This article is part of the Under the Lens series
Fit to Live In: Fixing Our Housing Stock
The apartment complex had been condemned. Nicole Scarpa and her kids were given a week’s notice to vacate. She was afraid she would soon be homeless, and not for the first time.
About 10 years ago, one of Nicole’s children, a 2-year-old daughter, passed away. She went through what she describes as some “mental health issues,” and wound up living in her vehicle.
But she did find housing, and settled in with her children.
From that experience, she says, “I got the desire to serve. And I wanted to get involved in the community, help meet unmet needs.”
Scarpa became a community support peer worker, but found that housing was the main issue many were dealing with.
Then, in 2018, came the notice to vacate. She counts herself lucky that she was able to find another apartment soon after but, she says, “That was traumatizing. It was a bad situation. I grinded. I called rental agencies, was very persistent. I knew a couple of landlords, called them. There wasn’t much out there. My neighbors, a lot of them went to live with other family.”
In 2023, Scarpa helped form a Roswell chapter of the nonprofit With Many Hands. One of the first things she did with the new organization was knocking on doors to ask people about their struggles in finding an affordable place to live, and seek input about potential solutions.
“And in Roswell, it seems there were boarded-up houses in just about every neighborhood,” Scarpa says.
Many of those homes, though, weren’t dilapidated. Maybe they needed a new roof, maybe an HVAC system. Many were owned by people who wanted to rent them out but needed help getting them fixed up.
She eventually teamed up with a friend, Roswell native Jeneva Martinez, founder of the Roswell Homeless Coalition.
“Bringing in new development could take years,” Martinez says. “But if we could do home rehabilitation, if we could work with property owners to bring them up to HUD standards, we could get some people housed.”
With Many Hands obtained a $40,000 grant from the Tides Foundation. “At first, I thought ‘$40,000 isn’t going to go far,’” Martinez says. “What are we going to do with $40,000? Have a conversation? But a lot of these houses we saw needed just a little bit of work. And a lot of people were letting us know they had a HUD voucher, but no housing. So I thought, ‘Let’s go talk to some of the people that own these vacant houses.’”
Organizers at With Many Hands identified four houses for a pilot project in 2023, and lent $10,000 to each homeowner, Martinez says. Those landlords would have the loans forgiven if they rented out the refurbished units to voucher-holders for two years. With Many Hands fixed the four properties within 45 days, thus setting the pattern for Rehab-2-Rental.
How Rehab-2-Rental Works
The program makes small loans to landlords looking to bring homes up to HUD rental standards. If a landlord rents a rehabilitated property to a tenant-based housing voucher holder for a total of five years over a six-year period, the loan is forgiven. A landlord can also pay back the loan and rent out the rehabilitated property at market rates. But thus far none have taken that option, says Dan Jennings, executive director of the nonprofit HagermanForward, which manages the funding logistics for Rehab-2-Rental.
There are some repair programs offered in New Mexico, but most focus on owner-occupied homes. What makes Rehab-2-Rental unique is that it’s geared toward rental properties.
Earlier this year, Housing New Mexico, a quasi-governmental agency focused on affordable housing, provided $656,000 for the program to expand statewide. The program also received a separate $500,000 grant from the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority to refurbish 18 homes in Chaves County, where Roswell is located.
“There are a lot of property owners that can’t access traditional finance methods, can’t just go to the bank and get a loan against a property, because it’s not in great shape,” Jennings says. “And there’s a lot of aging housing stock. So, it’s amazing seeing a landlord say, ‘I’m going to do this,’ and soon have a beautiful home ready for someone who may otherwise have soon been homeless.”
Rehab-2-Rental is currently administered through four Housing New Mexico–approved organizations—HagermanForward, Supporting People in Need, El Camino Real Housing Authority, and San Juan County Partnership.
The first step in the approval process, Jennings says, is making sure those applying for loans understand the voucher system. Then they need to find a contractor to do an initial walk-through on the property.
“They provide a good faith estimate, and if it’s more than what the grant affords, we need to have a conversation about whether [the landlord] can afford the gap between what we can provide and what the contractor says,” Jennings says. “Then we [Rehab-2-Rental] do a walk-through with the contractor and the homeowner together to do an inspection just to see if there’s anything that they missed.”
If a landlord is approved for a loan, the program provides some money up front for materials so the contractor can get started, and pays the rest of the refurbishment costs once the house passes inspection.
Housing Troubles in UFO Country
Roswell sits in the Chihuahuan desert in southeastern New Mexico, and is home to about 48,000 people. Roughly 60 percent of the population is Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census.
The city looms large in American UFO mythology—many believe that a flying saucer crashed nearby in 1947. The federal government has long maintained that the downed craft was actually a balloon. But the incident gave rise to a cottage industry, and Roswell today is home to a UFO museum and an annual UFO Festival.
Though the alien legends have drawn plenty of tourists, the city’s inhabitants have had greater and greater difficulty finding shelter for themselves.
According to Zillow, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Roswell in August was about $850 per month, compared to about $1,570 for the United States as a whole. But that’s up from about $650 per month in August 2024. The median annual household income in Chaves County hovers at about $52,000, according to U.S. Census figures, compared to about $79,000 for the United States as a whole.
In New Mexico, rents have increased by almost 25 percent over the past five years, while wages have increased by less than 5 percent, according to Housing New Mexico.
“We’ve seen the impact of increasing material costs, increasing cost of insurance, increasing cost of labor for construction,” says Robyn Powell, senior director of policy and planning for the organization.
The volunteer group Chaves County Health Council runs a 211 line to connect people with various resources. The organization’s director Kerry Moore says housing is “the No.1 thing we get calls about.”
“HUD with their voucher program, and a local group called Alianza usually help a lot, but because of funding cuts, a lot of assistance has been cut,” Moore says. “But even if we had vouchers available, we just don’t have enough housing. A lot of housing is taken up by people who work in the oil fields. It’s more affordable to live in Chaves County than in Eddy or Lea counties where the oil fields are busiest. We also have a lot of traveling nurses.”
Many residents have to get creative with their housing options.
“A lot of families are doubling up in households,” Moore says. “A lot of families bounce from house to house. We’re about 200 miles from the nearest major city, so we have a lot of open space, and we have people sleeping in their vehicles.”
Chaves County also suffered flooding last fall, which killed two people and caused an estimated $500 million in damage.
“That’s our biggest obstacle right now,” Martinez says. “Not only did we lose quite a bit of housing stock, but we’re also having trouble finding contractors right now, because they’re all so booked because of the flood.”
Expanding Statewide
The water was about 5 feet deep inside the Roswell duplex that Daisy Olaguez owned. She had flood insurance, but what it provided “was a joke,” she says. The tenants had moved out, Olaguez had given them back their security deposits, and she was receiving no rental income.
“We didn’t know where we were going to get the funds to deal with this,” Olaguez says. She had heard of the Rehab-2-Rental program and reached out to Martinez.
With the assistance provided she stripped the interior to the studs.
“We had to do everything,” she says. “Insulation, drywall, electrical, plumbing, flooring. The HVAC was completely shot on both units.”
Olaguez’s duplex units are among 11 that have received assistance from Rehab-2-Rental thus far, including seven since the statewide rollout, according to Jennings of HagermanForward.
In December 2023, organizers began thinking about growing the program beyond Chaves County. That was not long after the first house was refurbished, and Martinez says she and other organizers realized that the concept had potential to work statewide.
The first property to receive funding under the expanded program was a three-bedroom home that was upgraded in April and rented to a single mother.
The goal, says Jennings, is for each project to be completed within two months. “Once it becomes rentable, we’ll do a little ribbon-cutting and celebrate,” he says.
Jennings says most of the Rehab-2-Rental units have needed roof work, door and window replacements, smoke and CO2 detectors, and HVAC repairs.
As of September, in addition to the dwellings currently being renovated, three property owners were working on getting their contractor estimates. The program had distributed about $215,000, and roughly 30 people had been housed, Jennings said. Officials with Housing New Mexico say the program is proving “to be a great resource” and that they plan on looking for ways to continue expanding it.
“The need is great,” Powell says. “And we’re hoping to get additional funding in the next legislative session.”
Jesse McDaniel is another landlord who had a flood-damaged property. The water had reached about 4 feet, and the house needed new flooring, paint, trim, and a water heater. He knew Martinez through a fundraiser they had worked on for the Roswell Homeless Coalition, and decided to apply for a loan.
He now has a tenant, and recently got approval for a loan to work on another property. He described the program as “a godsend.”
“It’s just an ongoing thing that we need affordable housing—I get calls from people who are living in hotels, who are living in cars, who are looking for a rental,” he says. “But it’s not just helping the tenants. You have houses that are just sitting there, and can easily get fixed with a little help. And if you can fix a house up, get it occupied, that helps lift the neighborhood, that helps lift the city.”
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In New York State, we have a $40 million Vacant Rental Improvement Program (VRIP) that provides grants to property owners to repair/rehab vacant or unsafe rental apartments and bring them back into shape so they can be rented again.