Homewise
Invites You To The...

Are you interested in learning about how Santa Fe can become more affordable, sustainable, and vibrant? Join us for the Livability in the Land of Enchantment Speaker Series! This monthly series will bring local and national speakers to venues across town. Free public talks will be followed by a social hour with food, drinks, and community building.

SERIES TOPICS:
AFFORDABILITY
• How does a housing market work (or not)? What will it take to have more affordable housing options in Santa Fe?
• How is housing connected to the wealth gap in our community?
SUSTAINABILITY
• What can we do to address the demand on Santa Fe’s housing market while being conscientious about where and how we build?
• How can we pair conservation and development while also decreasing reliance on vehicles in a rapidly growing community like Santa Fe?
LIVABILITY
• How can we ensure that Santa Fe is a multigenerational community that embraces people of all ages?
LIVABLE SANTA FE FELLOWSHIP
The Livable Santa Fe Fellowship is a six-month program that equips community members with the knowledge and skills to help make Santa Fe more affordable, sustainable, and vibrant. Through participation in a speaker series with national and local experts and trainings on how to engage in shaping Santa Fe’s future, this program will deepen fellows’ understanding of the housing market and development patterns in Santa Fe and prepare fellows to take action. Fellows will receive a $500 stipend for participating.
This fellowship is for individuals residing in Santa Fe or neighboring communities interested in these topics and in being part of the solution to the challenges facing the city in terms of planning, development, and land us.
2023 EVENTS
AFFORDABILITY: FIRST SPEAKER
Date/Time: Monday, May 15th, 6:30pm – 8:00pm
Food and drinks to follow
Location: SITE Santa Fe
(1606 Paseo De Peralta, Santa Fe, NM 87501)
Childcare and translation services will be provided.
All other events in this series will be hosted on the 2nd Thursday of the month
Please send an email to livability@homewise.org for interest in attending virtually.

Matthew is a professor of sociology at Princeton University and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted. Read more HERE
AFFORDABILITY: SECOND SPEAKER
Can We Build Our Way Out of the Housing Crisis?
Date/Time: Thursday, June 8th, 6pm – 8pm
Food and drinks to follow
Location: Violet Crown
(1606 Alcaldesa Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501)
Childcare and translation services will be provided.
All other events in this series will be hosted on the 2nd Thursday of the month
To some people, it is very clear that our current housing crisis is simply a question of supply and demand. If we want housing people can afford, we just need to build more. Others worry that building more high cost/high rent housing may make things worse, not better. How can we hope to solve the problem, if we can’t agree on the basic economics. Housing Policy expert Rick Jacobus will share a different way of thinking about these issues that points to strategies for more equitable growth. If we want to solve the problem, we have to build more housing but building more may not be enough by itself. We have to think about who we are building for.

Rick Jacobus, Principal, Street Level Advisors
Rick is one of the nation’s leading experts in inclusionary housing and affordable homeownership. He is the author of Inclusionary Housing: Creating and Maintaining Equitable Communities, which has been called the ‘go to’ guide to inclusionary housing policy design. Rick has worked closely with the cities of San Francisco and Seattle to guide the redesign of each city’s inclusionary housing program. In addition, he has consulted on the design and implementation of affordable housing and community revitalization programs with more than a dozen cities including New York, Houston, Minneapolis, Honolulu and Atlanta.
Rick was the founder of Cornerstone Partnership, a national initiative to support local housing policies that create lasting affordability and he now serves as a strategic advisor its successor Grounded Solutions Network. Rick served as an F.B. Heron Foundation Joint Practice Fellow at CoMetrics where he researched business models for the collection of social impact data. He was previously a partner in Burlington Associates in Community Development and a visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. He has also served as a lecturer in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley and as a senior program officer for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation.
He has a Bachelors degree from Oberlin College and a Masters of City Planning degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
AFFORDABILITY: THIRD SPEAKER
Housing for All: Local and National Models for Affordable Housing
Date/Time: Thursday, July 13th, 6pm – 8pm
Food and drinks to follow
Location: Museum of Indian Arts and Culture
Childcare and translation services will be provided.
All other events in this series will be hosted on the 2nd Thursday of the month
The session will highlight various local and national models for affordable housing including supportive housing, subsidized rental housing, homeownership, resident ownership of manufactured home communities, and more. Each speaker will discuss a specific project, focusing on how it delivers affordability, community control/ownership, and wealth building. Attendees will learn how the different approaches are moving the needle, but also how they must be combined to effectively address the housing crisis in Santa Fe.
Speakers:
1. Paul Bradley, President, ROC USA and John Egan, Mountain West ROC Association Director
2. Jaime Jaramillo, Real Estate Development Planning Director, Homewise
3. Daniel Werwath, Executive Director, NM Inter-Faith Housing.
4. Edward Archuleta, Executive Director, St. Elizabeth Shelters.
5. Kurt Krahn, Executive Director, Santa Fe Habitat for Humanity.

SUSTAINABILITY: FOURTH SPEAKER
Do we have enough water to support new housing?
Date/Time: Thursday, September 14th, 6pm – 8pm
Food and drinks to follow
Location: Scottish Rite Center
(463 Paseo De Peralta, Santa Fe, NM 87501)
Childcare and translation services will be provided.
All other events in this series will be hosted on the 2nd Thursday of the month
Throughout the southwest, drought and water shortages are forcing many cities to limit or stop construction. As Santa Fe’s population grows and more and more housing is needed, questions abound regarding our local water supply. Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury and Director of City of Santa Fe Water Jesse Roach will discuss local and state water management efforts and whether Santa Fe will be able to support short- and long-term growth.
Topics:
- How are drought and climate change intersecting to impact the future growth of our city?
- What are previous successes in water conservation in Santa Fe and how can we build on those?
- How can we address the housing crisis amidst water constraints?
Councilor Carol Romero Wirth will be moderating this panel.

SUSTAINABILITY: FIFTH SPEAKER
How Our Cities Became Parking Lots
Date/Time: Wednesday, October 4, 6pm – 8pm
Food and drinks to follow
Location: Scottish Rite Center
(463 Paseo De Peralta, Santa Fe, NM 87501)
Childcare and translation services will be provided.
There are likely between 1 and 2 billion parking spaces in this country, enough to pave a small state…A study of 27 mixed-use U.S. neighborhoods concluded that parking was, at peak times, oversupplied by 65 percent.
Much of the nation’s most valuable real estate is now devoted exclusively to empty and idle vehicles, even as so many Americans struggle to find affordable housing.
-Henry Grabar
Henry Grabar, journalist, and author of the new highly anticipated book Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, will discuss the impact of parking on the character of neighborhoods, the size and cost of new construction, traffic, transportation, and even the course of floodwaters. He’ll also share how cities like Santa Fe can reform parking in ways that actually make it more convenient for drivers while increasing affordability, walkability, and livability.

SUSTAINABILITY: SIXTH SPEAKER
Yes in our Backyard: Climate Change and the Green Building Room
Date/Time: Friday, October 27, 6pm – 8pm
Food and drinks to follow
Location: Santa Fe Art Institute
(1600 Saint Michaels Dr # 31, Santa Fe, NM 87505)
Childcare and translation services will be provided.
“We live in a moment when our future—and the future of everyone and everything—depends on sometimes learning to offer a resounding yes.”
-Bill McKibben
Bill McKibben will share thoughts from his wide-ranging work on climate, which includes founding Third Act, an advocacy group elevating the activism of people 60 and up; co-founding 350.org, the first global grassroots climate campaign; writing 20 books, including the first book for a general audience about climate change; and contributing regularly to the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and more. He will focus on how saying yes to certain projects now can help alleviate the climate crisis in the long-term. In particular, McKibben will discuss the impact of affordable housing that makes cities denser and more efficient on cutting carbon and keeping temperatures down.
This event is hosted in partnership with the Santa Fe Art Institute. Reception and open studios with Santa Fe Art Institute Changing Climate Artists-in-Residents will follow the talk.
