This work session featured two major presentations: an update on the city's housing needs assessment and consolidated plan, and an economic outlook for 2025. Council members discussed affordability challenges, federal funding uncertainties, and the need for policy interventions to address housing instability and economic mobility.
Housing Needs Assessment and Consolidated Plan Update (Presented by Avilia and Heidi)
Economic Outlook 2025 (Presented by Monica Torres)
Rents were generally pretty stable between 2015 and 2020, and the same was with home prices. They decrease through the financial recession. And then we're pretty stable through 2020. And then we see that in both rents and prices. There was a big job of about a 50% jump between 2020 and 2023, 2022, and then prices begin to moderate again. And this trend we see across the countries, not just specific to Las Cruces. And then in terms of vacancies, we see that there was a very high vacancy or higher vacancy environment in 2010 and in 2017, but that's really turned in 2024. For rental vacancy rates, we would like to see them around 5% to be able to allow the churn in the market that allows renters to, you know, find housing and at the price that they want and be able to have options. And that's in Las Cruces, it's at 3.5%, so that's significantly lower. And then on the homeownership side, we would expect to see about a 2% vacancy rate, and that's also below the 2% mark. So we're seeing that the vacancies show tight markets in Las Cruces. And then the analysis has more data shown by different price levels and at lower price levels, there's even tighter vacancy trends. And now I'll pass it to Heidi to talk about the survey findings that we conducted for both the consortium plan and the affordable housing plan. Thank you, Avilia. I'm going to speak a little bit about some of the engagement that we did to support these two plans. And then I will pass it back to Avilia to talk about projected needs. So she's going to get into a deep dive in terms of what to expect in the future and the types of housing that people will need. You're going to come back to me for a bit of a wrap-up. So to support the consolidated plans or the HUD required plan as well as the state plan, we conducted a residence survey. We got a really good response, almost 800 responses. 70% of them lived in Las Cruces. So we have a really good sample to analyze about needs. They're people who are very housing unstable. About a third of respondents were over 65, another third or the similar third, there's some overlap there, had a disability. 13% single parents, 29% said they lived in an overcrowded household, 60%, 62% identified as of Hispanic descent, and a little more than a third were very low income, so had incomes of under 25,000. We ask a number of questions that are captured. The total analysis is captured in appendix A of your packet. But just to give you a highlight of some of the most important takeaways from the survey, wanted to start with those living in poor or fair housing condition. We asked people to self-assess the condition of their housing. Then we also ask them if they say I live in poor or fair housing condition, what improvements are needed. This gives you what we call a crosstab. So those responses by demographic groups. The top news were grab bars, ramps, alarms to notify if somebody with a cognitive or behavioral disability leaves the house. Overall, 13% of respondents to the survey said they did have to move in the last five years when they didn't want to. Those who are currently precariously housed, renters, single parents and those with a disability had the highest rates of displacement in response to this question. On the right hand side here, under the reasons for displacement, I would invite you to take a look at that box. We had an unusual response based on surveys. We do these types of surveys all over the country. We learned in Las Cruces the top reason for being displaced was losing a job or having hours cut back. Almost typically, I typically or almost always see the most uh common reason being that rent increased. So we're in an interesting economic situation right now, and we definitely are seeing that reflected in the displacement question. We also asked people what do you need to feel more secure in your housing? And this shows you those responses by household type. Many, many people said I need rental assistance, I need help paying rent. That was true of people with disability, people living in overcrowded households. But we also saw that people said they needed to make critical money to make critical repairs, and that was true of our large households, people of Hispanic descent. You'll notice here in the over 65, so the senior population and the non-Hispanic white population, the majority of folks said I don't need anything. That tells us that those folks are more likely to be housing stable than other demographic groups. With that, I'm going to pass it back to Avilia, and she's going to get into some of the data findings and projected needs. Thank you.