City irons out details of new housing law.
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Some whooped. Others hollered. Still others quietly congratulated their colleagues.
Such was the response to the City Council's decision last week to essentially overturn its current affordable housing program.
The new law approved by the Council requires builders to make 30 percent of all new units "affordable" at prices stipulated by the ordinance and creates a new department.
For City Councilor Rebecca Wurzburger, the new Affordable Housing Department-complete with four staff members-is perhaps the most important job facing City Manager Mike Lujan.
The city's Community Services Department, which up until now handled the Santa Fe's Housing Opportunity Program (HOP), was maligned in past months by some city councilors for failing to keep builders in compliance with the program and ignoring Council directives on the issue [Outtakes, July 20: "House Cleaning"].
"Next on my agenda is to meet with the city manager and find out how we're going to advertise those positions," Wurzburger says. "We should be accepting input from our affordable housing partners in the city in helping design the process for recruiting."
Councilor Karen Heldmeyer also believes the Affordable Housing Department needs new blood and "someone who doesn't see the Council as the enemy." But unlike Wurzburger, Heldmeyer sees the Council as having a more subdued role in the process.
"I hope we're not involved," she says. "It's not our job. The decision was made to put the department under the aegis of the city manager."
City Manager Lujan tells SFR the job description for the new department's director has been finalized already and he expects to start advertising the position soon.
"Generally speaking, we want someone who is familiar with the overall housing issue and is very strong financially. This is a huge program with lots of responsibilities-both in terms of housing and money."
Lujan says he also wants to roll over Ron Pacheco, a senior planner for Community Services, into that same position for the new department.
Another salient issue involves the establishment of a trust fund for the Affordable Housing Program. "In lieu" payments from builders also go into the fund if a builder cannot fully meet the ordinance's requirements on affordable units.
Under the HOP program, this fund was distributed by the Affordable Housing Roundtable, a consortium of 15 local organizations. Over the past 13 years, the Roundtable has disseminated nearly $2 million of trust fund money to Santa Fe groups that work on affordable housing, according to Chairman Tom Spray. The ordinance, however, leaves it up to the city to decide who will dole out the money now. "We've proved our track record, and I think we've worked well with the fund for many years," Spray says.
Councilor Wurzburger, however, wants to see the fund overseen by the city instead.
"This is a substantial amount of money," she says. "I would rather have this run through the city and include the Roundtable for advice."
Another pending question for Sharron Welsh, executive director of the Santa Fe Community Housing Trust, is the $66,000 income ceiling by which people qualify for an affordable unit under the program. Welsh worries that police officers, firemen and nurses would make too much money to buy into the program if they're married.
"I hope that we might be able to adjust that issue over time," Welsh says.
Still, Mike Loftin, executive director of Homewise and father of the bill, lends a calm voice to the discussion. He says the preliminary discussion and concerns over the ordinance are nothing more than part of the process by which it gets transformed into city code. "Nothing is ever carved in stone," Loftin says. "You always need to make adjustments. We need to watch the ordinance and its implementation and if there's a problem, we'll fix it."
