{"id":29092,"date":"2024-02-22T11:14:51","date_gmt":"2024-02-22T18:14:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/n-m-gov-asks-for-more-collaboration-with-mortgage-finance-authority-to-tackle-homelessness-housing-crisis\/"},"modified":"2024-02-22T18:14:51","modified_gmt":"2024-02-22T18:14:51","slug":"n-m-gov-asks-for-more-collaboration-with-mortgage-finance-authority-to-tackle-homelessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/n-m-gov-asks-for-more-collaboration-with-mortgage-finance-authority-to-tackle-homelessness\/","title":{"rendered":"N.M. Gov asks for more collaboration with Mortgage Finance Authority to tackle homelessness, housing crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gov.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham addresses the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority for the first time ever on Wednesday. Patrick Lohmann\/Source New Mexico<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham attended her first-ever meeting of the Mortgage Finance Authority board Wednesday, where she asked for more collaboration with the authority to address housing shortages and homelessness.<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s visit comes after she made housing one of her priorities during the legislative session that wrapped up last week, one in which lawmakers approved about $200 million in various types of housing investments. She also pushed hard for the Legislature\u2019s approval of an executive \u201cOffice of Housing,\u201d a proposal that the MFA lobbied against and that ultimately died in the state Senate.<\/p>\n

Lujan Grisham asked the MFA to appoint members to a committee who would work with counterparts from her administration to share data and ideas for addressing the housing shortage. She also proposed the two entities join forces to handle emergency calls from residents facing sudden housing crises.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re circling around each other without clear insight about, \u2018How much can we get done?\u2019\u201d the governor told the MFA board.<\/p>\n

The state lacks at least 32,000 affordable housing units to meet demand, according to a recent MFA study. There\u2019s been a sharp increase in homelessness across the state over the last few years. And the governor warned that new people moving into the state, including workers for three companies she said would announce openings soon, would exacerbate the housing shortage.<\/p>\n

The MFA has been the state\u2019s designated housing agency since 1998. It has a staff of 120 people who oversee more than 40 housing-related programs.<\/p>\n

Executive Director Isidoro \u201cIzzy\u201d Hernandez told the board the authority in 2023 provided about $10.3 million to build 285 homes and oversaw $47 million to provide housing vouchers and homelessness services to about 12,000 people.<\/p>\n

But the governor told the board that the size of the problem requires far more resources and coordination. She said that 285 homes built in a year is \u201cfantastic,\u201d but that making real headway would require thousands of new homes built annually.<\/p>\n

Many of the people MFA helps, particularly those who shuffle in and out of shelters, are inefficiently served, bouncing between agencies, often at great cost to taxpayers, she said.<\/p>\n

Board members who spoke said that more coordination could be useful, and chair Angel Reyes said he was open to the governor\u2019s ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI look forward to whatever it means to follow up with your office and your staff to figure out how we start to make the steps to collaborate together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This legislative session, lawmakers spent $125 million on loans for housing projects and infrastructure. They also gave the MFA\u2019s Housing Trust Fund $50 million for the next fiscal year, on top of the roughly $37.5 million it gets each year via severance tax bond payments. Lawmakers also approved about $20 million for \u201cstatewide homelessness services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source NM <\/a>is an independent, nonprofit news organization that shines a light on governments, policies and public officials.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

lacks at least 32,000 affordable housing units to meet demand, according to a recent MFA study<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[611,453,138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-homelessness","tag-housing-and-urban-planning","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29092"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}