Albuquerque developers are transforming some of the city’s vacant motels and homes into affordable housing. As Jack Herrera explains in High Country News, the city needs up to 30,000 new units to meet demand. “Meanwhile, plywood covers the windows of unused buildings, many of them one-story faux-adobe Pueblo Revival structures. In 2018, a municipal task force estimated that 1,200 to 1,300 homes were either vacant, abandoned or generally substandard.”
Rehabilitating older housing solves two problems: It revitalizes an economy that boomed in some neighborhoods and left others blighted. And it’s a rallying cry against scarcity, where the remnants of a past collapse become symbols of new life: boarded-up buildings transformed into new homes for those on the margins.…