In this episode of Reported, staff writer Katherine Lewin interviews Daniel Werwath, director of New Mexico Inter-Faith Housing and the developer behind the 100% affordable live/work artist complex at Siler Yard, on housing affordability and availability in Santa Fe. 

In this episode, Katherine Lewin interviews SFR staff writer Leah Cantor about her cover series, the first installment of which came out this week. This two-part series is all about affordable housing, or the lack of it, in Santa Fe, including how inclusionary zoning laws put in place years ago has partially created this current housing shortage in the city. 

The second part of Leah ’s series on affordable housing in Santa Fe publishes next Wednesday, March 10th. 

Life happens really fast, and it often seems to speed up when something dark is afoot, at least lately. That’s what today’s episode is about: how quickly and devastatingly you call fall into debt. 

Especially when you’re in debt—in New Mexico—to an installment lender.  

New Mexico is one of the last states in the country to allow triple-digit interest rates on short-term, small-dollar installment loans—not to mention the fees and all the other costs tacked on by the mostly multi-state corporations behind the storefront lenders you see all over low-income neighborhoods.

But there are people who are trying to do something about it in a bid to protect borrowers. 

Namely legislators and advocates who are trying to move a bill through both the state Senate and House right now that would cap the rate at 36%, which is more in line with the majority of the country. 

I interviewed two people whose stories epitomize what can happen when you’re exposed to debt during a vulnerable time. 

I’m going to introduce you to one of them in this episode of Reported—a 34-year-old who slipped into thousands of dollars of debt in a matter of months. 

Two episodes ago, we told you about a season we’d planned that looked back on New Mexico history by examining the terms of key governors. The season was going to be heavily reliant on research in the state archives, tracking down historians and recording tons of in-person interviews.

Of course, none of that has been possible with public health orders in place. But before we pulled the plug, we gathered up enough material for two episodes. In Episode 7, we walked you through some of the origins of the state during the territorial period, New Mexico’s role in the Civil War and more.

And speaking of pandemics, that’s what we have on tap for you this week—a snapshot of New Mexico in the years 1912 to 1919. What a time to be alive!

Theme music: Lone Piñon

Sources

Professor Steve Martinez: Santa Fe Community College

New Mexico Historical Archives

New Mexico Historical Review 

WASHINGTON ELLSWORTH LINDSEY By IRA C. IHDE *

VOL, XXVI JULY, 1951 No.3

A couple of lifetimes ago, before masks, endless Zoom meetings and takeout only, we had big plans for the fourth season of Reported, the Santa Fe Reporter’s podcast. 

Each week, we were going to explore a piece of state history through the lens of a New Mexico governor. 

But like nearly all other things good and decent that existed before 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic drove a stake through the heart of our grand idea. So, we scrapped the season on the governors.

We did, however, manage to produce two episodes from that blown up season and we think this is a perfect time to dust off these two nearly lost pieces and let you give them a listen. After all, they’re all about state government and the philosophies that drive it. In case you didn’t know, our current state government has just embarked on the fifty-fifth Legislature amid unprecedented circumstances: no galleries, no busy hallways, threats of violence and more. 

Katherine Lewin, the host and producer of Reported, interviews SFCC Professor Steve Martinez, who walks us through the origins of some of New Mexico’s mainstays—our state constitution, the beginnings of the Legislature and, of course, the feud with Texas—as well as the bright and dark spots of this time period before we became a state—slavery, voter suppression, American exceptionalism and the ongoing genocide of Native people. 

It’s not actually the beginning, but we picked this point in time in the middle 1800s when New Mexico became an official territory of the United States as a place to start. 

For generations, families across the US and Canada have struggled to get someone, anyone, to pay attention to the growing crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people. In the last few years, high-profile cases of brutally murdered Indigenous girls have brought the problem into the national spotlight and the pages of the national newspapers.

Despite more attention on this complicated issue, states have struggled to address it. The problems are rampant—communication breakdowns among tribal, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, and there’s little to no national or statewide data collection that would even begin to define the contours. 

New Mexico is not exempt from any of that. It’s among the states with the highest number of missing and murdered Indigenous women, according to The Urban Indian Health Institute, which has a comprehensive but outdated report. 

Last year, the New Mexico Legislature finally decided to do something by setting up a state task force, combining the work of the Indian Affairs Department with law enforcement agencies, advocates and survivors and family members. 

This group, now called the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives Task Force, recently released a report, after a year of work. The state’s first attempt led to a sobering conclusion: that a lot more work needs to be done by the task force and by legislators—especially around data collection from law enforcement agencies. But of the 23 law enforcement agencies the task force queried, only 11 sent cases with race and sex included and the researchers were only able to analyze data from three police departments and two sheriff's departments.

For this story, I spoke with Representative Melanie Stansbury, one of the co-sponsors of the original bill that set up the task force, about her impressions of the report and what could come next. I also interviewed New Mexico Sentencing Commission Deputy Director Douglas Carver about his work on race/ethnicity collection in the state. 

Music: Lone Pinon

Read more at www.sfreporter.com 

Santa Fe has been described as a tale of two cities: the one in the north and the east, and the one in the south. The Southside, with a capital “S”, which is also my beat here at the Santa Fe Reporter, is the most densely populated in general, and also has the most young families and middle to low-income households, including immigrants and nonwhite people. 

It’s also home to the city’s sewage treatment plant, several asphalt and gravel companies, and the airport, just to name a few of the polluting industries down here. 

But one company, in particular its application for an updated air quality permit with the New Mexico Environment Department, has sparked a fight that started in late 2019 and has carried over into the latter part of 2020. That company is Associated Asphalt. It makes asphalt for roads and highways across the state, often in contracts with state and local governments. 

Back in March, just after the first pandemic lockdown started, I wrote about the fight between Southside neighbors and the company. Associated Asphalt wants to consolidate its operations, which are currently in two spots, into one of those locations on the west side of Highway 599. It also wants to be able to operate 24/7. 

So here we are, eight months later, and the permit is still in limbo, except now the Southside residents worried about the plant have two lawyers, Maslyn Locke and Eric Jantz from the New Mexico Environmental Law Centerand an air quality expert, Mike Schneider, on their side. 

I interviewed Maslyn and Eric for this story. Excuse some of the background noise—working from home and outside of a studio means you can hear a bit of me typing notes and my dog obnoxiously chewing a bone.