Santa Fe teachers need affordable housing, but plans to build it have stalled
Retired Santa Fe art teacher and longtime union leader Grace Mayer has watched for years as her fellow educators get priced out of housing in the city.
'Pretty soon it's just going to be an exclusive community, like Aspen. If the people who make this place work — the nurses, teachers, bus drivers — can't afford to live here, then what's left?' said Mayer, who served for a decade as president of the National Education Association's Santa Fe branch.
While some rural school districts in New Mexico are building state-funded housing to help ensure teachers can live in the communities where they work, larger districts like Santa Fe Public Schools face similar challenges but don't have access to funds from New Mexico's Teacher Housing Pilot Program, reserved for more remote locales.
Rising rents have been outpacing teacher salary growth in Santa Fe for years, spurring plans for a housing complex on district-owned land. But so far, fundraising efforts have fallen short.
The Santa Fe school board declared a 'staffing crisis' in 2021, calling on the Legislature to boost teacher salaries and urging local governments to create affordable housing for educators. In 2023, the board passed a 'housing crisis' resolution, warning housing costs were threatening high-quality learning.
Work groups began plans for a 40-unit housing complex on a 7-acre lot between Sweeney Elementary School and Ortiz Middle School on the city's south side, and the district secured $815,000 in state capital outlay in 2023 and $750,000 in 2024 toward the estimated $15 million project. But it wasn't nearly enough to begin construction.
'We kind of stalled because we hadn't received enough money to fully build out the program,' said Josh Granata, general counsel and head of government relations for Santa Fe Public Schools. 'So, we were looking at ways to raise money and just kind of reached a point where we have to kind of switch gears.'
Although board resolutions had advocated for collaboration with the city of Santa Fe and Santa Fe County governments, Granata said those talks have gone silent.
' Prior to this, we've worked with the city and the county to try to see if we could collaborate,' he said. 'But we were running into problems because of the definition of affordable housing — and how school employees kind of fall outside of that federal definition in terms of how much money they make.'
4984994_022018SchoolBoard_80_CMYK.jpg (copy)
Santa Fe Public Schools interim Superintendent Veronica García
Still, interim Superintendent Veronica García said housing remains 'a board priority.' The district plans to revisit the project this summer and determine next steps for funds earmarked for the project.
The district, García noted, also has a partnership with Homewise Inc., a nonprofit that offers up to $40,000 in down payment assistance to qualifying educators through an anonymous donor-funded program.
Mayer argued such programs, while valuable, favor families with children and don't fully serve the needs of younger professionals — many of whom earn too much to qualify for subsidized housing but not enough to afford Santa Fe's market rates.
'The city sort of doesn't look at middle-income people or professionals,' she said. 'We keep telling them: 'We don't qualify.' '
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, the median gross rent for a Santa Fe one-bedroom was $945 in 2014. From 2019 to 2023, the agency reported, the number ballooned to $1,380 — the most recent data available. Since then, reports indicate rent has only increased in the city, with an average of $1,799 in April 2025, according to the website RentCafe.
At a 2023 school board meeting, Mayer pointed out 60% of the district's staff lived outside Santa Fe. Current residency rates were not available from the district or NEA-Santa Fe.
That high commuter rate affects retention, Mayer and the district have noted. Mayer said some educators working in Santa Fe and living elsewhere reluctantly left for jobs in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho to cut down on the daily commute.
For those commuters who stick it out — enduring long drives and train rides — there's a limit in their ability to participate in community life and school events like staff meetings, clubs and sports, she said.
Now retired, Mayer continues to advocate for housing solutions at the city level — noting her frustration at what she called an 'absurd' belief in 'trickle-down' housing — the idea that building high-end rentals will eventually ease pressure on the market. It's a long-held idea by those in local government she said, and not one that has borne results.
'If you don't fix this,' she recalled telling a city councilor recently, 'and start building things immediately, your city's gonna die … because there are no people to work in these professions.'
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