ABQ city councilor looking to rehab public housing in International District
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Trying to get more affordable housing in Albuquerque, the International District's city councilor is continuing the push to revamp three rundown properties; and, they could be on track to get a lot of help from the federal government to do it.
'It's really important to me, in this housing crisis. We haven't built any public housing in the city of Albuquerque I want to say, since the late 80s,' said Nichole Rogers, Albuquerque City Councilor for District 6, 'They're in desperate need of renovations. I'd like to see them all demolished and we can build more and better on these sites.'
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That's what Rogers has in mind for three International District properties: 'We have Wainwright Manor that's on Gibson; we have Pennsylvania Apartments on Pennsylvania; and we have Grove Apartments, also on Grove,' Rogers says. Together, the properties have 98 units, and house hundreds of people.
Rogers is backing a plan called the 'Choice Neighborhood Initiative,' in partnership with the city and the Albuquerque Housing Authority, which could rehabilitate the public housing through federal funds. 'Choice Neighborhood means taking a neighborhood folks don't want to live in and making it a neighborhood where people want and choose to live in,' Rogers said.
Rogers said the city already has $150,000 in these federal grant funds to help build community gardens and cultivate a marketplace: 'Once we show success there and get that project done, then we can apply for the implementation grant. That's big money, that's $50 to $60 million dollars that then we can go and actually do the construction to reimagine, rebuild based on what the community planned and wanted, we can actually make that happen.'
This week, they're inviting residents and neighbors to talk about what they'd like to see happen with the properties, 'Hoping that funding doesn't go away during this big transition that we're having in our country,' Rogers said, 'I've told myself I'm going to put my head down and focus on these neck of the woods but the bottom line is: these neck of the woods get a lot of funding from the federal government.'
The community meeting happens Wednesday at Wainwright Manor on Gibson Boulevard near the Gateway Center at 5:30 p.m.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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