NM Gov’s Office of Housing moving to state workforce agency

A small team of state employees focused on solving New Mexico’s housing crisis will move from the governor’s office to the state’s workforce agency, a temporary move while the informal office seeks a permanent home. 

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has sought statutory authority for a state Office of Housing from the New Mexico Legislature for the last two years, but legislation doing so failed in both sessions. Legislation would have empowered the four-person team to create a statewide strategy to solve the housing shortage and attached it administratively to the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration, which received more than $100 million this legislative session to spend on housing and homelessness.

In a news release Monday, the governor’s office said the move to the Department of Workforce Solutions will create a strong connection between job creation and housing, plus allow for more accountability after the state’s significant investment in solving the housing crisis here. 

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“This move will ensure that the Office of Housing has the resources it needs to put these dollars to use solving our state’s housing shortage as we continue pursuing legislation to make the state’s housing and homelessness initiatives permanent,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement. 

The move comes a few weeks after the governor fired Daniel Werwath, her senior housing policy adviser tasked with, among other things, convincing lawmakers to approve a state Housing Office. Werwath told Source New Mexico after his departure that he tried to achieve “some systemic change around housing, which apparently there’s less appetite for than I had hoped.”

The state lacks more than 30,000 housing units, according to recent estimates. Employers in Albuquerque, where lawmakers hope the majority of new housing spending will occur, added 31,000 jobs in the last three years, but city developers added only 9,000 new housing units in that period, according to a January report from Pew Charitable Trusts. 

In the coming months, Workforce Solutions Secretary Sarita Nair will come up with a recommendation for the office’s permanent home, governor’s spokesperson Michael Coleman told Source New Mexico. 

“It could remain at DWS, move to another agency, or stand alone. There is no firm deadline for the recommendation. The governor is confident that DWS is the right place for the Office of Housing at this time,” Coleman said in an email Tuesday.

Nair, in the news release, said one of the state workforce’s biggest challenges is finding affordable housing. Merging the housing office and the workforce agency will enable “strong collaboration and accountability,” she said.