Latest news with #JohannaNelson
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Santa Fe businesses' frustrations grow as road project continues
SANTA FE, N.M. (KRQE) – More than a year into a road rebuild through a Santa Fe tourism hot spot, the city is getting an earful because of new construction twists that keeps affecting dozens of businesses' bottom line. Story continues below Community:ABQ bus driver speaks out on her experience of safety issues on Central route News:Homeland Security: 11 people arrested at New Mexico dairy were 'undocumented' Trending:Mexican gray wolf Asha gives birth to litter of pups Food: Two Albuquerque restaurants make Yelp's 'Top 50 Cheap Eats' list The Concrete Jungle smoke shop has spent 30 years on Guadalupe Street in Santa Fe. 'We're struggling just to make ends meet, I don't even see how we're gonna weather this storm,' said Rebecca Storm, the owner of the shop. But Garcia said the last year dealing with a road rebuild project has been one of the toughest. 'Now sales are down 40 percent, we've never ever experienced that in our history,' said Garcia. 'Had we known that is gonna be a two-year-plus project with no end in sight, we might of made additional moves to do something else. While the project is supposed to be done by August, crews just pushed back work again this week after finding a hidden gas line. Santa Fe city leaders heard some of the frustration at a meeting with businesses this week. 'We've been taking those ideas back, trying to figure out the logistics of how do we make this work,' said Johanna Nelson, Economic Development director for the City of Santa Fe. Some businesses said they want money for the losses the construction has caused, while others said they want crews to work later into the night past 7 p.m. The city said it's working on business boosting initiatives. 'We've got a promotional campaign, so if we're out hitting the streets interviewing businesses putting that on social media. We're working with the chamber of commerce, right, to explore ways to we can further promote and support the businesses,' said Nelson. She added they're also considering a possible benefit concert, even an organized bike ride through Guadalupe Street. 'It's going to be a great thing, we just gotta hang in there and let's figure out what we can do in the meantime,' said Nelson. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Santa Fe launching grant program to help businesses with crime, vandalism
Operators of small businesses in Santa Fe could get some help fighting burglaries and vandalism if a new city program designed to address such issues gets off the ground before the end of the year as expected. The Santa Fe City Council approved $250,000 in one-time funding for the program Feb. 26. The Office of Economic Development will work in conjunction with the Community Services Department to administer and operate it. Economic Development Director Johanna Nelson has hired Santa Fe-based consulting firm Prospera Partners to study how the program should be structured. She said preliminary plans call for microgrants of less than $20,000 for business owners to help them better protect their property from burglars and vandals, perhaps in the form of security cameras, alarms, lights and locks. Nelson described the initiative as a pilot program that will be evaluated after its first year to determine if it works. 'If it does, we want to seek outside funding [to continue the program],' she said. Staff members from Prospera Partners and city officials will be gathering feedback from business owners so the program can be put together in a way that addresses their needs, Nelson said. 'We're very much in the research phase,' she said. Yalla 2 Malek Belghiti Alaoui, one of the partners in the Yalla Shawarma food truck on South St. Francis Drive, had a new surveillance system installed. While there will be some minor startup costs associated with launching the initiative, Nelson said the idea is for a heavy majority of the $250,000 to wind up being awarded as grants. She said she hopes and believes the grants can be awarded before the end of the year. 'A more ambitious goal would be by the start of the fiscal year,' she said, referring to July 1. Many councilors who spoke about the program at the Feb. 26 meeting expressed a desire to see it be as accessible as possible, Nelson said, adding idea will be a priority for the city staff. While burglaries and theft are a significant concern for many small-business owners in Santa Fe, Nelson said it was her impression many others are just as worried about vandalism and squalor. For instance, she said she has heard from many downtown business operators who open their establishment in the morning and routinely find human waste on their doorstep, requiring a cleanup. One Santa Fe business that has experienced both burglary and vandalism is the Yalla Shawarma food truck, whose owners sell Moroccan-style Mediterranean food from a site on South St. Francis Drive. The business was victimized two nights in a row in November, sustaining $7,000 in damage. Yalla 6 Lunchtime patrons place an order March 13 at the Yalla Shawarma food truck on South St. Francis Drive. Malek Belghiti Alaoui, part of the truck's ownership group, said he and his partners were able to reopen the truck about a month later after an online fundraising campaign netted nearly $7,000. He said he was very excited to hear about the city's plans to launch the crime mitigation initiative. 'Absolutely, anything that could help somebody to create an environment where we can feel safe and do business and encourage others,' he said. Belghiti Alaoui said his business has operated without incident since it reopened. He and his partners responded to the incidents by significantly enhancing their security and protection measures, including adding surveillance cameras. Those improvements were not inexpensive, he said, noting the total came to about $2,000. He said he would welcome the chance to apply for a microgrant from the city for additional equipment or for enhancements to the equipment already in place. 'You can go to so many upgrades,' Alaoui said. Another Santa Fe business that has endured crime issues is F1 Cyclery, which opened in September at 1189 Parkway Drive in the Siler Rufina District. Pedro Murga, one of the partners in the venture, said the shop was targeted twice within its first three months — once in September when floor-to-ceiling windows were broken, allowing burglars to make off with several bikes, and again in November, when someone tried to drive a vehicle through the front window. After that, Murga said he invested in heavy retractable steel shutters that allow him to seal the business every night. He also has installed motion-activated security cameras that allow him to monitor the property from his home computer. Murga laughed when he was asked if the additions have provided him with any peace of mind. He said a small bird has nested next to one of the cameras, sometimes triggering it to begin operating in the middle of the night and alerting Murga there is some activity at the business. 'Sometimes at 3 o'clock in the morning, [the bird] decides to wake us up. That makes it hard to go back to sleep,' he said. Yalla 7 Libby Maclaren, left, and Anne Vidovich of Santa Fe browse the menu at the Yalla Shawarma food truck on South St. Francis Drive on March 13. Murga said he wasn't sure if a grant program for security and protection equipment was the best way to address the crime issues. But he applauded the city for making an effort to fight the problem. 'That's a great start. That's awesome,' he said. A more effective approach, he said, might be to apply stricter penalties to those arrested for committing such crimes. 'We need to teach thieves a lesson,' Murga said. 'There's no punishment for a lot of them.' Nelson said the problem has gotten so bad in parts of the city that it is beginning to affect the bottom line of business owners. 'This has almost become a baked-in item in the cost of doing business,' she said. During the Feb. 26 meeting, the council also approved the appropriation of $150,000 for help fund the Office of Economic Development's Buy Local campaign, a program aimed at promoting and incentivizing shopping at local businesses. 20250130_MGS_F1 Cyclery_003.JPG (copy) F1 Cyclery partner Pedro Murga take a new bicycle down to the first floor of the shop on Jan. 30. Murga said the shop, which opened in September, was targeted twice within its first three months. Nelson has said the initiative is a priority for her office. The idea is to sustain whatever gains are made during the campaign over the long haul. Too often, she said, such initiatives lose steam or are forgotten after just a few months of emphasis. As with the anti-crime program, feedback from local business owners about what would allow the program to succeed will be sought and compiled, she said. Nelson said she is especially interested in exploring the idea of whether some of the tariffs planned by the Trump administration will provide an opening for some local manufacturers or business operators to capture a larger share of their market. 'Having a strong framework is getting us in good shape for whatever comes this way,' she said.
Yahoo
23-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Affordable for whom? A look at the data behind the definitions
The term "affordable housing" gets tossed around a lot, especially during policy talks in Santa Fe. If there's one thing almost everyone in the City Different can agree on, it's that Santa Fe is badly in need of more affordable housing — but affordable for whom? "That question comes up all the time," said Johanna Nelson, the city's interim affordable housing director. The term can refer to single-family homes with prices set in a range considered reasonable for purchase by middle-income workers, lower-rent or subsidized apartment units, or "transitional housing," which is usually a temporary first step into housing, with support and services, for someone who has experienced homelessness. While people might have different ideas of what "affordable" means to them, organizations that receive housing-related funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or the state government must follow guidelines for rent and sales prices that qualify as affordable and household income levels at which residents are eligible for support. A long-standing HUD metric is that renters are considered cost-burdened if they pay more than 30% of their gross income on housing, a figure that has risen to include nearly half of all U.S. renters, according to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The efficacy of the 30% rule has been called into question in recent years, but no other major metric has been created to replace it. Under HUD's Section 8 subsidy program, a housing aid voucher generally will cover rental costs that exceed 30% of a household's income — for instance, a renter in a $1,200-a-month apartment earning $30,000 a year, or $2,500 a month, would pay $750, and the voucher would cover $450. The agency uses the "area median income" to determine which households qualify for aid. As of May, the AMI for the area designated by the U.S. Census Bureau as the Santa Fe Metropolitan Statistical Area (the city and county) was $64,050 for one person. Someone living in the city or county in fiscal year 2024 would have been considered "extremely low income," at 30% of the AMI, with a salary of $19,250 a year; "very low-income," at 50% of the AMI, with a salary of $32,050; and "low-income," at 80% of the AMI, with a salary of up $51,250. Often, however, discussions on the city's affordable housing crisis are centered on a need for more workforce housing, also known as "attainable housing" — homes offered at prices considered affordable for purchase by someone on a midlevel salary, such as a teacher, police officer or nurse. Santa Fe Homes Program data According to the Brookings Institute, the term is typically geared toward housing that is affordable for people making about 80% to 120% of the AMI — or $51,250 to $76,850 for a Santa Fean. Under the city's Santa Fe Homes Program — which requires builders to either include a certain number of affordably priced homes or rentals in new developments, or pay a fee that will go toward the city's affordable housing initiatives — a rental unit for someone making 50% of the AMI would have to be offered at $801 to be considered affordable, while a one-bedroom home would be affordable at $141,250. A three-bedroom home for a family earning 50% of the AMI would be affordable at $181,500 under the city program. Such prices are far below Santa Fe's market rates. The median home price in the city in 2024 was $582,000, according to a research firm's recent analysis of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data.
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Santa Fe officials seek applications from organization for affordable housing funds
More than $3.5 million administered by the city of Santa Fe is available for organizations working to help address the city's affordable housing crisis, but applicants have just over two weeks to craft and submit their proposals for the money. City officials announced last week they are seeking requests for proposals for projects designed to bring down the cost of affordable housing construction or help residents become homeowners. The city's Office of Affordable Housing has about $3 million to award from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, along with $600,000 from the federal Community Development Block Grant program. Applicants have until 3 p.m. Feb. 14 to submit proposals. Johanna Nelson, the interim director of the city's Office of Affordable Housing, said there is no limit, beyond the amount of funding available, on a proposal's monetary size. The city is using the request for proposal process to dish out money in both programs, so each application must meet specific guidelines and state laws related to procurement. That means the details are important, she said. 'There are a lot of steps,' Nelson said. 'But going through the RFP process adds another level of protection to make sure everybody's getting fair play.' After city officials have vetted and reviewed proposals and conducted follow-up interviews with applicants, the Community Development Commission will evaluate the projects' scores and make recommendations to the City Council on which organizations should receive the money. Nelson said the process typically takes a couple of months to unfold, meaning applicants may know by early spring whether their proposals have been successful. 'We are expecting to have a healthy pool of applicants,' she said, noting Santa Fe is fortunate to have so many organizations trying to solve the affordable housing issue. 'It's always a healthy competition.' Applicants must follow the city's bid process to the letter, Nelson emphasized, as incomplete proposals will not be considered. Two virtual training sessions were scheduled Monday to help applicants navigate the bid process, she added. The events were recorded and are available for viewing, the city said in a news release. Each session was expected to last approximately 90 minutes. Additionally, members of the city's procurement team will be available to answer questions and help applicants complete their proposals, Nelson said. She expects the proposals to include some creative potential solutions to the housing crisis. 'We're really optimistic,' she said.
