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Jam Real Estate Experts • Santa Fe, NM

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Santa Fe Artist Housing Backers Hope Third Time’s the Charm

Siler Yard would add 65 units of live-work space for artists in Santa Fe, but it’s been slow going thus far. (Design by Atkin Olshin Schade Architects, Trey Jordan Architecture, da Silva Architecture, and Surroundings Studio. Visualization by Go West Projects.)

In the early days of 2019, a proposal for affordable artist housing in Santa Fe, New Mexico, went before the City Council—again.

At the meeting, the city of Santa Fe re-committed $2.1 million (which included land valued at $1.3 million) for the $16.3 million, 65-unit project on the former site of the city’s sewage treatment plant. It was a good sign proceeding the project’s third application to the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority, which previously declined to offer tax credits to the project.

“I’m glad you are going forward with this again,” City Councilor Chris Rivera told Daniel Werwath, the project’s lead developer, at the meeting. “I think this is going to be our year.”

Werwath also hopes 2019 will be the year his passion project, known as the Siler Yard: Arts+Creativity Center, will finally come to fruition. Werwath is chief operating officer of New Mexico Inter-Faith Housing, as well as an artist, so he knows more than most about the importance of affordable housing for artists.

He also might know more than most about the difficulties in building it: he first proposed affordable artist housing for Santa Fe in 2005.

“From my own experience as an artist and craftsman, the obstacles to low-cost working space in Santa Fe are huge,” he says. “We don’t have a big, abandoned warehouse district, and houses here are small.”

His idea found community and city support but in the process of negotiating land, the economic downturn hit and put an end to the plan. Then, in 2011, the nonprofit Creative Santa Fe kickstarted its own process to build affordable artist housing, and Werwath eventually joined the team.

Creative Santa Fe took on the challenge after their own outreach revealed a growing need for affordable housing. “We found our young creative people were leaving because there was not enough,” says Cyndi Conn, the group’s executive director.

Four years ago, the city and Creative Santa Fe released a request for proposals to secure a local developer, bringing Werwath on board. That was followed with a search for a locally led design collaborative.

As the team came together, funding remained a challenge. “The last couple years have just been totally wild in tax credit development,” Werwath says. “The tax law changes have upended that funding source, while tariffs and other things going on are drastically increasing construction costs.”

“We have been fighting,” Werwath says, “to fit this very non-conventional project into very conventional funding sources.”

The obstacles are significant. The state tax credit program selection criteria awards more points to projects using less subsidy. Since the Arts+Creativity Center would be in a high-cost area, it is at a disadvantage.

The ambitious design also brought up costs. A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts allowed the team to carry out an intensive, inclusive engagement process including all stripes of Santa Fe creatives, from a rock musician to Native American ceramicist to lowrider car artist.

“We started looking at how to re-invent live/work housing,” says Shawn Evans, one of the project architects. The collaborative came up with a transformative proposal for the former sewage treatment plant, with eight residential buildings rising two or three stories with a range of bedroom configurations.

Every home features high ceilings and an attached work studio. Large windows lining community rooms look out to a centralized “spine” which connects a plaza and playgrounds. A shared resource center will be part makerspace and part workforce development.

“The design reflects what [the team] was hearing from people,” says Alexandra Ladd, director of Santa Fe’s Office of Affordable Housing. “But we’ve had councilors concerned that if there’s public investment, the dollars should be stretched as far as they can possibly go.”

At the January City Council meeting, tensions arose when a counselor questioned what he felt was a high subsidy for just 65 units. Ladd wanted to get away from the notion that “you can make each unit less expensive [by building] more units,” she said at the time, adding that “we are taking big steps away from the idea that you warehouse poor people.”

As the city and state weighed in on subsidies, the Arts+Creativity Center team got increasingly creative in securing funding. Energy efficiency was an early priority, but the tax credit program stopped offering points for green building, Werwath says.

But as the cost of solar dropped, the team took a second look at building sustainability last year. The future energy savings would significantly reduce operational costs, they found. To help offset the cost of installation and lower their need for subsidy, they pitched a fundraising campaign to locals.

“There was a huge response to building affordable housing and climate change intervention,” Werwath says. In two months they raised over $350,000.

The tax credit application is due this month and the team will know if they receive funding by May. “If we get that funding commitment, we’ll be under construction around this time next year,” Werwath says.

Conn believes this project can be a prototype for tackling Santa Fe’s affordable housing need in more creative ways. According to the city’s Office of Affordable Housing, Santa Fe’s market lacks at least 2,400 units to serve renters earning less than 50 percent of the area median income.

The goal, however, should be facilitating projects at a faster pace, Conn says. “We still need to figure out a lot of other ways to build affordable housing in our city short term,” she adds. “If it takes eight years to build 65 units, we’re never going to solve the problem.”

This article is part of “For Whom, By Whom,” a series of articles about how creative placemaking can expand opportunities for low-income people living in disinvested communities. This series is generously underwritten by the Kresge Foundation.

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NM Democrats propose bills to diversify state’s economy

SANTA FE, N.M.- New Mexico Democrats are introducing bills that they say will fundamentally change the state’s economic structure.

Currently, the oil and gas industry makes up about 45 percent of New Mexico’s revenue.

However, Democrats would like to open up a market for recreational marijuana, boost the film industry by lifting the tax incentive cap and create internships to get more young people involved in the film industry.

“We’ve had eight years of economic contraction and population stagnation in New Mexico and the time is now to turn it around and these bills are, we think are, going to be at the forefront of re-energizing our state’s economy,” said House Speaker Brian Egolf

While Democrats focus on how to grow the economy, Republicans are critical of how they plan to the revenue.

House Bill 2 passed out of committee Monday. It would increase state spending to nearly $7 billion.

Republicans believe the plan is irresponsible.

Rep Jason Harper released a statement that said, “This level of spending is reckless, unsustainable and will only lead to tax increases on all New Mexico families this year and cuts to education in the future."

House Republicans plan to release their own spending plan later in the week.

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Subscribe to The Civic Report

Top-notch reporting, thoughtful analysis and insightful opinions. Get your digital news magazine in your inbox each week to stay on top of national news.

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Bill would make New Mexico a ‘sanctuary state’: NM Legislature news

Crews worked last year to replace a piece of a bollard fence in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. The section is part of a 20-mile stretch of fence at the U.S.-Mexico border.

(Photo: RUBEN R. RAMIREZ/EL PASO TIMES)

SANTA FE, N.M. — A New Mexico bill could turn the state with the nation’s largest percentage of Hispanic residents into a "sanctuary state."

Identical Democratic proposals in the New Mexico House and Senate would prevent state agencies from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. It also limits the authority of sheriffs and jails to hold federal immigrant detainees.

More: More than 200 migrants detained by Border Patrol in desolate NM border

More: New migrant caravan from Honduras makes way toward Mexico

The bill comes after Democrats recently extended their majority in the state House and after Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham took office.

The proposal also comes as a number of New Mexico cities and towns have declared themselves "sanctuaries" for immigrants living in the country illegally.

Activists have pressed cities and towns for the declaration amid President Donald Trump’s call to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and other immigration enforcement proposals.

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Interesting New Mexico Attractions From Cities All Over The State

It is time to stop by some more attractions all over the state of New Mexico. It is hard to pick and choose, but you want to keep a diversified list so that you make your way around and see and do different things. Last time we visited several cities in New Mexico and some cool attractions, and I intend to do the same thing with you this time. Let’s see what city and attraction are first up.

Las Cruces, New Mexico is home to one of the top natural atractions, and if you haven’t noticed, that is saying something. So much of the landscape in New Mexico is part of some type of natural attraction. It is a beautiful state for sure, and the attraction in Las Cruces is the Dripping Springs Natural Area. You can find it on Dripping Springs Road, and of course there is a visitors center there as well.

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Progressives take the lead in northern NM

Susan Herrera watches election results with friends during a watch party at the Blue Heron Brewery in Española on Tuesday night. Herrera appeared to have knocked off longterm state Rep. Debbie Rodella in House District 41. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal)

SANTA FE — Challengers who ran as progressives against northern New Mexico incumbents Debbie Rodella and Carl Trujillo appeared to be on their way to victories late Tuesday night in pair of bitterly contested Democratic primary races for state House of Representatives seats.

Andrea Romero, an ostrich farmer and former executive director of the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities, had accumulated more than 55 percent of the vote against incumbent and national lab scientist Carl Trujillo — who is facing sexual harassment allegations by a Roundhouse lobbyist — in northern Santa Fe County’s District 46 in incomplete but substantial returns.

Romero has been plagued by her own controversy over spending public dollars for booze and baseball tickets for Coalition events. Her contract to run the organization expired amid the controversy.

Rodella, in office for 25 years, was losing to Susan Herrera, former executive director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation, in District 41, centered around Española in Rio Arriba County, and also including parts of Santa Fe and Taos County. Herrera had 56 percent of the vote.

Andrea Romero

Both challengers took liberal stances on issues such as abortion rights and gun control, and maintained that the two incumbents were too conservative for their heavily Democratic districts.

Romero said she received a phone call from House Speaker Brian Egolf late in the evening saying things were looking good for her.

“It’s about unity,” she said. “We have a very big district. We stood up for the things we believe in in what is a richly Democratic district.” She said Trujillo’s position on abortion rights, and the money from big oil and gas that went to him were not in tune with Democratic Party values. Trujillo maintained his positions were misrepresented.

“Now it’s about coming together,” Romero said. The Democratic primary winners in Districts 46 and 41 face no opposition in the November general election.

In other northern New Mexico Democratic House races, Los Alamos County councilor and former attorney with Los Alamos National Laboratory Christine Chandler had 53 percent of the vote against Peter Sheehey, her colleague on the council and a retired lab physicist, in District 43. The winner faces off against Republican Lisa Shin in the November general election.

In a three-way race in District 40, Joseph Sanchez, of Alcalde, an electrical engineer and former director of the Jemez Mountains Electrical Cooperative, was outpacing Paula Garcia, executive director of the New Mexico Acequia Association and a Mora County commissioner, and Rio Arriba County Commissioner Barney Trujillo. Sanchez had 49 percent of the votes counted.

In other races:

– Adan Mendoza had pulled away from the pack in the four-way race for Santa Fe County sheriff. He had 43 percent to 36 percent for Linda Ortiz. Leonard Romero and Manuel Anaya were far back.

– In a state District Court judge race in the 1st Judicial District, Maria Sanchez-Gagne appeared to have knocked off incumbent Greg Shaffer, who was appointed to the Division II bench by Gov. Susana Martinez in October. Gagne-Sanchez had 34 percent to 31 percent for Shaffer, with Donna Bevacqua-Young and Jerry Archuleta further back.

– Jason Lidyard, who was appointed to Division V District Court judgeship in the First Judicial District by the governor, was prevailing against Matthew Jackson, earning 60 percent of the votes

– Incumbent David Segura was headed for victory over Jerry Gonzales in the race for Division 1 magistrate judge in Santa Fe County. He had about 78 percent of votes counted by 10 p.m. John Rysanek, a lawyer, was leading over former State Police officer Sam Sena in the Division 3 magistrate judge race. Rysanek had about 53 percent.

– In the race for Santa Fe County commissioner in District 3, Santa Fe school board member Rudy Garcia was well ahead of Donald Reece and Filandro Anaya, both from the southern part of the county. Garcia had 59 percent of the vote.

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Drought endangers newly planted trees in Santa Fe

It seemed like a perfect plan. Until, that is, New Mexico’s merciless drought sucked the life out of it.

In March, contractors hired by Santa Fe County harvested some 15,000 willow stalks growing in thick clumps along lower portions of the Santa Fe River.

The workers soaked the willows in water for five days — a move intended to give their roots a boost — and then transplanted them upstream as part of a long-running river reconstruction and trail project known as the Santa Fe River Greenway.

“We did the plantings [in March] so that the willows went in while they were still dormant and before they budded, which gives them their best chance of survival,” said Scott Kaseman, Santa Fe River Greenway project manager.

Over the course of two weeks, the thousands of willows, along with 142 cottonwood saplings, were planted along the banks of the usually dry riverbed between Frenchy’s Field and Siler Road, an area currently under construction as part of the greenway project.

“We were counting on an average year of snowpack to have our standard release [of water in the Santa Fe River], which can last for weeks sometimes,” Kaseman explained. “If there wasn’t that significant of a runoff, then as a backup, if we had a living water release, then we thought we could count on that.”

But what little snowpack that Santa Fe received in the mountains melted off rapidly this year, and the so-called “living river” releases may be more like a trickle.

“With target flows projected to be at the minimum level of 300 acre-feet, it seems unlikely that a significant amount of the target flows will reach the new plantings,” according to city documents.

Under the city’s Living River Ordinance, up to 1,000 acre-feet of water is scheduled to be released annually into the Santa Fe River from the reservoirs in the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed. But that depends on the availability of water, which is in short supply this year.

Now, the thousands of young trees are in peril — and city and county officials are grappling with how to give them enough water to develop healthy, extensive roots in the parched soil, which would increase their chances to survive.

Earlier this year, the county asked the city to do a one-time pulse release on the Santa Fe River.

“Pulses are designed to mimic natural cycles,” said Melissa McDonald, the city’s river and watershed coordinator. “Since our river is somewhat controlled by releases, the pulse would mimic what happens in nature, so we would be sending increased flow of water downstream, which would effectively water the willows.”

But in the midst of a persistent drought, the city reluctantly rejected the county’s request.

“We had our hands tied with the fact that we have a bypass constraint [that restricts how much water can be released into the river], and we’re not even doing pulses this year,” McDonald said.

At the request of the county, the city explored other options, including using effluent water from the city’s wastewater treatment plant. But after evaluating the permitting required to use effluent, “it seems that the permitting would be too slow to allow this option to be timely,” according to city documents.

Another option: Tap into the city-owned Osage Well, which could deliver water to the river channel just upstream of the newly planted section of the river trail.

“I remember a couple of years ago, there was a fire upstream and then the rains came and it swept a whole bunch of debris and soot into the Rio Grande and we had to shut down the [Buckman Direct Diversion] for a number of days,” Councilor Chris Rivera, a former city fire chief, said at a recent Finance Committee meeting.

“If we ran into some situation like that where we’re running minimum capacity up at the reservoirs, BDD is down and we’re having to use all our wells, we’re in a world of hurt at that point,” he said.

City Councilor Signe Lindell and others questioned the wisdom of the county planting thousands of young trees during a drought.

“I’d like to have some more trees at my house, but I determined that we’re in a drought and that it wasn’t really prudent for me to plant trees,” Lindell said. “I would think that professionals would’ve maybe thought that through a little bit more.”

“I’ve been here 15 years and it’s as bad as I’ve seen in 15 years,” he said.

“We do have the contractor doing supplemental watering to get them through to the monsoons, but nothing can beat getting the channel bed soaked really well,” he said.

“The county already had the funding and design completed, so they went ahead and did the river restoration and trail construction,” Kaseman said. “But since the area is (now) within city limits, the city agreed to take over the maintenance and operation after the 12-month warranty period has taken place.”

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Hong Kong, New York and London Top World Luxury Markets

Hong Kong topped the rankings for the second year in a row.

Hong Kong, where a manufacturer bought a lavish mansion last year for US$360 million (HK$2.8 billion), is the world’s most luxurious housing market, according to annual rankings by Christie’s International Real Estate released Wednesday.

The Chinese city-state claimed the title for the second year, as it houses several of the world’s priciest homes and has attracted considerable activity from mainland Chinese buyers, according to 2017-18 data gathered from 80 luxury housing markets worldwide. New York, in second place, overtook London, which was in a distant third place, said Dan Conn, chief executive of Christie’s International Real Estate.

“London is still dealing with a hangover from Brexit,” Mr. Conn said.

London aside, much of the global political and economic uncertainty that dampened high-end activity between 2016 into the beginning of 2017 has given way to robust sales in both primary home markets and vacation areas, according to the report.

Hong Kong offers a prime example: Homes continue to trade hands for record-breaking prices despite government efforts to cool the market with increased property taxes.

The most expensive home to sell in 2018 was a US$178 million (HK$1.4 billion) detached house on Hong Kong’s exclusive Mount Nicholson. The city is poised to set all-time sales records if a mansion on The Peak sells for its US$445.9 million (HK$3.5 billion) asking price—now the most expensive known listing in the world, according to the brokerage.

Meanwhile, the so-called affordable luxury market has carried New York City, the runner up in Christie’s rankings. The market for Manhattan’s priciest homes has softened as a result of too much inventory, but robust sales “particularly at the lower-end of the luxury market” bolstered the city’s position, according to the report.

Across 80 markets, total luxury sales rose 11% in 2017, compared to a meager 1% increase in 2016.

Second-home markets saw a dramatic turnaround from 2016. Santa Fe, New Mexico, topped Christie’s list of the hottest second-home markets.

The southwestern city, along with Sarasota, Florida, and Sun Valley, Idaho, have all seen a resurgence of demand for $1 million-plus properties not seen since before the 2008 market crash. Demand in those places has put a strain on supply and pushed prices up, Mr. Conn said in a presentation on the findings Wednesday morning.

Santa Fe has always been a strong cultural center that has traditionally drawn buyers from northern climates, Mr. Conn said. “It’s waited 10 years to become the darling of the market.”

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Trailer park place: Examining life in a singlewide

When scholars Sonya Salamon and Katherine MacTavish set out to examine life in rural American trailer parks, they decided to focus on the young families who lived there. They also wanted to describe a spectrum of places in terms of park quality. For their book, Singlewide: Chasing the American Dream in a Rural Trailer Park (Cornell University Press, 2017), they studied families with school-aged children in three areas where trailer parks proliferate: eastern North Carolina, central Illinois, and southern New Mexico. For privacy purposes, all the book’s references to people and places, including cities and trailer-park names, are pseudonyms, but the book realistically portrays trailer living in each unique area chosen by the authors.

One of the economic markers in these parks is the presence or absence of doublewide units, which cost at least twice as much as singlewides. In Illinois’ Prairieview Manor, 38 percent of residents live in doublewides. By contrast, none of the lots in the trailer parks of the town the authors call Mesa Vista, located south of Albuquerque along the Río Grande, are large enough to accommodate a doublewide. And as one of the resident park managers said, “If you can buy a doublewide, you can usually afford a piece of land to put it on.”

The book’s title, and a pivot for the study, is the notion that owning a home on your own piece of land is an important value in the United States. The citizens studied by Salamon and MacTavish all appeared to believe that life would be better in a “real” house. In a recent interview, Salamon said, “We do make a policy argument in the conclusion that this is really good low-income housing. It can be better than putting people in rural apartment buildings. We do see it as a good option, but they’re often not well built.” A Consumers Union survey showed that one-fourth of mobile-home owners had particle-board subfloors that swelled when wet and about one-third had leaky sinks, showers, windows, doors, or roofs.

The fundamental point explored by the authors, as they put it in their introduction, titled “Galvanized Ghettos,” is “whether trailer parks are a good, or at least neutral, place to raise families.” New Mexico’s Mesa Vista is a place with more than a dozen trailer parks. A short profile is given of Darlene, a resident of Tumbleweed, which is one of the nicer parks, with a small children’s play area and mature cottonwood trees shading the trailers. She has two kids, works at a fast-food restaurant, and gets help from her brothers to keep her vehicle running because her husband, a trucker, is usually on the road. At the other end of the quality gamut is Sandia Estates, where all the trailer-park stereotypes seem to be validated: “A dirty young child dressed only in a diaper wanders unsupervised, a shirtless man works beneath the hood of a truck with no wheels, a mangy stray dog roams the streets in search of scraps, and a toothless woman sits on her back steps smoking an afternoon cigarette.”

The field studies for Singlewide were made between 1998 and 2001. To immerse themselves in each distinctive milieu, the researchers shopped locally, ate in the restaurants, attended sports events and church activities, and subscribed to the local newspapers. For the Mesa Vista profile, they surveyed 79 (randomly selected) households and did more intimate studies of 10 families.

According to 2000 census data, New Mexico has the second highest proportion of manufactured homes to the overall housing supply. At 18.6 percent, it’s outranked only by South Carolina. In the Mesa Vista parks, 60 percent of the trailers are occupied by families, and two-thirds of the households are primarily Hispanic. Many of the Anglo residents there had migrated from California and the Midwest, in the latter case because of the milder climate in southern New Mexico. At the time of the study, the median income was $17,355. Looking at education, 23 percent of the owners had not graduated from high school, but 14 percent had a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Interestingly, the “trailer trash” epithet was raised only a few times during the study in Mesa Vista,and in fact, class distinction based on economics did not appear to be crucial. MacTavish and Salamon said status “is more about claims to community than about being a have or a have-not.”

During the yearlong study periods in the three U.S. locations, just one family from each location made the move from trailer to houses on owned land. The one from Mesa Vista was Ruby Martinez-Roberts, a Hispanic divorcee in her thirties. When MacTavish first visited her, she found a “well-designed singlewide trailer [owned by Ruby] with a large, cheerful kitchen.” The researcher discovered that Ruby had kin living nearby. That meant a source of support but also annoyance: “My family is nosy and dominating,” Martinez-Roberts said. During the study, Ruby met an acquaintance of her brother who had a good job in a neighboring state. The two were subsequently married and moved into a conventional home. The authors emphasize that this was a marriage based not on love, but on Ruby’s pragmatic plans for more stability and a house that would offer her kids more space, more solitude, and less “adventuring,” as she described trailer life. “They’re still married and they’re still in their home,” MacTavish said in late March.

MacTavish is a fourth-generation New Mexican from Magdalena in Socorro County who earned her doctorate in human and community development at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where Salamon taught for more than four decades. A Pittsburgh native, Salamon and her husband have had a second home in Santa Fe since 1990, but have been full-time residents of the city since 2013. She is the author of Prairie Patrimony: Family, Farming, and Community in the Midwest (1992) and Newcomers to Old Towns: Suburbanization of the Heartland (2003). “Sonya was my major professor for my PhD. I chose that school in large part because I wanted to study with her,” said MacTavish, who is associate professor of human development and family science at Oregon State University and lives in Corvallis.

In their book, MacTavish and Salamon say that Ruby and the two others who evolved out of the mobile-home situation had some significant commonalities. All were high-school graduates with some higher education or skill training; all had at least one partner in a stable full-time job; all had firm plans — not just fantasies — about transitioning into a conventional home; and none were overwhelmed with debt. “The three families understand James Baldwin’s memorable observation about the struggle ‘with how extremely expensive it is to be poor,’ ” they write in the conclusion, “Family Dreams and Trailer-Park Realities.”

Park residents’ expenses typically included high-interest-rate “chattel loans” for their trailers and for rent prices “that essentially make families, as Baldwin said, a captive population.” The authors said the residents they surveyed all held the dream of being able to move into a regular house on their own land, and saw trailer living as a stepping stone. “I think the key was finding someone in the community to mentor them,” Salamon said. “That could be a minister, or we had one that got involved with a middle-class family.” However, on this matter of moving, the authors make this point: “Each family was strongly motivated by their rejection of living permanently in a trailer park rather than by rejection of a trailer as housing per se.”

One of the four questions explored in the book is, “Are there lasting effects to family and child identity that come from living in a trailer park?” “That was mixed,” Salamon said. “We thought it had the most impact in the whites and not in the minority populations. The Hispanics in the Mesa Vista parks and the blacks in North Carolina were so attached to the community with church.” MacTavish, who once lived in an Oregon trailer park, added, “Ironically, when people owned the land, which we think of as one of the policy solutions, that gave them more freedoms that not everyone appreciated: the chicken coop and the several vehicles that don’t run, for example.”

The second question was, “Does owning a trailer home in a trailer park pay off as the first rung on a housing-tenure ladder for rural families?” The answer is a qualified yes: just three out of 248 families made the move during the study year. A big part of the problem — part of the trap — is the financial fix in which trailer folks find themselves. No one is immune from the impacts of their own decisions, but predatory business practices are definitely at play here. Salamon often refers to the “Mobile Home Industrial Complex.” “That was coined by my husband, who’s a physicist,” she said. “The largest manufacturers, financers, and trailer park owners are interlinked and some are vertically integrated [co-owned].”

In the chapter titled “The Mobile Home Industrial Complex,” the authors examine manufacturers, dealers, and financers, trailer parks that are operated as a real-estate commodity, and the industrialization of trailer-park investment and management. “Look at Clayton Homes, the biggest producer of mobile homes. They sell them and I think they have trailer parks, too,” Salamon said. “It’s part of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway company.” Clayton Homes also sells property insurance on its mobile homes, and repossesses them when borrrowers are in arrears, according to the results of a joint investigation by The Center for Public Integrity and The Seattle Times. The findings, released in 2015, said Clayton Homes “operates under at least 18 names, leading many buyers to think they’re shopping around.” In addition, the investigation found that “Clayton Homes lends at interest rates that can top 15 percent, and often adds thousands in fees to borrowers’ loans.”

The final question was, “Does a rural trailer park have the power to define the life chances of the children and youth who grow up there?” On the surface, the question has disappointing implications, but there is a rainbow visible in their first profile snippet in the book: a twenty-year-old single mother named Amy whose purchase of a new trailer home was a dramatic step in providing a stable environment for her daughters. “Trailer parks for many of those parents were a much more stable existence than what they had themselves experienced,” Salamon said. “They were able to step away from the alcohol and drug addiction, the high mobility, and the hard living to give their kids a different kind of launching place.”

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Nakamura affirmed as NM Supreme Court chief justice

The Associated Press

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) – Justice Judith Nakamura has been re-elected by her colleagues as chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court.

The court announced Friday that Nakamura will hold the leadership post for a two-year term.

Nakamura has been chief justice since June 2017, when she succeeded Justice Charles Daniels to fill the remainder of his term in the position.

As chief justice, she presides over court hearings and conferences and is the administrative authority over personnel, budgetary matters and general operations of all state courts. She also advocates for the judiciary branch on legislative and funding issues.

Nakamura joined the Supreme Court in December 2015. She served previously as a state district judge and was a Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court judge.

(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

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Española schools avoid steep penalty

April 28–Española Public Schools will not have to pay $2.5 million of a $3.2 million settlement in a 2014 lawsuit involving a former teacher accused of sexually assaulting students in Santa Fe and Española, as officials previously feared.

The New Mexico Public Schools Insurance Authority will pay $750,000 to satisfy a deductible for the claim, according to a claims supervisor. And private insurers will cover the balance of the $3.2 million paid to the family of a fourth-grader who said she was sexually assaulted by the onetime teacher Gary Gregor at Fairview Elementary School during the 2007-08 school year.

The insurance authority and private insurers reached the arrangement in arbitration after one of the private firms balked at paying the settlement, arguing the school district knew or should have known — but didn’t disclose on its insurance forms — that Gregor had been accused of sexual misconduct before he began working in Española schools.

Gregor has faced repeated allegations of abusing students since the mid-1990s — first in Utah, then in Montana — but he continued to teach young students for about 15 years after the first accusations emerged.

Concerns about him were raised in Santa Fe in 2004, and the parents of at least one young female student in Española filed a report with police in 2009, alleging he had abused their daughter.

The state Attorney General’s Office indicted Gregory on criminal charges in 2017. Since then, he has been held in jail, awaiting trial on more than a dozen counts of criminal sexual contact or criminal sexual penetration of a child under 13.

The $3.2 million settlement is the second one officials have reached with plaintiffs who claimed Gregor sexually assaulted their children. Another case was settled for $4.37 million, and complaints by four more former students of inappropriate conduct by Gregor are pending, according to claims supervisor Gary Ramirez.

Under the agreement with the insurance carriers, Española Public Schools will avoid having to pay the disputed amount in the $3.2 million case, but the settlements also could mean an increase in the annual premium the district pays to the insurance authority for coverage.

"It’s my understanding that they might have to pay more into the pool if it’s determined that they behaved in a reckless or negligent manner," said attorney Carolyn Nichols, who represents the plaintiffs in the case.

Española Public Schools’ annual premium is $1.58 million, according to the insurance authority’s chief financial officer, Richard Valerio, who said existing polices allow the premium to be increased by up to 25 percent per year.

At the school’s current rate, that could be an increase of as much as $400,000 per year.

Money aside, Nichols said Friday: "I hope [the schools] are motivated just by the fact that there has been so many victims of this one individual, to be more vigilant just to protect their students."

Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3068 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com. Follow her on Twitter at @phaedraann.

___

(c)2018 The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.)

Visit The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.) at www.santafenewmexican.com

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Santa Fe’s Luna Capital Weighs in on Impact of Steel and Aluminum Tariffs on Brewing Businesses, Makes Recommendations – Albuquerque Business First

SANTA FE, N.M., April 18, 2018 Luna Capital, a brokerage and real estate firm based in Santa Fe, New Mexico with a specialty in brewing businesses anticipates new steel tariffs will effect brewing companies immediately. Luna weighs in on the Trump administration’s February announcement regarding imposed tariffs—25% on steel and 10% on aluminum–below.

Aluminum

According to the Brewers Association, 30% of craft beer now comes in an aluminum can, and small brewers that produce 10,000 barrels or less per year represent the fastest growing segment of those who can. Additionally, breweries that have been open less that a year chose to can over any other option.

Aluminum accounts for 5 – 7% of the cost of producing a can of beer. In the worst case, a 10% increase in the price of aluminum results in a modest margin impact to the brewery. It will be less than pennies per can. There’s roughly 3 to 7 cents of aluminum in a can of beer. A 10% tariff is 3/10ths to 7/10ths of a cent.

The exemption of Mexico and Canada from tariffs eases the pain, as about two-thirds of aluminum imports come from Canada, lessening the tariff burden to an even more manageable level.

Steel

The greatest burden that craft brewers will feel is in cost of steel. Manufacturers of mash, brew kettle, fermenters and bright tanks will likely increase prices as a precautionary measure to protect their margins.

Companies will need to evaluate whether absorbing the costs or passing them onto their customers is more prudent.

Luna Recommendation

"Now may be the time to review the types of supplier contracts brewers have in place, review their growth strategy (new equipment, which contains steel), and negotiate contracts appropriately. Additionally, there are mechanics in place to hedge risks via futures contracts or swaps, but note, these market-hedging strategies carry inherent risks," said Luna Senior Vice President, Senior Development Officer, Davies Crasta.

About Luna Capital: Founded in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2013, Luna Capital is a proactive and transparent commercial lending advisor providing capital resources and real estate expertise to businesses in the Southwest and nationally. Through careful analysis and planning, Luna becomes an invested long-term partner for their clients, engaging the business on every financial detail by building out customized plans that are then carefully overseen and guided. Luna is an exceptional creative force in an industry not known as such. Their thorough process and relationships with banks, SBA programs, private lenders, private equity and individual sponsors elevates their loan approval rate to nearly 100%. CEO Kris Axtell founded the company after a decade in the banking industry. He was joined by COO and Managing Member Brandon Fitzpatrick, an MAI trained appraiser and qualifying broker, in 2016. For more information about the Luna Capital team and services, visit: http://www.luna.capital.

SOURCE Luna Capital

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Don Imus ranch for sale at $19.9M in northern NM

Santa Fe real estate agent Craig Huitfeldt of Keller Williams has the ranch listed at $19.9 million, $10 million less than was originally listed. The property includes more than 29,000 square feet of living space and an additional 35,000 square feet of barns and other structures.

The ranch has operated as a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization that benefits children with cancer. Ever since Imus and his wife founded the ranch back in 1998, it has housed children for nine-day visits during the summer months.

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Navajo water ruling will be appealed to NM Supreme Court

SANTA FE – An attorney for non-Indian water users in northwest New Mexico says he will appeal a decision by the New Mexico Court of Appeals upholding an agreement between the Navajo Nation and state government settling Navajo water rights claims in the San Juan River basin.

Lawyer Victor Marshall of Albuquerque, who represents acequia and ditch associations in the area, said he will take the case to the state Supreme Court. “We will appeal this decision because this decision destroys New Mexico’s remaining water supply,” said Marshall.

On Tuesday, a panel of the Court of Appeals affirmed a 2013 decision by James Wechsler, a former appeals court judge who was sitting as a presiding district court judge in the Navajo water case.

Wechsler approved a tribal-state agreement recognizing the Navajo Nation’s right to divert 635,729 acre-feet of water per year, which translates to consumption of 325,756 acre-feet annually. Consumption is defined under state law as the total amount of water diverted, minus what’s returned for use by others downstream.

Supporters of the settlement said it removes major uncertainties over water availability for non-Indians in the San Juan basin, because of the risk that the Navajo Nation might have gone to court and won a substantially larger amount of water.

Marshall notes that under the agreement, the Navajo Nation gets six times more water than the Albuquerque metro area. He maintains that the agreement also will reduce the amount of so-called San Juan-Chama water — San Juan basin water piped across the continental divide to flow into the Rio Grande — for Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

And the deal “means tribes throughout New Mexico are entitled to huge amounts of water at the expense of everyone else,” said Marshall.

The New Mexico Office of the State Engineer disputes Marshall’s assertions. “The decision from the court does not have any impact on San Juan-Chama water deliveries. Indian Water Rights settlements are negotiated case by case based on the merits of their claims,” said an OSE statement.

The agreement’s defenders call comparing the Navajo Nation’s water rights to those of big cities an apples-to-oranges comparison, because all of New Mexico’s agricultural water agencies use substantially more water for irrigation than is used by cities.

The settlement increases the Navajo Nation’s share of the state’s water from 6 percent to 10 percent, according to a 2013 Journal analysis.

Marshall said he had no comment on the Court of Appeals sanctioning him in strongly critical language for accusations he made about Wechsler’s actions in the case and what Marshall contended was a conflict of interest for the judge. “That’s not what’s important,” he said.

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Hyundai Brings New Santa Fe, Refreshed Tucson, Electric Kona To NY

2019 Hyundai Santa Fe

Hyundai will livestream its press conference from the New York Auto Show on Wednesday, March 28, at 12:45 PM EDT (4:45 AM GMT), and the company will have quite a bit to announce there, too. The automaker will have the latest Santa Fe, a refreshed Tucson, and an electric version of the Kona at quite an SUV-heavy event for the South Korean brand.

The new Santa Fe (gallery below) already debuted at the Geneva Motor Show, and Motor1.com even had an opportunity to drive it. However, Hyundai hasn’t yet showed the SUV to customers in the United States, though. As a five-passenger model, the new Santa Fe replaces the previous Santa Fe Sport. Seven seats are still available on the Santa Fe XL. Two gasoline-fueled engines are available: a 2.4-liter four-cylinder with an estimated 185 horsepower (138 kilowatts) and a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder with 232 hp (173 kW). A 2.2-liter turbodiesel is exclusively available on the XL and produces 200 hp (149 kW) and 320 lb-ft (434 Newton-meters).

There are far fewer public details about the refreshed Tucson available. Spy shots suggest the possibility of a major design change at the nose, including new headlights and a larger grille. Hyundai’s camouflage does a good job of keeping the model under wraps, but expect tweaks to the rear, too. Inside, tech updates are among the likely improvements.

Hyundai also debuted the electric Kona at the Geneva Motor Show. It looks practically identical to other versions but features an electric motor producing 133 hp (99 kW) and 291 lb-ft (395 Nm). A 39.2-kilowatt-hour battery provides 186 miles (300 kilometers) in the new WLTP, which allegedly provides more realistic numbers than the old NEDC evaluation. A higher-level model features a motor with 201 hp (150 kW) and 291 lb-ft (395 Nm). A 64-kWH battery provides 292 miles (470 kilometers) of driving range.

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Santa Fe Natural Tobacco to close hometown office

SANTA FE, N.M. — Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. is closing its office in the New Mexico city where it was founded.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reports the business had maintained an office in the city despite being acquired years ago by North Carolina-based tobacco giant Reynolds American Inc.

This summer, the fewer than 20 people who work in Santa Fe must either move to North Carolina or leave the company. The bulk of Santa Fe Natural Tobacco’s manufacturing and distribution has been centered in North Carolina since 1996.

The move will close a chapter on one of the more successful startups to take root in Santa Fe. The company built Natural American Spirit cigarettes into a bestselling premium brand.

The company was founded in a shed at the Santa Fe Railyard in 1982 by a group of investors.

Information from: The Santa Fe New Mexican, http://www.sfnewmexican.com

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