CURRENT ISSUES

Patricia Willson 

Victory Hills NA: Past President 

District 6 Coalition: Treasurer Inter-Coalition Council Representative  

PLANNING SHOULD BE DONE BY THE PLANNERS!

On Jan.6th, the City Council passed O-24-69: several amendments to the Integrated Development Ordinance (IDO); the City’s zoning code. These changes not only ‘upzoned’ a wide swath along Central, 4th Street, Broadway, and Bridge, but other parts of the bill make it nearly impossible for a neighborhood association or coalition to appeal a project. Upzoning is the process of allowing duplexes, townhomes and apartments permissively—often along transit corridors—to increase density. 

Upzoning has mixed reviews; see links to articles below. In some cases, it provides successful TOD (transit oriented development). In other instances, it harms the low-income people it was intended to help—creating gentrification, causing areas to become richer and whiter, and forcing lower income, transit dependent people further out.

O-24-69 was entirely drafted by the City Council; the Planning Department had no hand in it. The nine members of our City Council have a wide range of talent, skills, and backgrounds, yet none of them have professional expertise in urban planning, architecture, traffic engineering or transit design.

How can we assure that the upzoning created by the passage of O-24-69 will result in good outcomes, and not harm lower income people and further marginalize our neighborhoods?

O-24-69 does not truly address the issues of housing and homelessness. The development community successfully used that re-framing to get what they wanted—little to no oversight by Neighborhood Associations and Coalitions. The bill decimated the IDO amendment process (a carefully curated march through Committee and public review and input) and severely compromised your right of appeal. Who has the time and money to collect signatures and pay court costs? Members of Strong Towns ABQ are concerned about ever being able to buy a house, developers are concerned about their quarterly profit.

Approval for any development here should include an analysis of:

1) Water use sustainability

2) Its true role in the economy (cannabis dispensaries, car washes, drive-thru coffee shops and cheap apartments are real estate development, not economic development)

3) Labor market: our quality of schools does not attract high-wage jobs

4) Increased heat and fire danger—just look at Los Angeles...

5) Land carrying capacity (the U.N. reports how increasing density aggravates desert aridification)

While the bill passed with a veto-proof majority, Mayor Keller believes that neighborhood engagement is an important aspect of City government and has expressed his desire to repair the Neighborhood Association Recognition Ordinance (NARO) and the IDO’s exclusion of previously established sector plans. Again, how can we assure that the upzoning created by the passage of O-24-69 will result in good outcomes, and not harm lower income people and further marginalize our neighborhoods?

Information about upzoning:

A January 3rdarticle on Strong Towns, “The Best Evidence Yet for the “Housing Musical Chairs” Theory”, discusses the ‘migration chain’: the sequence of associated moves when someone moves into nicer market rate housing, then their older, less-nice place becomes available for someone with a lower income. Link to that article: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/1/3/the-best-evidence-yet-for-the-housing-musical-chairs-theory?fbclid=IwY2xjawHvaCJleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHa1i2HfN13BVKojNcX41To6U7Z32Eni5E1cJTgGGXG9rLt4JTrSBmk9DVA_aem_RnJRjUx1XE4HIzO3VlgaMQ

The source material for this is a study out of Sweden https://stephenhoskins.notion.site/Liang-Kindstr-m-2023-Does-new-housing-for-the-rich-benefit-the-poor-On-trickle-down-effects-of--982d9cca809b475b86faca56f131a99b (however, Sweden has a noticeably richer and more homogenous population).

This study presents a case for the dangers of up-zoning; that it can increase gentrification and actually cause neighborhoods to become richer and whiter. Here is a link to “Upzoning and gentrification: Heterogeneous impacts of neighborhood-level upzoning in NYC”: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00420980241298199

While the first two articles make a strong argument for this template, it may not translate well to a low-population, low-wage earning desert. New Mexico is facing unprecedented climate conditions that no state or country has solved.