city has bought a share in the company that built and owns their apartment block, says Inside Housing’s Peter Apps

02/19/2026

Therein lies the appeal of the humble accessory dwelling unit, or ADU—more colloquially known as an in-law apartment, carriage house, secondary suite, or casita, among other aliases.

By converting a garage, attic, or basement into a separate apartment, or adding a small, detached cottage to a backyard, homeowners can create an extra space for family members or a small rental property that helps generate income. At the same time, they help increase the supply of affordable and accessible housing options in their neighborhood—without a dramatically affecting the local aesthetic. And making it easier for homeowners to do so can help communities everywhere address the local and national housing crunch.

Check out all these beautiful designs!

02/12/2026

Most important, she said, is Senate Bill 92, which would exempt affordable housing developers from gross receipts taxes on materials and labor.

“I think I agree that gross receipts tax probably contributes to why building something here costs more than it costs somewhere else,” she said.

Advocates for cities, including the New Mexico Municipal League and the city of Albuquerque’s lobbyist, previously expressed opposition to the bill, given local governments’ heavy reliance on gross receipts tax revenue.

The New Mexico Legislature has more than 20 bills aimed at affordable housing, including funding and policy bills.