Daniel Werwath’s plan to fix NM’s affordable housing problem

It might have been skateboarding with teens who were homeless. Or a father who was on the ground level of affordable housing efforts.

From the start, Daniel Werwath’s career has been about getting people into homes and making sure there are enough affordable options so they can do so.

Since last year, he’s been leading the fight from a new perch: as housing policy adviser to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

But Werwath has been around the block. He’s held positions in the private sector and at nonprofits, with involvement in 10 affordable housing projects in New Mexico and planning efforts in other U.S. cities.

Getting more affordable housing in areas of New Mexico where people desperately need it is more difficult than you might think.

“Housing is about the most complicated thing we do in the world,” Werwath says. “We take it for granted because everyone needs a house.”

Consider this: The median cost of a new home in New Mexico has shot up to more than $440,000, Werwath says. Underlying that figure is the fact that Santa Fe County is lacking 7,000 of the housing units it needs. Albuquerque has a gap of at least 25,000 units, but Raton has an excess of several hundred.

While most land-use happens at the local level, Werwath says his office will work on broad issues such as setting goals and figuring out how to get there, uniting disparate efforts throughout state government, working on cutting red tape and collecting data on what works best.

But those are just the system-level issues. To Werwath, housing is deeply personal.

“I think the ultimate thing for me is the idea of this being a state where kids can’t afford to live when they graduate from high school,” he says. “I think about vulnerable populations — people staying with abusers because they can’t afford homes. I think about overcrowded households and the challenges that creates. People without stable housing — it’s traumatizing.”

Your office is still new, but what are some things you’ve been working on?

One is to just pull together all the agencies that touch on a specific topic and get them pulling in a direction. (For example,) … we convene the different agencies that touch on workforce, along with economic development. These are the funds and programs we have. How do we pull them all together? We’re still in the uncovering phase. Some are adjacent in a way you wouldn’t necessarily think. We did a pilot this summer where we brought all these agencies to a homeless encampment and … took care of about 20 people that one afternoon — something that normally takes a social worker months.

What are the biggest stumbling blocks when it comes to affordable housing?

One of those is regulatory frameworks. (In) Santa Fe County, it takes three to four years to get an approval for a large-scale project. If you can shorten it to 12-18 months, you can save up to $80,000 a unit in hard costs. The easiest thing to do in Santa Fe is build luxury housing. You want to build affordable housing? Years of public hearings, getting shredded at every step, having an impossible time getting permits from the city. Every step is hard. You know what’s easy? Building a 3,500- square-foot mansion, three of them a year, on top of a mountain with one client. That’s what the regulatory framework says is easy to do.

What are your pet peeves?

When people say they have a question in a public hearing, but it’s really a comment and a reason to talk about themselves. And the word “webinar.” I don’t know why. It just really drives me nuts.

How do you spend your free time?

I ride my bike a lot. I ride to and from work most days. Recently, (on) an electric bicycle. I have a seat on the back for my daughter. I take her to school before I come here. I do a lot of splitboarding, so uphill snowboarding, you hike up and then come down. That’s a good way to sort things in your head.

What’s a difficult aspect of your job?

I think increasingly one of the values I’m trying to center myself around is you don’t always win. You win a lot, but you don’t win everything. And often when you’re in a series of wins, that wave is going to crash. It is hard, like a burnout thing, especially doing actual projects and local land-use hearings.

How do you stay motivated and keep your spirits up?

The spirits stay up because the impacts are huge. The wins are huge. But I try to detach from it. I swore off social media. That was a big one. It’s a super toxic space. All the things that we’re dealing with nationally with misinformation about everything, that’s happening at the local level with housing. It’s gotten insane in the last few years. And there’s no arbiters of truth.

How worried are you about federal funding cuts?

Where I’m most concerned is homelessness. We receive about a little over $20 million a year in federal funding to address homeless issues in the state. Losing that would be catastrophic. I feel confident that our governor and Legislature would step up and help solve those problems. We also think there needs to be a Marshall Plan-level investment in turning the tide on homelessness, because the numbers are bleak in terms of the trajectory.

How would you say your skateboarding experiences affected you?

I grew up skateboarding and spent a lot of time on the street with people. You spend a lot of time with homeless people when you skateboard. You interact, and you see them in a different way. I think maybe the hardest part about solving homelessness will be making sure everyone remembers that those are all people.