Homewise plays outsize role in local efforts to battle affordable housing crisis

Yahoo

23-02-2025

When he joined Homewise Inc. in 1992 — then known as Neighborhood Housing Services of Santa Fe — the nonprofit had a staff of three people, said Mike Loftin, the group's CEO.
Over the last 30-plus years, that number has swelled to 120.
The growth didn't occur overnight, but it began shortly after Loftin signed on, leading Homewise to eventually become the biggest and most well-known player in Santa Fe's affordable housing movement.
Since its founding in 1986, Homewise has evolved from a group that offered about a dozen home improvement loans each year to a housing developer that has constructed hundreds of homes — some affordable, some at market value — and has helped thousands of local people become homebuyers. It also has opened an Albuquerque office and has received tens of millions of dollars from local and national philanthropic organizations to further its mission.
Three decades after its first development — 10 homes in the Las Acequias subdivision off Airport Road — the nonprofit secured a deal in 2024 to serve as master developer of the long-awaited third phase of the Tierra Contenta community in southwestern Santa Fe. The project could include up to 1,500 homes, at least 40% of them affordable. Homewise plans to sell some tracts of the 216-acre parcel to other affordable housing builders.
All that change over the years has brought both accolades and criticism.
In spring 2023, Homewise became embroiled in a dispute over a Santa Fe County proposal to expand the village of Agua Fría, designated by the state as a Traditional Historic Community, to territory northwest of Santa Fe targeted for annexation by the city.
Homewise owns 200 acres of the 1,077-parcel known as Area 1B, which it has long planned to develop in a project dubbed Senderos. Officials with the nonprofit had hoped to see the land annexed by the city, rather than included in Agua Fría, and requested a 'carve-out' exemption in a county ordinance expanding the village.
The County Commission approved the exemption in June 2023, but only after considerable bickering among parties involved.
However, the village expansion effort failed.
The city, which opposed the ordinance, filed a lawsuit in state District Court aiming to block it, and a judge ruled in May 2024 in the city's favor.
Homewise's Los Prados development — a 161-home project on South Meadows Road — also drew fierce opposition in 2023. A zoning change request for the 22-acre site led to contentious, hourslong public hearings before the city Planning Commission and City Council, pitting residents against affordable housing advocates.
Previously owned by Santa Fe County, which had planned to develop a park there, the parcel had been used by neighbors as open space. The county sold it to Homewise in 2021.
Many nearby residents argued vehemently against Los Prados during the land use hearings. Still, city officials voted in favor of the zoning change.
The Planning Commission recently approved a preliminary plat for the development at a far quieter meeting.
This wasn't the first time the nonprofit faced pushback from neighbors over its development plans. It won a fight in 2007 over a 50-home project on 15 acres along Old Las Vegas Highway, near Quail Run. Despite residents' objections, the City Council approved the plans.
Focus on first-time buyers
Homewise's road to community lightning rod began with Loftin's arrival in the early 1990s. He said one of the first things he did was initiate a series of conversations with the organization's clients — not about what Neighborhood Housing Services was doing but what it should be doing.
What he learned was eye opening, he said. Most of the organization's clients were elderly and had owned their own house for years, which explained why they were in the market for a home improvement loan.
What they were most concerned about was their children, who had grown up in Santa Fe but found themselves priced out of the local housing market, Loftin said, adding he repeatedly was asked if he could do something to help them.
He went to the board of directors and posed the same question. The notion received pushback, he said, with many board members saying it was already too late to do anything about Santa Fe's runaway home prices.
Loftin disagreed. Despite having only lukewarm support from the board, he launched a low-interest home loan program at the organization — rebranded to Homewise in the early 2000s — and that became the first step in a series of significant changes it would undergo over the next three decades.
'What I realized is that we had to get really good at helping people buy their own home,' Loftin said.
Along with the low-interest loan program, he started an education program for first-time homebuyers — the group that became the target audience for Homewise.
'A lot of builders didn't want to do mortgages for first-time homebuyers,' he said, noting such reluctance provided his organization with the opening it needed to get a foothold in the market.
'Where can we add value?'
That combination of circumstances and ambition allowed Homewise to quickly reach another level. And within two years, Loftin said, the organization was ready to ratchet up its presence again, becoming a builder.
He continued to ask himself one question whenever he considered adding new programs to the organization's portfolio: 'Where can we add value?'
Homewise's first foray into the building realm was in Las Acequias, a development between Agua Fria Street and Airport Road on the city's south side. The project consisted of 10 homes — small by Homewise's current standards.
'We were all really nervous,' Loftin said, adding few builders were constructing entry-level houses — one- or two-bedroom homes with one bathroom — in that era.
Homewise followed the lead of Borrego Construction, a family-owned builder in Santa Fe, in constructing those small homes, he said. In fact, Homewise bought the lots for the Las Acequias project from Borrego.
While Homewise has since begun constructing larger homes, especially the ones it sells for market value, Loftin regards the decision to start with small homes as a big gamble that paid off.
'One thing I really like about Homewise is, we're not afraid to try stuff,' he said.
Conventional wisdom held that there was no resale market for small houses. But when Loftin looked around, he saw plenty of single people or childless couples who might buy a small house.
Many families had stopped having two, three or four children, he said, but most builders hadn't taken notice, leaving buyers with little choice but to invest in a much larger house than they needed — something a lot of them couldn't afford.
Homewise continues to build smaller houses, Loftin said, noting Miraflores, one of its new developments in southern Santa Fe, features some one-bedroom, 524-square-foot houses.
'For a single person or couple, it's perfect,' he said.
'If we're ever going to make housing more affordable," he added, "we've got to have increased density and less square footage. We had to have a wider range of house types.'
The organization also has managed to trim costs — and sales prices — by challenging other bits of conventional wisdom in the industry.
Loftin said it has has eliminated mortgage insurance on the homes it sells, a requirement for most federal loans that protects the lender. It can significantly increase monthly costs for buyers.
'Nobody ever pays mortgage insurance at Homewise,' he said. 'We're working with the homeowner now. If they're successful, we're successful. … I really like the way we approach this. Basically, we saying to them, 'We're with you the whole 30 years.''
The Homewise staff has to work hard to maintain success, he said. If a homebuyer falls 10 days behind on a mortgage payment, they can expect a phone call from a Homewise staffer, inquiring what can be done to get back on track.
'If you do this the right way, there's no reason this is riskier,' he said.
Charitable foundations have taken notice of Homewise's efforts to create affordable housing and aid homebuyers.
It became the recipient of a $25 million, no-strings-attached gift last year from Seattle billionaire MacKenzie Scott's Yield Giving organization and a $10 million 'impact investment' from the Anchorum Health Foundation in Santa Fe.
Loftin called the Scott donation game-changing and said none of the money would be spent on the organization's operational costs.
Missteps along the way
Not everything Homewise has tried has worked, Loftin acknowledged, laughing when he recalled the infamous 'upside-down' houses the organization tried building several years ago.
It was obvious to him the views and lighting on two-story properties were always significantly better on the second floor, he said and he felt it was a waste of that potential to put bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs.
He had Homewise build some condos featuring an upstairs living room and kitchen, with the bedrooms downstairs.
That design did not catch on, to put it mildly.
Loftin recalled the puzzled look on the faces of potential buyers when they entered the properties on the ground floor and were confronted with a hallway instead of a living room.
'People couldn't get their arms around it,' he said. 'We built a few of them, and it took us a while to sell them.'
Another idea that failed was the Homewise Affordable Parade of Homes. The organization tried renting vans and driving groups of potential homebuyers to its projects all over the county to give them an idea of the available options.
'It was not what people wanted,' Loftin said. 'If somebody found something they liked, they wanted to spend more time there. From that, we learned you have to do more individual attention.'
Ironically, the Affordable Parade of Homes was cited prominently in a national publication that wrote about Homewise, he said, creating the impression it was a success.
'The truth is," he said, "it really didn't work at all."
Working in collaboration
While the nonprofit housing developer may be best known for its efforts to assist first-time homebuyers, Loftin said, the organization has devoted much of its work in recent years to broader community development.
Even in the affordable housing arena, he said, buyers want mixed-use developments that prioritize walkability — such as El Camino Real Crossing, Homewise's first mixed-use project at Agua Fría Street and Harrison Road. The community includes the popular Escondido restaurant.
'People don't just buy a house — they buy a neighborhood,' he said.
He cited the upcoming Tierra Contenta project, approved last year, which will include a school site and park. He expects some of the homes in the development to be built by organizations such as the Santa Fe Community Housing Trust and Santa Fe Habitat for Humanity. That kind of collaboration is important, Loftin said.
The large number of organizations devoted to battling high housing costs in Santa Fe provides the community with a diversity of delivery systems and forces everyone to be accountable, he said.
'Having that accountability matters,' he said. 'And I'm sure there are organizations out there that are better at certain things than we are.'
Getting housing costs under control locally is an issue that won't be solved quickly, Loftin said, noting he fears many of the policies the Trump administration is espousing will be antithetical to efforts to bring interest rates down — perhaps the biggest factor in making homes more affordable.
Still, he is pleased state and local government officials have dedicated resources to the problem. And he said the quality of leadership that has emerged at groups like the Community Housing Trust and Habitat for Humanity gives him faith that a well-rounded, collaborative approach is possible.
That leaves Loftin free to avoid worrying about anything but how Homewise is performing, he said.
'You keep focused on the North Star of your mission,' he said. 'If you do a good job of completing your mission, the other stuff takes care of itself.'