October 19 – Shortly after Emily Sutherlin and her husband learned she was pregnant with twins, they decided to move from Chicago to Santa Fe so they could be closer to Sutherlin’s mother, who had moved to the city when she retired.
“We quickly realized that I needed help and that it would be great to live close to family,” says Sutherlin, who had two children at the time, ages five and two.
Her husband quickly got a job with the city’s water department.
“I actually think that’s why we thought it would be easy” to find a home, Sutherlin said, acknowledging that the couple hadn’t done much research before moving to Santa Fe.
The process of finding a house to buy took almost two years.
The Sutherlins found that the limited availability of homes for sale and high prices presented significant challenges.
Officials and advocates widely describe the lack of affordable housing — for both potential homebuyers and renters — as a housing crisis that is putting pressure on many city residents. Families with young children are especially vulnerable if they are displaced from Santa Fe.
“We see that people with children are having a harder time because there are more expenses,” said Cathy Garcia, spokesperson for local nonprofit Chainbreaker Collective, an economic justice organization.
City leaders have cited two key factors as the biggest barriers facing families in Santa Fe: the lack of available child care and the high cost of housing.
“If you can’t get an affordable home and you can’t find childcare… the job can be incredible, but you can’t show up for work,” said Bridget Dixson, president of the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce.
Garcia said many low-income families choose to pay rent over other essentials, such as health care, for fear of being evicted “because they have nowhere else to go.”
“There’s no alternative place, right?” she said. “You’re moving or you no longer have a home, and what does that mean for a child?”
House purchase increases ‘quality of life’
The Sutherlins initially moved to a rental property because of the difficulties they faced in purchasing a home, in part because banks were hesitant to make loans to the new residents, who had not previously owned a home.
“All the savings we moved here with were just used up on rent,” Emily Sutherlin said.
The family signed a lease on a house for $2,600 a month, and by the time they moved, this increased to $3,200, which Sutherlin said was more than double what they had paid for an equally sized home in Chicago .
When they started looking seriously for something to buy, “there just weren’t any houses,” she said.
She had a list of criteria for the couple’s new home. One by one, she had to let go of almost all of them.
Initially, they were looking for homes in southeast Santa Fe zoned for Piñon Elementary School, where her eldest daughter was a student. Because of all the new houses being built near the school, she was told that her daughter could not be guaranteed a place there if the family moved outside the school zone.
The family looked for a home in the area for nearly a year, Sutherlin said, but discovered the homes for sale were too expensive.
“We really wanted a garage so I didn’t have to load my kids into a cold car on winter days,” she said. That went out the window too.
The main criterion that remained was space: the family wanted three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and a place that was ready to move into. Advisors from the nonprofit Homewise Inc., a housing developer that also provides home-buying assistance, advised them to make an offer immediately if they saw something that met their needs, and when something became available in the Las Acequias neighborhood in downtown Santa Fe, they did just that.
After about two years of searching, the family was finally able to buy a house.
The process wasn’t perfect: The house they selected was far less move-in ready than they had been promised, and they had to live with Sutherlin’s mother for about a month after their lease expired. But they were happy with the purchase.
“It’s great and our neighbors are great,” Sutherlin said of the home, which is within walking distance of Las Acequias Park. She is looking forward to being able to walk there in the morning with the family’s new puppy.
“The quality of my life has already started to change because I was able to become a homeowner, and I didn’t necessarily expect that,” Sutherlin said.
She said her family’s situation and conversations with other people about similar experiences have opened her eyes to the challenges of living in Santa Fe, especially for families.
“You can’t rent as a family in Santa Fe right now — unless you make an exorbitant amount of money — and have enough savings to eventually buy a house,” she said.
‘I’d say we’re stuck’
According to data from the Santa Fe Association of Realtors, the average price of a home was $640,000 in the city and $825,000 in Santa Fe County in the third quarter of 2024. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $2,400, Homewise estimates. show.
Housing New Mexico, a quasi-governmental agency also known as the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority, found in its 2024 Housing Needs Assessment that an estimated 53% of renters in Santa Fe County are considered cost-burdened or “extremely” charged, meaning they pay respectively more than 30% or more than 50% of their total income from rent.
About 34% of homeowners are affected by the costs.
Rising home prices have discouraged many residents from upsizing.
Taos native Lealia Nelson and her husband bought what she described as a starter home after moving to Santa Fe in 2015. The house was perfect for a couple, she said, but it is too small now that they have a two-year-old daughter. .
“I would say we’re stuck,” Nelson said in an interview earlier this year. The family had considered moving but was hesitant to leave Northern New Mexico, where they have roots.
“If we stay, it will probably decide whether we have another child just because we can’t fit another child in our house,” she said.
Housing New Mexico’s housing needs assessment shows that only 19.3% of Santa Fe County residents can afford the current median home price.
“It’s a huge challenge” for families to live in Santa Fe, said Elena Gonzales, Homewise Inc.’s chief operating officer.
Councilor Jamie Cassutt agreed.
“It’s extremely difficult to just get your foot in the door in this city,” she said.
Cassutt, who was born in Santa Fe and moved for more than a decade, returned to the city with her now ex-husband to raise their son, which was only possible thanks to “significant” family support.
Cassutt said the local economy suffers when parents can’t afford to live here. As the city looks to diversify its economy beyond tourism, she added, it must find ways to make housing affordable for parents who are in their prime working years.
While much of the city’s gross tax revenue comes from tourists, Cassutt noted that it also comes from people who live in the city and make their purchases here. According to her, commuting is harmful to the economy.
“If we pay people and they take those dollars somewhere else because that’s where they can live, that’s going to hurt us as a city,” she said.
Cassutt said a lack of affordable and attainable housing could also create a “vicious cycle” in which the city struggles to retain teachers, child care workers and health care workers, making Santa Fe even less attractive to families.
Gonzales agreed.
“It’s hard to keep an employee if he commutes to Albuquerque two hours a day,” she says.
