When Landlords Make the Laws

Muñoz refused to talk to SFR for this story. He told a reporter who approached him with questions at the Capitol on Monday to make an appointment. He didn’t respond to a subsequent voicemail message or questions sent to him at two different email addresses.

The legislators who double as landlords include Democrats as well as Republicans. Some, including Muñoz, chair committees and in turn have power over how bills flow through the Capitol. Some rent out just a residence or two, like Rep. Derrick Lente, D-Sandia Pueblo. Some lease dozens of units, including Rep. Harry Garcia, a Democrat from Grants.

Understanding how much real estate legislators own, and where, is not exactly easy. SFR combed through the financial disclosures legislators must file each year. As part of these disclosures, lawmakers are required to list any real estate they own in the state besides their primary residence. But they are only required to provide a “general description” of the property they own and list the county where that property is located. The description can be as vague as “rental property,” with no hint of whether it’s a commercial or residential property, a single family home or a sprawling trailer park. While lawmakers are also required to disclose any sources of income over $5,000 a year, such as rent from homes they lease, they may provide few details.

The lawmakers listed in this story were either clear about their holdings in financial disclosures or have property listed in county assessors’ offices. Others may own residential rental properties but are not clear about their holdings. More own commercial properties.

BY ANDREW OXFORD oxford@sfreporter.com

GALLUP—The Chamisal Trailer Park looks a lot like the others around here, with dozens of trailers lined up in rows along a road on the outskirts of town.

Residents SFR interviewed had only a few complaints. They say no one has done anything about junk cars, for example, or that snow doesn’t get plowed often. A local ordinance says city officials should inspect every mobile home park in this city of about 20,000 on the edge of the Navajo Nation twice a year to ensure landlords are keeping the properties up to code. But the city’s spokesman tells SFR no one conducts those inspections anymore.

Still, rent hasn’t gone up much over the years and everyone seems to know the landlord by first name—George.

George Muñoz, that is, the Democratic chairman of the powerful state Senate Finance Committee, which wields tremendous power over New Mexico’s budget.

SFR found about a dozen legislators are also landlords, like Muñoz, who owns this mobile home park in Gallup and another nearby. While few lawmakers are known to be renters themselves, “landlord” appears to be one of the most common jobs among New Mexico legislators.

Some who work on housing issues at the Capitol say the representation of landlords and the relatively few renters among lawmakers creates a sort of bias in the Legislature, making it all the harder to pass laws that could limit rent increases or provide protections for tenants against unscrupulous property owners.

“I wish I could say this was a partisan issue but it isn’t,” says Rep. Angelica Rubio, a Democrat from Las Cruces sponsoring a bill to bolster tenant protections. “That’s our biggest challenge. We have good public policy but there’s a lot at stake for some making the decisions.”

Not all legislators who double as landlords are fighting against the ideas; some have voted for bills that could take money out of their own pockets. Yet, they aren’t the only ones representing landlords at the Roundhouse. Several trade groups have a small army of lobbyists pushing the views of landlords, realtors and mobile home park owners.

With just a couple weeks left before the session ends on March 18, several bills to bolster tenant protections are dead or face uncertain futures, suggesting lawmakers are again putting the issue in the backseat.

Meanwhile, about 30% of homes in New Mexico are occupied by renters, according to the US Census. It’s harder to calculate with certainty how many lawmakers are tenants. By all accounts, though, it’s not a big caucus.

“I’m one of a few people who still rents. I’ve been renting my whole life. I like being a renter,” Rubio says.

But at the Capitol, Rubio finds a certain perception of tenants.

“There’s just this idea of the type of person that rents and so it’s a really challenging issue,” she says.

Tenant protections have long struggled to gain traction at the state Capitol. In 1991, for example, lawmakers voted to bar cities, counties and towns from limiting rent increases, ensuring no community could enact rent control.

Senate Bill 99, a proposal this year to repeal that law and let local governments adopt rent control policies, was shot down in the first weeks of the session. The bill’s backers argued it would have merely given local governments one more option for responding to a worsening, statewide housing crisis. Communities could adopt rent control policies, or not. and that she looked forward to putting a new focus and new funding into fighting homelessness.

The Senate Health & Public Affairs Committee voted to block the bill in a hearing last month. Committee members acknowledged the state’s rising rents and rising number of unsheltered people, but argued that allowing local communities to limit rent increases wouldn’t help the problem.

“We would have a patchwork quilt of policies around the state,” Chairman Gerald Ortiz y Pino, a Democrat from Albuquerque, told the committee as he joined Republicans in blocking the bill.

Proponents of tenant protections argue the state needs to both build new housing and prevent people who already have homes from ending up on the streets because of skyrocketing rents.

Serge Martinez likens the situation to a common saying used by an arborist he knows: The best time to plant a tree is five years ago and the second best time is right now. The same goes for housing, argues Martinez, associate dean of experiential learning at the University of New Mexico School of Law and an advocate for tenants’ rights.

Putting more money into new housing will be great for the people who can move into those homes when they are constructed years from now. In the meantime, tenants need help, he says.

“There is no silver bullet. There is no one thing that’s going to automatically fix it. These are all parts of the puzzle,” Martinez says.

Martinez, who is also the president of Amparo, a housing assistance and eviction prevention program in Albuquerque, has been pushing for House Bill 6—a package of tenant protections.

Similar proposals have see-sawed through several iterations over the last few sessions as backers have negotiated changes they hope will get the measure through the Legislature and on to the governor’s desk. At perhaps its most ambitious, the bill would have prohibited landlords from refusing to take housing vouchers, removing a major obstacle for those who manage to obtain much-sought assistance.

That provision is gone, though.

Legislators And Landlords

SFR reviewed the financial disclosures filed by legislators and noted the lawmakers who reported owning residential rentals.

Rep. Bobby Gonzales (D-Taos)

Seven residential rentals and seven commercial rental properties

Sen. George Muñoz (D-Gallup) Real estate

Sen. Steven Neville (R-Farmington) Rental properties

Sen. William Soules (D-Las Cruces) Rental property, residential

Sen. Pat Woods (R-Grady) Rental property

Rep. Art De La Cruz (D-Albuquerque)

Rep. Harry Garcia (D-Grants)

Four rental properties

10 commercial properties; 1,330-acre ranch; 11 houses; eight vacant lots; one mobile home park and one house

Only two members—Democratic Sens. Brenda McKenna and Antoinette Sedillo Lopez—voted against tabling the measure.

Ortiz y Pino argued the solution to rising rents and rising homelessness will involve putting more money into building homes.

“And we have money,” he told the committee.

A budget approved by the House and now wending through the Senate would put millions of dollars from the state’s general fund into residential housing. And it would use $2 million from a settlement with drug companies to house people with opioid use disorders.

There’s interest from the top floor of the Capitol, too.

In her inaugural address, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said that “building serious momentum on affordable housing can be a hallmark of the next four years”

This year, the bill would change the timeline for landlords to file for eviction when a tenant is late on rent. Instead of being able to file only three days after providing a tenant notice of a missed payment, a landlord could only go to court after 11 days.

Supporters argue the bill would also better protect tenants from retaliation by landlords for raising concerns about poor maintenance or other problems with a property.

The bill passed the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee last week along party lines—with Democrats voting in favor and Republicans in opposition— and is awaiting a hearing in front of the House Judiciary Committee.

Some lawmakers have been blunt that their experiences as landlords inform their view of the issue.

Garcia, the Democratic legislator from CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

Rep. T Ryan Lane (R-Aztec)

Rep. Derrick Lente (D-Sandia Pueblo)

Single family rental

Townhome rental

Rep. Luis Terrazas (R-Silver City) Residential rental

Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez (D-Albuquerque)

Four rental properties

Grants, voted against a version of the bill last year, citing his experience as a landlord during a debate over the measure. According to his financial disclosure, Garcia owns several houses and a mobile home park in Cibola County. He says he tries to be understanding of tenants, particularly if one loses a job and can’t pay rent. But he doesn’t like the idea of the Legislature imposing limits on rent or some other rules on landlords.

“That’s not fair to the people who have to pay the bills,” he says, referring to landlords with mortgages and repairs to cover.

Rubio, though, is worried about the renters who may end up with an eviction on their records forever—following them around as they are required to disclose it on future rental applications.

While a previous iteration of HB6 passed the House last year, Rubio says it’s unclear if it can make it through the Senate this session. Other housing legislation has already sputtered there.

Senate Bill 298 would update the Mobile Home Park Act, which covers New Mexicans who own their own mobile home but lease the space where it is parked. The bill would limit rent increases in mobile home parks and require owners to notify residents before selling a park. Residents would also be given a chance to make an offer for a park before any sale is finalized— what’s known as a “right of first refusal” in other states that have adopted similar laws.

Maria Griego, a staff attorney working on the legislation at the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, says the protections are key because mobile home parks provide a crucial segment of affordable housing in the state.

“It’s often a very attractive option for retired New Mexicans who live on a fixed income, so they really need that predictability,” she says of the limit on rent