How money, urgency and creativity is changing the play for affordable housing in Santa Fe By Leah Cantor
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MARCH 10-16, 2021 | Volume 48, Issue 10
NEWS
I AM Transformative .
OPINION 5 NEWS
Tyler Sisneros Director of Treasury Management and Digital Banking
7 DAYS, CLAYTOONZ AND THIS MODERN WORLD 5
As your local expert, I can help transform your business using Century’s Treasury Management tools to drive measurable financial results. I AM Century Bank!
DEADLY TREND LINE 9 Suspected murders decreased in 2020, but have quickly risen above average in the new year as Santa Fe reopens HOW BIG OF A SPLASH 11 Lawmakers are still hashing out the details on cannabis legalization proposals and their tax revenue potential COVER STORY 12 HOME GAME The second of SFR’s two-part series on Santa Fe’s efforts to address affordable housing delves into solutions including more cash for a trust fund; creativity with community; initiatives to help the unhoused and long-term planning
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SFR PICKS 17 Catch your breath with the new Museum of Art exhibit, plus kids, blues and ice cream
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A&C 18
SENIOR CORRESPONDENT JULIA GOLDBERG
HEY, SQUIRRELFRIEND! Santa Fe comic artist offers fun, weird and dark storyline in the vein of Disney and Fleischer— only evil
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR JEFF PROCTOR
STAFF WRITERS LEAH CANTOR KATHERINE LEWIN COPY EDITOR CHARLOTTE JUSINSKI EDITORIAL INTERN WILLIAM MELHADO
FOOD 19 LACTOSE INTOLERANT Plantina Vegan Bakery treats those who eschew meat and dairy MOVIES 20 BREAKING NEWS IN YUBA COUNTY Allison Janney gets all the attention; plus we review the Shudder original Lucky
CONTRIBUTING WRITER RILEY GARDNER DIGITAL SERVICES MANAGER BRIANNA KIRKLAND PRINT PRODUCTION MANAGER AND GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUZANNE S KLAPMEIER DISPLAY/CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE ROBYN DESJARDINS CIRCULATION MANAGER ANDY BRAMBLE
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COURTESY LANL.GOV
S F R EPORT ER.COM / NEWS / LETTERSTOTHEEDI TO R
LETTERS
sea levels? It is far less expensive to act now. We only have a short time left to get these climate bills passed this session. What are we going to do? Sit around and let New Mexico fall into more severe drought, frequent forest fires, and have only a dry riverbed for a Rio Grande? I know you love your sons and daughters, your grandsons, and granddaughters. If you love them, why would you ruin their future? This is about New Mexico children. Pass climate bills this session.
ALEX HANNA ALBUQUERQUE
7 DAYS, MARCH 3: Mail letters to PO Box 4910, Santa Fe, NM 87502; or email them to editor@sfreporter. com. Letters (no more than 200 words) should refer to specific articles in the Reporter. Letters will be edited for space and clarity.
ELEMENTS, FEB. 20: “ENVIRONMENT NEWS”
WHY NOT ACT? I’m 12 years old. I am concerned about my future. I am being handed the heavy burden of climate change. In New Mexico, most major climate bills are currently stalled. Why? I have been speaking in support of climate bills on zoom this legislative session. Fossil fuel emissions are causing climate change: Every country, every state, every city, every town needs to take action to draw down emissions. I see that some of our New Mexico representatives don’t seem to understand that climate change is happening now. I was given 30 seconds to speak in support of the Climate Solutions Act, HB 9. I listened to Republican representative Nibert stall for two hours, asking repetitive questions. Now, I am sitting here 10 days later and there is still no committee vote on the Climate Solutions Act that will actually draw down New Mexico emissions. Politicians say it’s too expensive to fix climate change now. How many billions of dollars do you think it’s going to take when there are major food shortages and rising
OVERSIMPLIFICATION SFR’s Seven Days reported “LA CIENEGA RESIDENTS APPARENTLY DON’T WANT A CELL TOWER - Because who wants to reach the fire department easily?” This La Cienega resident respectfully requests that SFR editors rethink their oversimplification of a complex community issue. In the process of approving the tower, which will exceed our community’s height restrictions by 35 feet, the State Land Commission skirted multiple county planning and zoning ordinances alongside restrictions set forth in the La Cienega Community Plan. A legitimate opportunity to solicit and incorporate community input wasn’t provided. Emergency access matters to us as residents, but so do due process, resident representation, and our tight-knit community’s integrity. Nefarious activity from corporations like AT&T shouldn’t surprise us, but our state leaders’ clandestine regulation-skirting is legitimate cause for alarm.
KATE McCAHILL LA CIENEGA
CORRECTION A caption in last week’s cover story named the wrong store near which new apartments are being built on Richards Avenue; the correct store is Home Depot.
AXCES
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MEETING LIST
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WEEK OF MARCH 8-12, 2021
Wednesday, March 10, 2021 Economic Development Advisory Committee – Virtual Meeting: 11:00 AM https://santafenmgov.zoom.us/j/91023070113?pwd=QTJrQ jl3M2c3TFpCRjVaRkJYZU53UT09 4:00 PM
Governing Body – Virtual Meeting: https://www.youtube.com/user/cityofsantafe
6:00 PM
Governing Body – Virtual Meeting: https://www.youtube.com/user/cityofsantafe
Thursday, March 11, 2021 5:30 PM Bicycling and Pedestrian Advisory Committee– Virtual Meeting: https://www.youtube.com/user/cityofsantafe Friday, March 12, 2021 No Meetings Scheduled SUBJECT TO CHANGE Please visit https://santafe.primegov.com/public/portal to view agendas, participation information and corresponding materials. For additional information, contact the City Clerk’s Office at 505-955-6521
SFR will correct factual errors online and in print. Please let us know if we make a mistake: editor@sfreporter.com or 988-7530.
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S FREP ORTER.COM / FUN
ALAN WEBBER SAYS HE’LL RUN FOR MAYOR AGAIN “Obelisks for none, backyard statues and miniature American flags for others,” sounds like a kick-ass slogan.
SFPS SUPERINTENDENT VERONICA GARCÍA SAYS SHE’LL RETIRE We honestly salute García for sticking it out this long. Did you know COVID-19 has made schools and stuff really hard?
DAYLIGHT SAVINGS BILL OK’D BY SENATE
EVEN DON’T KIN C F* K THIN IT! T U O B A
Please end the tyranny of 3:45 pm darkness!
MEGHAN MARKLE, PRINCE HARRY REVEAL MUCH IN OPRAH INTERVIEW The royals of Britain are racist?! Quelle surprise!
ARTIST GILBERTO GUZMAN FILES FEDERAL SUIT OVER DOWNTOWN MURAL’S FUTURE Santa Feans don’t like you messing with their art.
ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL NORTH RUNS HEADLINE REFERRING TO THE TERM “NIMBY” AS “THE ‘N’ WORD” No better word for a situation like this than “yikes.”
ASPEN SANTA FE BALLET DISSOLVES TOURING COMPANY, REWORKS FUTURE PLANS No jokes here—just a thanks for more than two decades of dance and stuff.
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W E A R E WAY M O R E TH A N W E D N E S DAY H E R E A R E A CO UP LE O F O N LI N E E XC LUS I V E S :
LISTEN UP In the latest episode of Reported, Katherine Lewin interviews SFR staff writer Leah Cantor about her cover series on housing at sfreporter.com/podcast
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S FR E P O RTE R .CO M / N E WS
Suspected murders decreased in 2020, but have quickly risen above average in the new year as Santa Fe reopens B Y K AT H E R I N E L E W I N k a t h e r i n e @ s f r e p o r t e r. c o m
T
wo men were found dead at the GreenTree Inn on Cerrillos Road within the first two months of 2021—both in rooms rented via housing vouchers aimed at helping homeless people through the pandemic. Virgil Tortalita, 50, was found in a bathtub in room 237 on Jan. 4. It appeared his body had been there for several days. Then, on Feb. 21, a cleaning crew found Arthur Loretto, 52, lifeless on the bed in room 137. There were signs of alcohol consumption and a fight. Both deaths had signs of foul play and were investigated as homicides, though police don’t believe they are connected. While police arrested a suspect in Tortalita’s case, detectives are still looking into Loretto’s death. The men are among the four people suspected to have been murdered within the Santa Fe city limits in just the first twoplus months of the new year. It’s a quick increase in comparison to the entirety of 2020—the pandemic year saw three homicides, marking a return to Santa Fe’s longtime average after significant spikes in the death toll in 2017, 2018 and 2019. The Santa Fe Police Department believes the decrease in human interaction during the pandemic could partially explain last year’s numbers.
But COVID-19 hasn’t impacted the work of detectives; the number of homicides solved has stayed steady and just above the national average for the last few years at SFPD, including 2020, according to data provided by the department. Capt. Anthony Tapia wasn’t necessarily surprised that homicides decreased in 2020. He tells SFR it was “an oddball year” for everyone because of COVID-19, and that lockdowns and social distancing decreased personal interactions. He believes it could have had an impact on homicides, returning them to the city’s longer-term average of three per year. Police are watching to see whether reopening measures lead to more violence, Tapia says. “When it came to homicide and crime in general, [2020] was very unique,” Tapia tells SFR. “We had shutdowns, lockdowns, people who were quarantining, so we didn’t have the normal interaction of people….We are concerned that we’re in February and we’re already at four.” The city of Santa Fe has not historically been plagued with murder like its neighbor, Albuquerque, which counted 76 homicides in 2020 and 80 in 2019. Crime reports for Santa Fe show yearly homicides dropped significantly in 2011 after reaching a decade high with 13 in 2009. In 2016, the city had just one homicide, but that grew to four in 2017, five in 2018 and seven in 2019. Yet, SFPD has seemingly done a strong job of clearing homicides through arrest, according to data Tapia provided. In 2019, the national solve rate was 61%—that dropped to 59% in 2020. Santa Fe has matched that slight decrease: It had a 72% solve rate in 2019 and 66% in 2020, but
City of Santa Fe Homicides
2016
1
2017
Solve Rate
0%
4
75%
2018
80%
2019
72%
2020
66%
5 7 3
2021
4
to date
50%
SOURCE: SFPD AND FBI
Deadly Trend Line
still stayed above the average of the rest of the country. Tapia expects the 2021 percentage of solvability to increase for the department as detectives continue to work on the murders of Frank Pete, who was shot to death at an apartment complex on Hopewell Street on Jan. 8, and Loretto, the second man found deceased at the GreenTree
NEWS
Inn. Tapia tells SFR there are “persons of interest” in both cases and he hopes to make progress on them this year. “We’ve been tracking a little above [the national average],” Tapia says. “The 2021 [percentage] will probably level out a little more as 2021 goes on because investigations do take time to solve.” Along with the two murders that have already been closed by arrest in 2021, SFPD also made arrests in two high-profile killings of adolescents by their peers in 2020: Aiko Perez, allegedly stabbed to death by his friend Matthias Hutt on June 5, and Ivan Perez, allegedly shot in the chest on the Southside by 17-year-old Mario Guizar-Anchondo on July 15. Ivan and Aiko are not related. An employee at 1520 Paseo de Peralta discovered Michael Sheffield dead in the courtyard of the business park on Jan. 2, 2020. He had been stabbed multiple times. There have been no arrests. The number of murdered adolescents in the city could have easily been higher—Ivan’s attacker also shot another boy standing next to him that night, hospitalizing him, though he survived. Ivan died at the scene. And just last week on Feb. 23, two teenagers shot at other teens who are part of a local group known as the Southside Goons at Las Acequias Park, wounding one young man in the leg. Tapia says the shooting at the park and the death of Ivan Perez have both been linked to local gang violence. Members of the so-called Southside Goons have refuted participating in gang activities, and insist they are a music group. “We’ve shifted our efforts,” Tapia tells SFR. “We’ve created an impact team that is focusing on gang violence in these youthful offenders and we’ve already made quite a bit of progress on that with their proactive outreach and activities.” Leah Cantor contributed to this report.
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When strong values inspire positive action, we can get through anything. In 2020, Homewise worked with clients and community partners to achieve the following:
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56 new
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Homewise Homes
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to address the lack of quality affordable housing in Santa Fe.
Homewise is a New Mexico nonprofit whose mission is to help create successful homeowners and strengthen neighborhoods so that individuals and families can improve their long-term financial wellbeing and quality of life. 10
FEBRUARY 24-MARCH 2, 2021
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S FR E P O RTE R .CO M / N E WS
NEWS
BY JULIE ANN GRIMM e d i t o r @ s f r e p o r t e r. c o m
W
ith just 10 days to go in the session, New Mexico senators are still hashing out the details of a proposal to legalize adult-use cannabis that’s passed the House. To further complicate matters, another bill, born in the Senate and with key differences, will move along to the next committee as well. No matter which taxation strategy they land on (if they land on one), however, analysts have varying opinions about how much cash the new law would put into state coffers. House Bill 12 and Senate Bill 388 had their second discussions Tuesday at the Senate Tax, Business and Transportation Committee (as of presstime, no vote had occurred on the former, though members indicated they favor the plan) and would next move to Senate Judiciary. While the tax committee heard three Senate bills for legalizing cannabis in late February, Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto, D-Albuquerque, who sponsored the bill referred to as the “industry version,” removed that proposal from consideration; and Sen. Jacob Candelaria, D-Albuquerque, who backed a proposal that was substantially similar to the House-adopted measure, said he was willing to offer amendments to
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Analysts’ estimates for legal cannabis tax revenue range, depending on out-of-state shoppers
HB 12 rather than move forward with his measure. The Cannabis Regulation Act envisioned by HB 12 would impose an 8% excise tax on retail sales and allow counties to impose additional excise taxes of up to 4%; gross receipts taxes from the state, cities and counties would pile on top of that (in Santa Fe it’s 8.4375%) for a combined total tax on cannabis of about 20%. The committee recommended a due pass on SB 288 from Sen. Cliff Pirtle, R-Roswell. Its tax proposal comes in lower, with a maximum rate of approximately 12%. While Pirtle’s bill formerly proposed to allow counties to opt out of cannabis sales, he said at Tuesday’s hearing that provision had been removed. The napkin math requires another big answer: How much demand exists for the product? Or in more lay terms: How much cannabis will consumers buy? Analyst Kelly O’Donnell has been tracking that question for about five years through a demand model she first constructed with the state’s Medical Cannabis Program in mind. Her projections for sales use a national survey of drug use as well as retail performance data from southern Colorado counties that border New Mexico and demographic information about the proximity of New Mexico’s southern counties to would-be shoppers from Texas. O’Donnell estimates New Mexico’s market for regulated adult-use cannabis at $318 million in the first full year of legalization, growing to $800 million in year four and $1.1 billion by year five. The same rough number arrives, she explains, if one examines the size of Colorado’s market, $2.2 billion, and multiplies it by the ratio of New Mexico’s population to Colorado’s (2.1 million/5.8 million).
LLEN
The Size of the Splash
AN
That puts the tax revenue at 20% in the range of $63 million in the first year, spiking to $220 million by the fifth year. The Legislative Finance Committee, meanwhile, leveled the estimate much lower in its revised March 2 fiscal impact statement, which said the tax revenue in fiscal year 2022 would amount to $20 million and rise to $50 million by the third year. O’Donnell says the main difference between the two is the estimated market from outside New Mexico. “One of the differences in the analysis has been, I think, the size of the cross-border sales. I anticipate those being a very significant part of the size of the New Mexico market—just from observing what has happened in Colorado and from observing that we have this very long border with Texas, and Texas is one of the states that has not legalized and is probably not going to do so in the very near future,” she tells SFR in an interview, adding: “Some of the lower estimates that have been floating around basically downplay that potential.” While earlier versions of HB 12 sought to earmark some of the tax revenue for specific new funds, the current version
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would instead leave that task for future legislatures. The LFC report focuses on more than just revenue—it calculates that the proposal to eliminate the GRT on medical cannabis will mean a revenue loss of $9.7 million to state coffers and the Department of Health will still require about $2.75 million in salaries. Various state agencies also told the LFC they expect cannabis legalization to increase the cost of their operations. That includes $7.6 million in required recurring revenue for licensing, rulemaking and administrative support for the new Cannabis Regulation Division; $7 million in contracts for information technology through the Taxation and Revenue Department for “verification and validation services;” and more than $1 million for the Department of Public Safety for officer training related to DWI and for 10 agents to investigate anticipated illegal cannabis growing operations. How the illicit market will interact with the regulated one is also part of the calculation on revenue. O’Donnell says her model assumes that at the outset of regulation, illicit sales are likely to continue, but that they’ll taper off over time.
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How money, urgency and creativity are changing the outlook for affordable housing in Santa Fe
E
BY L E A H CA N TO R l e a h @ s f r e p o r t e r. c o m
ven though Santa Fe battled high COVID-19 case rates over the last year, not a single outbreak of the virus has been reported in any of the city’s congregate homeless shelters since the pandemic began. For Mayor Alan Webber, that’s a silver lining in a dark time. “It’s never right to talk about the upsides of COVID, in my opinion, but one of the things that has happened because of COVID is a sense of urgency and innovation in deploying our assets very strategically to address homelessness,” Webber says in an interview with SFR, “and it’s worked to help keep people safe.” This achievement is due to the city’s swift response to the virus in the spring, when officials set up a socially distanced shelter on the Midtown campus and used a combination of federal relief dollars from the CARES Act and local funds to pay for 338 hotel rooms that have housed 520 people for extended periods. Ironically, the urgency of COVID-19 brought the city’s longtime goal of ending chronic homelessness nearer, even as thousands of locals who have never been homeless risk losing their housing due to the economic fallout of the pandemic and affluent newcomers drive home sale prices to all-time highs.
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As with the city’s solutions to address homelessness during the pandemic, many of the answers to Santa Fe’s increasingly inequitable housing dynamic are actually fairly simple, immediate and obvious. They just require political will and a lot of money. Housing advocates say the first step is to fully fund the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund, the pot of cash that pays for programs ranging from rental vouchers and mortgage assistance to construction of new affordable housing projects. Santa Fe must also face the inequities caused by land-use codes that implicitly favor the wealthy, and lasting change will require a mindset shift as residents grapple with the city’s future. In last week’s cover story, “House Rules,” SFR went back 30 years through Santa Fe’s inclusionary zoning history to a time when the city was considered a national leader in affordable housing to trace how we got from there to the current affordability crisis. This week, in partnership with the Solutions Journalism Network, we delve into some solutions that could help move the city forward.
Santa Fe Suites and the Built For Zero Approach
Whether you’re more likely to stare resolutely ahead when you hit a red light to avoid catching the gaze of the person at the median or to shuffle through your middle console in search of a dollar, driv-
SFREPORTER.COM
ing past panhandlers at every major Santa Fe intersection can make homelessness seem inevitable. It’s not. “Homelessness is solvable,” says David Foster, director of real estate development for Community Solutions, a national organization working with more than 80 US cities—including Santa Fe—to reduce and end homelessness through its Built for Zero program. “This is the best approach to social policy I’ve ever seen when it comes to an actual strategy and a methodology to follow,” says Mayor Webber, who pushed the city to join the program in 2018. “Now we’ve got a real workable roadmap. It’s worked in other places. We can do it, too.” He’s talking about places such as Rockford, Illinois; Bergen County, New Jersey; and Abilene, Texas, where people rarely remain homeless for more than a year and special programs help homeless veterans get back on their feet. These locales have achieved “functional zero,” where the total number of new people experiencing homelessness each month is less than the total number of homeless people who move into long-term housing and get the support they need. Foster says the Built for Zero strategy takes fluid coordination between multiple entities and generous public investment. A community must first work with shelters and other organizations to establish and regularly update a “by-name list” of every person who passes through the system, says Foster. Then the city must provide enough affordable housing to accommodate the entire homeless population and an integrated safety net to help them stay housed. Santa Fe spent the last few years working with partner organizations to set up a “coordinated entry system” to keep track of people, says Anna Cale, a project administrator at the Youth and Family Division of the Community Health and Safety Department.
With the pandemic, we put a lot of people in hotels very quickly.... And really because we were forced to, we saw what we were actually capable of in terms of addressing homelessness as a collaborative group. -Anna Cale, project administrator, Youth and Family Division of the Community Health and Safety Department
Before last March, the city seemed far from housing most of the people on the list. That changed overnight as officials took measures to stop the spread of COVID-19. “With the pandemic, we put a lot of people in hotels very quickly,” Cale says. “We set up shelters very quickly. A lot of people went into housing very quickly. And really, because we were forced to, we saw what we were actually capable of in terms of addressing homelessness as a collaborative group.” Kate Cleaver, a continuum of care manager with the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness, tells SFR the new arrangement has helped many people who’ve spent much of the last year in motels. Many are revolving through the city’s emergency rooms and jail far less frequently. Some have overcome addiction, found work and set goals for the future.
Siler Yard: A Vision of What’s Possible
LEAH CANTOR
Let’s say you’re back at that intersection, staring at the cardboard sign in someone’s
hands that says, “Anything helps. God bless.” If handing out a few spare dollars to people on street corners every few weeks could miraculously solve homelessness in a matter of years, would you do it? What if you could solve the city’s entire affordability crisis and ensure that every teacher and medical aid can also afford to raise a family here, just by spending what it would cost to take a neighbor out to coffee once a month? “It could really and truly be that easy if everyone in this town who says they care about affordable housing pitched in and made a collective effort,” says Daniel Werwath, director of New Mexico InterFaith Housing and the developer behind the 100% affordable live/work artist complex at Siler Yard. Werwath has spent more than a decade fighting for this project. It’s an example of the creativity and innovation that could characterize affordable housing if the city committed to it. Each of the 65 units includes a large, open room that doubles as a studio and a living room/kitchen with a heavy-duty utility sink located nearby. The walls are constructed to muffle sound and are covered in an extra layer of plywood to make it safe and easy to hang heavy objects. The front doors are taller and wider than average to accommodate bulky materials, instruments or sculptures, and most units have north-facing windows to create the perfect lighting for painting. Energy efficiency measures and solar panels will bring energy use to net zero.
The Midtown Emergency Shelter on the former campus of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design gave homeless people the opportunity to self-isolate and prevent the spread of COVID-19.
LEAH CANTOR
“We are seeing a huge difference from living in a communal setting or in the open to having their own space where they are able to stabilize their lives,” says Cleaver. This success proves something social workers have known for a long time: Access to stable housing is key to solving any number of other problems. Now the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness and its city and community partners are scrambling to figure out how to keep these people housed once the pandemic ends and federal funds dry up, Cleaver says. The permanent conversion from hotels to affordable housing is one way. In December, Community Solutions helped the city purchase the Santa Fe Suites hotel off St. Francis Drive and convert it into a mix of affordably priced rental units. The city contributed $2 million in CARES Act funds to the project. Webber says the city discussed this housing option long before the pandemic hit, but COVID-19 provided the necessary urgency and the funding to get it done. Yet, not everyone in the neighborhood is pleased about the change. The owners of an adjacent shopping center filed a lawsuit against Community Solutions, claiming the conversion does not conform to city codes and would permanently damage surrounding property values.
The autonomy and personal space offered by hotel and dorm rooms helped many chronically homeless people stabilize their lives during the pandemic.
Outside, a central strip of open space is flanked by large community rooms that could be used as tool shares, studios or galleries, depending on the collective will of Siler Yard’s future residents. This kind of collaborative decision-making is at the heart of the Siler Yard vision, says Werwath, explaining that each element of the design was born out of community planning sessions with local low-income artists and neighbors who were paid a stipend to participate. The units will all be rented at affordable rates to people earning between 30% and 60% of the area median income. Housing is defined as affordable if does not cost more than a third of a qualified household’s income. At the bottom end of the scale, this means a one-bedroom apartment will go for as little as $400 a month to someone earning an annual salary of $15,400. Werwath says if the city dedicated $3 million a year to its Affordable Housing Trust Fund and used its resources strategically, a new affordable development just as appealing as this one could be built every year. Siler Yard is on 5 acres of land donated by the city and was funded by a complex mix of money from the city and state and federal affordable housing tax credits. The trust fund contains nearly $1.3 million at present and has brought in $100,000 to $700,000 a year over the last decade in development fees. These feesin-lieu that depend on the whims of the real estate market are not a stable source of funding, says Affordable Housing Director Alexandra Ladd.
The Santa Fe Housing Action Coalition, a nonprofit that focuses on housing policy research and advocacy in Santa Fe, released a report detailing 11 strategies for stable revenue streams in January. These include short-term rental fees, a cannabis tax, a real estate transfer tax and surplus public utility revenues. Werwath thinks one of the most promising strategies is for Santa Fe residents to pass an affordable housing bond, similar to the “workforce housing” bond passed by Albuquerque residents in 2006 and renewed every two years. A $4 million bond, for example, could be used to pay for an affordable housing project over the course of two years and would be paid by city residents via a small increase in property taxes over the course of 20 years—an estimated $4 a year on the property taxes for a $300,000 home. If the city went on to make this a recurring source of revenue by issuing a new bond every other year for the next two decades, officials could raise $40 million in affordable housing funds in 20 years. “In total, all those bonds would add up to an average of $40 a year on people’s property tax….That’s about $3.50 a month per homeowner to fix affordable housing,” says Werwath. “It’s like buying your neighbor a monthly cup of coffee.” Every city councilor, Mayor Webber and the majority of past mayoral administrations have pledged to prioritize affordable housing. Yet the city has dragged its feet for years on building the trust fund. In June, Anchorum St. Vincent, Enterprise Bank and Trust, and housing CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
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LEAH CANTOR
HOME GAME
LEFT: The proposal to build housing at Zia Station faces opposition from neighbors. RIGHT: Daniel Werwath gives a tour of Siler Yard, a new affordable live/work community for artists, which is already accepting applications from income-qualified people for apartments scheduled for completion this year.
nonprofit Homewise invested $10 million in Homewise’s new Community Catalyst Fund for affordable housing. Michael Barrio, director of the Santa Fe Housing Action Coalition, says private sector funds can make an important short-term impact, but alone that’s not enough. The Affordable Housing Trust Fund, he says, is a more reliable source of funding for long-term solutions and is “one of the best tools that the city has to address affordable housing, because those are dollars that can be leveraged three or four times.” When projects like Siler Yard are able to secure city funding, that opens the door for other state and federal tax credits and grants. According to Barrio’s presentation at a January Quality of Life Committee meeting, every $1 in the trust fund could bring in an additional $10 from outside sources. Barrio says cities like Portland, Oregon, and Austin, Texas, have succeeded by dedicating diverse streams of
revenue to their affordable housing trust funds. “We’ve literally led the horse to water,” he says. “All you have to do is drink.”
The Potential of Public Land
The city already has one valuable resource that could be an affordable housing game-changer: public land. Donation of city owned land to an affordable housing project like Siler Yard instantly increases the project’s likelihood of winning some of the most heavily subsidized and highly competitive affordable housing tax credits out there, says Werwath. Last year, the city began a new initiative to sell vacant and under-utilized land. Using those sales to bolster the Affordable Housing Trust Fund is among Housing Action Coalition recommendations, and City Councilor Signe Lindell tells SFR she plans to soon introduce an ordinance that would earmark half the proceeds for that purpose.
Santa Fe’s greatest impact on housing through the use of public land was arguably its decision to invest in Tierra Contenta, says Justin Robison, director of the Santa Fe Community Housing Trust. The city bought the 860 acres on the Southside out of foreclosure in 1993 and created a nonprofit to manage the property and develop a master plan that required at least 40% of new homes on the land to be affordable. Robison says that number is closer to 55%. “That was a big success, and I think that is a big part of why Santa Fe was looked upon so favorably back in the ’90s and early 2000s was there was this thing going in the background that was a city-generated project creating real mixed-income neighborhoods,” says Robison. The Santa Fe Community Housing Trust took over the Tierra Contenta Corporation in 2010. The nonprofit also helps low-income residents with mortgage assistance and homebuyer educa-
tion programs partially funded by the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Just over 2,300 homes were built in Tierra Contenta over the last 25 years in the first two phases of development. Robison says the corporation intends to get started on the third phase later this year with plans to build about 1,100 more homes on the final stretch of land. The Community Housing Trust started out in 1994 as a community land trust with about 150 homes in the neighborhood, but began moving away from that model within a decade. Land trusts preserve affordability in an area by maintaining ownership of land while selling houses at low prices to low-income residents under an agreement that they will be resold at an affordable rate to the next buyer. Land trusts in other cities—such as the Sawmill Community Land Trust in Albuquerque—have made homeownership accessible to people who otherwise would never be able to afford it.
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However, Robison says he doesn’t think the model works for Santa Fe because land trust homes don’t increase in value at the same rate as surrounding properties. Homeownership is a primary way Americans generate and accumulate wealth, and it’s one of the best ways to close the gap for low-income families in a place like Santa Fe where home values rise much faster than income, he says. “The full benefit of being an owner, being able to generate wealth, being and becoming financially enfranchised is handicapped by the land trust model,” says Robison.
The Heart of the Problem
Good policy, active nonprofits and enough money could do a lot to make Santa Fe more affordable. Still, two of the greatest obstacles to equitable housing are the city’s land use codes and the residents themselves. “Affordable housing is an example of something this community says it values, but that it has not clearly supported, prioritized, or sacrificed for,” says city Senior Planner Carlos Gemora. He says the problem stems from our
collective inability to prioritize between a whole host of conflicting values. An ongoing debate about a proposal for a new 384-unit development at the intersection of Zia Road and St. Francis Drive exemplifies the problem. On a late-February night, project manager Jennifer Jenkins spends nearly an hour convincing the Planning Commission that the development fits the values expressed in the city’s general plan and land use codes, and mirrors the recent trajectory of development in the area. If approved, it would be the first new apartment development in the city to include affordable and market-rate units on site since Santa Fe passed affordable housing requirements for rental apartments in 2005. The mixed-income and mixed-use development is located next to the Rail Trail and the Rail Runner Zia Station. It would include townhomes, apartments and commercial space. The plan maximizes access to alternative modes of transportation, plus offers high density, ample open space, sustainability, and generous improvements to sidewalks and bike lanes, Jenkins says.
Each level will be set back in a contemporary take on Santa Fe historic style. Outraged neighbors see things differently. They point to numerous planning documents that espouse just the opposite set of values: low-density development away from major roadways, minimum height to protect mountain views and low traffic congestion. Of the 83 people who signed up for the public comment period, almost all speak against the project, and the president of a nearby neighborhood association claims 96.8% of members oppose the project. In reality, says Gemora, the neighbors and the developers are both right. The tension is baked into the very foundations of the land use code and the city’s 1999 general plan document, which begins with a summary of the kind of city residents hope Santa Fe will become. Two lists presented side by side rank residents’ top priorities and concerns. Under priorities, affordable housing comes first, followed by opportunities for youth and economic development. Top concerns start with uncontrolled growth and development, loss of tradition, culture and open green space and traffic.
TELL US Please complete our reader survey on housing at sfreporter.com/survey
Santa Fe More than 50% of the city is zoned to only allow up to two homes per acre.
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City of Santa Fe Zoning
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R1 and R2 Zoning districts All other residential Non Residential and mixed use Mixed-use and specialty zoning where high-density residential can be permitted
SOURCE: CITY OF SANTA FE LAND USE DEPARTMENT
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At a presentation as part of the Friends of Architecture Santa Fe ReVisioning Series in June, Gemora said these concerns translate into opposition to nearly every major development proposal that comes before the city. The general value of affordable housing often gets overrun by the specific concerns of surrounding neighborhoods. “We see this a lot in…neighborhood opposition to projects. The preservation of character is the top priority, and the value of housing is a secondary priority.…It’s only allowed if it does not create any negative impacts,” Gemora said. To make things even more difficult, the majority of the city’s zoning actually discourages affordability, he tells SFR. Over half the city is zoned at no more than two units per acre. This is an example of what housing advocates call “exclusionary zoning,” because the combination of the cost of land, complex requirements such as landscaping and design standards, and density restrictions make construction so expensive that new working-class housing is extremely unlikely. Whether intended or not, this can effectively segregate a community by race and class. “Our land use code encourages luxury,” says Gemora. “And again, I don’t want to say that that’s always bad—it just depends on what the community values. We have really good zoning laws if what we’re looking for is nice development and expensive development.” It’s considered industry best practice to update a city’s general plan every five years, says city Planning Manager Noah Berke. Because Santa Fe hasn’t drafted a new general plan in 20 years, amendments are adopted in a haphazard manner each time a new development asks for an exemption to existing rules or officials create a new zoning overlay for a specific city district. It’s also been years since the department had the budget to hire long-range planning staff to do that work. “It’s like staff is running around putting out fires and trying to fix leaking pipes all the time because the piping is so old and we haven’t spent the time to put in a new modern system,” says Gemora. “The community needs to have some hard conversations about what it values and wants to prioritize. That’s really the heart of it.”
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Since it’s important to celebrate the small victories right now, how nice is it outside lately? It’s seriously nice. And pretty warm. In fact, it’s pretty good ice cream weather. But this ain’t your daddy’s Baskin Robbins, any-old-ice-cream-willdo kind of year—you need something that’s so for real. Enter Xzavian Cookbey and his ever-popular Freezie Fresh ice cream truck. A mobile monument to fresh-made ice creams with your choice of add-ons, Freezie Fresh’s annual appearances have become the stuff of legend, a veritable feast of delights for both taste and sight; the concoctions are made fresh before your eyes on one of those freeze plate things (think crepe pan, but cold), rolled up and placed in a cup. Eat it. Believe us. Find him in the Big 5 parking lot. (ADV) Freezie Fresh Opening Day: Noon-8 pm Friday, March 12. Free (but pay for ice cream, duh). 2860 Cerrillos Road, freeziefresh.com
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ONLINE MUSIC SAT/13 MAHALO, MAHAL We’ll pretty much use any excuse to put blues legend Taj Mahal in the paper, and when the folks at the Lensic Performing Arts Center collaborate with the man for, oh, we don’t know, the bazillionth time, we still find ourselves thinking about how everyone should know. What can even be said about Taj Mahal that hasn’t already? Not a lot, but for this particular event (which will be livestreamed as part of an ongoing series), Mr. Mahal joins forces with his own Phantom Blues Band as well as New Orleans funk master Jon Clearly, a mainstay on shows with the likes of Mahal, Bonnie Raitt, Dr. John and other such well-known musical heroes. You’ll have 48 hours to watch the show once you’re registered, too, so even if the premiere doesn’t work for you, there’s time to get satisfied and tickled, too. (ADV) Taj Mahal with John Clearly: 7 pm Saturday, March 13. $25-$32. lensic.org
COURTESY SANTA FE CHILDREN’S MUSEUM
ONLINE EVENT TUE/16 FOR THE KIDS A friend of ours with young kids recently lamented how he and his wife “picked up the kids from school one day, and they didn’t see their friends again for nearly a year.” It’s a tough time to be a kid (it always is, kind of), but the people at the Santa Fe Children’s Museum want to soften the blow of COVID-19, isolation, etc. We’re talkin’ about that 2021 Wee Wonder Virtual Play Program, a series of online events for children ages 3-6 featuring stories, songs, movement activities, show and tell, STEM stuff and more. The program works in tandem with the museum’s bilingual Grab-and-Go Kits and only runs $25 for two interactive storytime sessions (scholarships are available; free for members). This week’s theme is Ocean Adventures. (ADV) Wee Wonder Virtual Program: 9-11 am Tuesday, March 16. $25. santafechildrensmuseum.org
EXHIBIT OPENING SAT/13
Keep Breathing New Mexico Museum of Art makes the invisible visible with Breath Taking The New Mexico Museum of Art’s Curator of Photography Kate Ware was ready to go with the exhibit Breath Taking last year when the pandemic began. What once was meant to be a celebratory look at breath and breathing suddenly became a lot more complicated. If breathing can kill us—which, as we’ve learned with COVID-19, it can— how does a curator rework a show about breath and breathing, and make it a bit more current? “[The pandemic] gave us the opportunity to reevaluate,” Ware says. “Instead of breath being a good thing that keeps you alive, it becomes threatening; and because we also looked at the renewed call for racial equity, I think it’s a much stronger show.” In addition to the roughly 75% of the original show that made it through to the final exhibit, the upcoming opening will feature a wider range of pieces. Take, for example, Washington, DC-based photographer Tony Mobley, whom Ware found on Instagram. With powerful black and white photographs of protests following the police killing of George
Floyd in Minneapolis—and Eric Garner’s words, “I can’t breathe,” still ringing in our ears—Mobley captured a poignant and unforgettable moment in time. Look also to video workshops from artist Shaun Leonardo, which teach lessons in how to escape a chokehold; or to the photos of Don Usner, who snapped New Mexicans across the state, masked and grappling with the new breathing realities of a COVID-19 world. Elsewhere in the show, works by Alison Keogh, Jill O’Bryan, Frank Rodick and many others hit the concepts of breath and breathing from most conceivable angles, from interpersonal to environmental and beyond. “It’s a little bit of an absurd idea for a show of visible art to be about something invisible,” Ware adds, “but I’m always interested in how art, particularly photography, can articulate what’s invisible.” (Alex De Vore) BREATH TAKING OPENING All day Saturday, March 13. By admission. New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W Palace Ave., 476-5072
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A&C
Hey, Squirrelfriend!
BY ALEX DE VORE a l e x @ s f r e p o r t e r. c o m
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omic artist Ryan T. Cook keeps two books at his work station at all times: The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation and David Sylvester’s Interviews with Francis Bacon. One, he says, reminds him that even though Disney now practically owns all entertainment, it has employed some of the most groundbreaking artists of all time, many of whom developed methods and styles that endure to this day; the other keeps him rooted in stylistic weirdness. “[Francis] Bacon said that after the invention of the photograph, there’s only so much art that should be done realistically,” Cook tells SFR. “I like the idea of cutting past something that your brain tells you is good to something you can feel directly.” Cook’s newest book, Blood Nut—the second in his White Glove series—feels like a gut punch. The bizarre story follows Enoch Squirrel, a sort of mashup of cartoon and comic tropes representative of the period between the 1920s and the 1990s, who ventures to the woods in search of a missing beaver lumberjack. There, he runs afoul of a pair of trees, one of whom tasks him with eating its acorns (or offspring, if you will—it’s violent), there he winds up tasting of a demon acorn, there he becomes possessed. It’s almost like the classic angel/ devil on the shoulder bit as cast by a cypher-like lead, Enoch, and the trees, with one feeling like the timid voice of reason and morality, the other like a charming monster of some kind. Blood Nut ends on what might be perceived as a cliffhanger (no spoilers) and mercifully lacks shiny p olish. This one’s DIY and baffling—it’s like Spiegelman collaborated with Crumb and the Fleischer brothers during a weekend ayahuasca trip to the desert, and it’s a glorious not-for-kids combination of familiar themes told with distorted imagery.
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Blood Nut does stand on its own, even if gleaning its actual story takes more than one read-through. Still, for Cook it’s about characters, and with three more books in the works and an ultimate ending already devised, there’s room to grow them. Enoch, for example, seems a good Cook has called Santa Fe home for and trusting sort out to help a missing the last three years, but previously lived person, but is his willingness to eat a livin Florida, where he picked up a film ing acorn, demonic or otherwise, hinting degree from Florida State University. at a darker personality? His film work took him around the “The story’s power comes globe and even helped him make his from the charown short, Lunchmeat. That project acter’s perwas a disaster, he says, but combining spective on knowledge earned from a fucked-up film what’s happenexperience with a lifelong love of comics ing,” Cook tells and animation led him to what he does SFR. “It’s like, now—comics, full-time. rather than seeing “I’ve always loved drawing, and I’d an alien invasion, fill up notebooks. I’ve always loved MAD try to see it through Magazine and Calvin & Hobbes and newsthe character’s eyes. paper comics,” Cook says. “Then when I I wish I could sound was in fourth grade, we had some couslike a mastermind, ins come visit—and these were the cool but I feel like I’m not cousins who knew about Korn and Limp quite there yet.” Bizkit and stuff—and they brought a copy Whatever point he’s of the first English-translated Shonen reached, it’s exciting to Jump.” see a DIY comic artist A long-running compenself-publishing absolute dium of serial manga chapweirdness for not much ters, the popular Japanese more than the love of magazine made its way to art. America in the late 1990s, “Any job would have birthing an entire thirdbeen easier than comwave generation of manga ics,” Cook says with a and Japanimation fanatics. laugh. “I’m poor as a Cook was among them, but churchmouse. This is rather than the Shonen like a curse, but I don’t Jump siren call being about have a choice. I have to overall content or storytelldraw.” ing methodology, he gleaned For now, Cook will instead the twin pillars of soon begin work on his quality character design and newest series, Bootleg, reader interaction. a different approach “American comics are and style than White meant to be read in a way Glove, and one rooted where it can take you 20 in real history about minutes to read a page, moonshiners. He plans whereas manga is meant to have the first volume to be scanned, almost, and out before the year closread quickly,” says Cook. es, and the third episode “From there, I started goof White Glove after that. ing to a comics shop, and “One thing that septhose guys turned me on to arates me from the big [comic artists like] Crumb, comic producers is that Clowes…all these dudes who they’re the assembly are not in the Marvel/DC line method: Someone mainstream.” writes it, someone penCultivating stylistic cils it, someone inks it,” and thematic elements Cook says. “I’m the poor from American heroes and schmuck who had to Japanese execution, White learn all of these aspects Glove was born. Unlike for myself. Hopefully I previous Cook works, Ruh-roh, baby acorn—you might be done for. Find White Glove 1 and 2 on can give the reader a fosuch as Skunk Ape (which Amazon and the artist himself on Instagram at @ryan.t.cook. cused vision.” ran on the Vice site some
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years ago), Glove makes use of what we might call a streamof-consciousness style of writing. Cook says he spent months toiling with a notebook, crudely sketching stick figure stand-ins and letting his mind spill out on the page. Part of it, he says, comes from the dark timeline in which we’ve all been living since 2016; part of it just poured out of him. “The writing is probably the most mysterious aspect to me,” Cook explains. “There’s this trouble in the comics industry with the regular issues— they’re unsatisfying on their own. I want to move back to a place where anybody, if they pick up only one issue of something, it can stand on its own. That’s what I’m trying to do with White Glove.”
COURTESY RYAN T COOK
Ryan T. Cook’s Blood Nut visually tackles Disney and the Fleischers, but things get darker and a whole lot weirder
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Lactose Intolerant Plantina Vegan Bakery treats those who eschew meat and dairy BY ALEX DE VORE a l e x @ s f r e p o r t e r. c o m
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sort of inadvertently became a vegan in my 20s,” baker Thomas Kamholz tells SFR. “I’d been dabbling in it, thinking about it, and I had a friend staying with me up in Boulder, Colorado. They’re vegetarian and ended up cooking dinner every night, so I realized that, after about a week had gone by and I hadn’t eaten any meat, I felt so much better.” This was in the early aughts. Since then, Kamholz moved to Santa Fe, and in November he opened up his pickup and delivery-based Plantita Vegan Bakery (1314 Rufina Circle, Suite A3, 646-701-3616; plantitaveganbakery.com) with more astounding results than the even the vegan set might expect. Now, as Kamholz ups his game, adding more customers, considering a possible expansion to pop-up events and personally delivering some of the best bagels and empanadas in town, it’s a smart time to offer Santa Fe a piece of advice: Vegan or not, put this bakery on your radar. But let’s go back a bit, to Cleveland, Ohio, where a teenage Kamholz started working in restaurants as a busser and later, a cook. Eventually, he’d move to Colorado, where he worked in the kitchen of a small café attached to a bookstore and where he’d fall in love with baking. “I just mostly prepped stuff and made soups, and we had this small deli menu and a full bakery,” he says. “So at some point, someone quit, and they needed someone to make muffins. I wasn’t really a home
baker, but I thought to myself, ‘I can make muffins!’ And that’s how I learned baking.” Kamholz returned home to Cleveland for a time, where he’d work at yet another bakery, this one vegan. He picked up most of the vegan cooking skills he uses to this day, but he also grew tired of working for others. “I realized I loved working with food, but working for myself…how could I do that?” he says. By then, he’d already planned to move to Santa Fe with his partner. While living in Boulder, Kamholz had traveled down regularly to perform as DJ Attenot at various events promoted by local cohort Team Everything. So, after kicking around ideas like a bicycle-propelled vegan food cart, a homemade tempeh business (think of tempeh like a fermented tofu, people who’ve never had it) and a possible wholesale baked goods business, Kamholz ultimately chose to stay small at first, developing recipes with almond milk and cashew yogurt, baking treats to order and refining his menu. Plantita Vegan Bakery has since quietly grown into something truly special. You’ll find bagels, empanadas, handpies, galettes, muffins and more on the menu, and not one of them is made with eggs or milk—y’know, in case you didn’t know what vegan means. Kamholz also offers ready-to-bake pizza and cookie doughs, full-sized pies and other seasonal or holiday items like Irish soda bread, and he tells SFR he might broaden offerings even further down the road. Most items are available for pickup or delivery (an extra $5) within three days of placing an order; often, Kamholz says, he can be quicker, though you should certainly not pressure him to rush his craft. He’s closed on Sundays and Mondays.
COURTESY PLANTINA VEGAN BAKERY
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All of these items are vegan, and they stack up against stuff with dairy like you wouldn’t believe.
FOOD
I sampled Kamholz’s green chile bagels, pot pie empanadas and chocolate chip cookies, and all three are beyond satisfying and delicious. First things first—no, these aren’t New York bagels, people from New York who always have something to say about bagels. They’re still tasty and enticingly chewy with just enough of a spicy kick from the chile to have the right New Mexico flair. Eaten in tandem with the savory pot pie empanadas, these doughy little bastards are a straight-up revelation. Kamholz somehow found a way to make his pot pie empanadas—made with peas, onion, carrots, potato and a proprietary vegan gravy—taste enough like the pot pie I know from childhood without a trace of meat. It’s an amazing feat of baking, but also a good little piece of information for people who struggle with the ethics or health concerns of eating meat and can’t seem to break the spell. Kamholz’s chocolate chip cookie is a brilliant dessert, as well, and straddles that soft/crispy line all good chocolate chip cookies should find. He says it’s about ingredients like coconut sugar, which bakes up a nice crunch on the outside while leaving the inside soft. Do they taste exactly like a dairy-based chocolate chip cookie? No. They’re better. They definitely have a different flavor profile than most other cookies, if that’s a concern. Nevertheless, as folks spurn meat more and more and terms like “plantbased” get thrown around, a slightly different taste from a baker with health and ethics on the mind is a real treat. Just know Plantita’s offerings aren’t gluten-free— Kamholz isn’t sure where the assumption that all vegan food is gluten-free came from, but he wants to be sure folks know. Besides, there’s Revolution Bakery for gluten-free treats. “The one thing I know I can do that has an impact is to be vegan,” Kamholz says. “The ethical treatment of animals, the environmental implications…it feels like a good option for anyone who wants to have an impact.”
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By the time we join Breaking News in Yuba County’s Sue Buttons (Allison Janney), she’s having a pretty rough day. It’s her birthday, her coworkers forgot, the cake she was forced to buy herself reads “Happy Birthday Suc!” and her husband Karl (Matthew Modine), a banker, is on the phone with some mysterious woman who asks if he’s stroking his cock right now. He isn’t—not in that moment —but he’s still a scumbag. Sue feels overlooked, unappreciated, unimportant. Those feelings fester. Elsewhere, Karl’s brother Petey (Westworld’s Jimmi Simpson) attempts to leave a life of crime behind following news that his live-in girlfriend (Samira Wiley) is pregnant with twins. The bored but funny business owner who hired him (Wanda Sykes) needles Petey about forming a crime partnership, while the mobbed-up Mina (Akwafina) pressures him to get Karl to launder money. Still with us? OK. It’s complicated, but director Tate Taylor (The Help) so masterfully and gradually sets up the powder keg that when the disparate storylines and characters clash together in
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 WORST MOVIE EVER
LUCKY ++ RESPONDS TO A MAJOR ISSUE -- INCONSISTENT DIRECTION; CINEMATOGRAPHY SEEMS DISCONNECTED
It’s a bumpy road until Lucky finds its groove. When it does, though, there’s far more to admire in what it wants to be rather than what it actually becomes. Like a mash-up of Get Out and Promising Young Woman, Lucky plants a flag in a gray area where passion drives the writing, but nothing seems to guide everything else. May (Brea Grant, who also penned the script) is a self-help author who encourages women to go it alone on their paths to success. Her days are filled with book signings and publishing meetings, but her nights are ripped from nightmares. When darkness falls, a masked man enters her home and tries to kill her. Every time, she takes him down—only to have him vanish moments later. Her circle of friends describe her as “lucky” to survive, acknowledging her terror but always brushing it off like brunch gossip. Lucky isn’t so much about the home invasions as it is about how others react. Such films are some of the best within horror genre nowadays; evolving from torture porn (sorry, Saw fans) to metaphors about the terrors that already exist in our society. Lucky isn’t technically impressive, but it never feels like a gimmick, despite the repetitiveness of May’s nightly battles. Grant’s script is heavy with the critiques about society’s responses to male violence against women, while director Natasha Kermani (Imitation Girl) leans too heavily on the screenplay’s content. Lucky‘s pacing is grating, the blocking dull—the actors often stand in the frame and don’t budge. Grant’s performance is also deadly serious while the 20
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a violent but hilarious ballet of misconceptions, misunderstandings and missed opportunities, it’s almost perfect. Karl suddenly disappears, which thrusts Sue into the high-profile world of press conferences and local news appearances courtesy of some twee human interest reporter (Juliette Lewis) and Sue’s own sister (Mila Kunis), a lesser journo. Janney nails it as the put-upon wife finally getting some attention—even if it’s bad attention. She knows what really happened to Karl, but isn’t spilling so long as the camera crews keep turning up. Eventually, she starts to believe her own lies just as the peripheral madness topples in on all the central players. From there, Yuba County starts to lose its momentum. Regina King sings as the dogged detective convinced Sue is hiding something, though her screen time is sadly limited. Ellen Barkin’s in
other performers go for camp. Could that have created an effective contrast? Yes, but it’s hard to detect any noticeable tone that would’ve made that aspect worthwhile. Outside of the technicalities, Lucky‘s smartest plays are the metaphors. Preachy? Sure, but an audience needs a brimstone sermon every now and again. Too bad it feels so cheap. (Riley Gardner) Shudder, NR, 83 min.
TOM AND JERRY
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++ MERCIFULLY ENDS -- UGLY AND LOUD; THE DUO DON’T EVEN DRIVE THE PLOT
I laughed twice during the 101 minute runtime of Tom and Jerry: Once in disbelief over the rapping pigeons who open the film with a version of A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It?” in borderline racist Dumbo crow fashion, and the other when a character admitted to committing white collar crime. Ugh. But then, this isn’t the first time we’ve been burned by the angry animated cat and his outrageously violent mouse frenemy. In 1992, Tom and Jerry: The Movie released. It broke the cardinal sins of having the two speak and relegating them to the background—this iteration repeats the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea of giving real-life humans Chloë Grace Moretz and Michael Peña (neither of whom are bad a ctors, but who have the charisma of sandpaper here) the main story and pushing the animated stars to the side. How, Kevin Costello, did you write this? And why? You can try to hide behind writing creds for William Hanna and Joseph Barbera on IMDb, but we still know what you did. It’s especially alarming given that your 2017 film Brigsby Bear at least had
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the mix, too, but barely—and, in the end, one wonders why Janney or Akwafina aren’t in every single scene even if Simpson has often proved a capable and funny performer and doesn’t disappoint here. Still, the ending feels rushed and shoehorned with a lot of dark ideas that didn’t quite fit elsewhere in the complex plot. From a relatively new writer like Amanda Idoko, though, Yuba County feels like a big breakthrough. Surely her next film’s narrative will feel even more refined, and this one is so fun to watch, its shortcomings feel far less important than its many strengths.
a cool central idea (look it up). In Tom and Jerry, though, there’s a “how do you do, fellow kids?” tone throughout, especially in its constant and painful rap jamz. See also an electric scooter chase, Tom and Jerry drinking booze, thinking in emojis and setting up an Instagram page together; dialogue is mainly complaints about millennials; Colin Jost’s prehistoric jawline is present. We might argue kids are easily entertained, but here’s the thing—we can’t say Tom and Jerry is actually for kids. It requires knowledge of economic angst, Gen-Z humor, media criticism and even Bollywood to grasp the basic movements of the plot. In the end, Tom and Jerry isn’t bad because it’s a derivative property. It’s bad because it’s disingenuous and has no interest in entertaining kids. It feels like a dad trying to hang out with his kid’s college-aged friends. Your children will hate you if you try to pass this off on them, and they should. Oh, and don’t think we don’t see you, director Tim Story. You made Barbershop, man…shouldn’t you know better? Maybe cinema should die after all. (RG) HBO Max, PG, 101 min.
LAND
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++ MOUNTAINS, HUMANITY, SURVIVAL -- RISKY DEPICTION OF MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS AND RECOVERY
Robin Wright stars in and makes her directorial debut with Land, a visceral drama with breathtaking Western mountain scenery and a dose of humanity centered squarely in how the body and spirit survive. Wright’s Edee seems to have “weak white
BREAKING NEWS IN YUBA COUNTY Directed by Taylor With Janney, Akwafina, Simpson, Sykes and King Amazon, R, 96 min.
woman” written all over her when she buys a mountain property with a rustic cabin and heads out with a trailer full of provisions—she’s in way over her head. Did she even bring a hat or gloves? Without spoiling the heavy Alone and Into the Wild vibes, we’ll just say she obviously needs the wisdom from Miguel (Demián Bichir) and his nurse friend Alawa (Sarah Dawn Pledge), who enter the picture just in time. Yet, the more generous understanding of Edee is that she’s desperate to emerge from a well of grief and looks to a rudimentary live-offthe-land cure with last-ditch naivete. Wright unfolds the story with engaging nuance, both as actor and decision-maker. The brief flashbacks are poignant—rightly rooted in Edee’s present existence, not just a lazy blank slate of memory reels. Miguel teaches her to chop wood, hunt, butcher and, well, live. And he does it all with a mystic, mysterious and deadsexy DILF peace. The sparse script by Jesse Chatham and Erin Dignam serves its role well, with every word chosen to reveal a few threads of the story. The score, too, is subtle and key to the storytelling. Wright misses an opportunity, though, with Alawa’s nurse character. She’s intended to be elusive and disapproving, but could have used more or stronger screen time to deepen her presentation of an Indigenous woman. We’re definitely rooting for Edee even as our curiosity about what happened to her family eats away; the conclusion is suspended, in fact, until the movie’s final minutes in a way that feels anticlimactic, as if it mattered so much until finally it didn’t. By then, she’s sort of found her way back to now. (Julie Ann Grimm) VoD, PG-13, 89 min.
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1 Havana’s home 5 Herb with leaves used in Japanese cooking 10 Classic Ford models 14 Like some arguments 15 Complete 16 On vacation 17 Meyer of the “Saw” movies 18 How to view the alternate answers crossing the circled squares 20 Expert’s offer 22 Artist’s stand 23 Army creature? 24 Dinner table basketful 26 Troubled outburst from Scooby-Doo 28 Charlie of the 1960s Orioles 30 Indigenous New Zealanders 33 Denounces 34 Performance style at UCB and Second City 36 ‘50s Ford failure 38 Baked Italian dish 39 “___ Up” (Violent Femmes song) 41 “Here’s ___ from me to you ...” 45 *”Rudolph the Red-___ Reindeer” (or the other way, Japanese audio company) 47 *”Barber Shop Chronicles” playwright Inua ___ (or the other way, letter used to abbreviate “forte”) 49 Encouraging words 52 *Athlete running 5,280 feet (or the other way, second run of crew practice)
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1 Classical conclusion 2 “Armageddon” author Leon 3 Wheel of Fortune wedge to be avoided 4 Texas shrine to “remember” 5 “Rugrats” father 6 “Fingers crossed” 7 “___ Sin” (HBO Max miniseries) 8 “Je ne ___ quoi” 9 Farther along 10 Edinburgh boy 11 Like some biceps exercises, e.g. 12 Suddenly occur to 13 Electronic keyboards, casually 19 Outwit, in a way 21 Red Muppet
25 *Aa and pahoehoe, for two (or the other way, like military fleets) 27 Designation at an Arabic meat market 28 “30 Rock” character Lemon 29 “Where ___?” 31 *___-wip topping (or the other way, more unusual) 32 “The Last King of Scotland” name 35 “Octopus’s Garden” singer 37 *___-toed boots (or the other way, half of those pairs of boots) 40 *DNC member (or the other way, married) 42 Dave Brubeck standard 43 “___ complete mess” 44 Eugene clock setting, for short 46 Vitality 48 “Battlefield Earth” author ___ Hubbard 49 Dr. Seuss title turtle 50 Early inning statistic 51 Fullest extent 53 *Reveals one’s true feelings (or the other way, pater ___) 56 Russian rum cake 58 Cockpit figure 61 Be immodest 62 Financial advisor Orman 64 Maple, for instance 65 Intricate story 67 Chance ___ Rapper 68 Super-spicy
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MIND BODY SPIRIT MIND BODY SPIRIT
ACUPUNCTURE Rob Brezsny
Week of March 10th
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Artist Richard Kehl tells this traditional Jewish story: God said to Abraham, “But for me, you would not be here.” Abraham answered, “I know that Lord, but were I not here there would be no one to think about you.” I’m bringing this tale to your attention, dear Aries, because I think the coming weeks will be a favorable time to summon a comparable cheekiness with authorities, including even the Divine Wow Herself. So I invite you to consider the possibility of being sassy, saucy, and bold. Risk being an articulate maverick with a point of view that the honchos and experts should entertain.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Poet Wendell Berry says “it’s the immemorial feelings” he likes best: “hunger and thirst and their satisfaction; work-weariness and earned rest; the falling again from loneliness to love.” Notice that he doesn’t merely love the gratification that comes from quenching his hunger and thirst. The hunger and thirst are themselves essential components of his joy. Work-weariness and loneliness are not simply inconvenient discomforts that he’d rather live without. He celebrates them, as well. I think his way of thinking is especially worthy of your imitation in the next three weeks.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Spiritual author Ernest Holmes wrote, “True imagination is not fanciful daydreaming. it is fire from heaven.” Unfortunately, however, many people do indeed regard imagination as mostly just a source of fanciful daydreaming. And it is also true that when our imaginations are lazy and out of control, when they conjure delusional fears and worries, they can be debilitating. I bring this to your attention, Taurus, because I believe the coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to harness the highest powers of your imagination—to channel the fire from heaven—as you visualize all the wonderful and interesting things you want to do with your life in the next nine months.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Famous and influential science fiction novelist Philip K. Dick relied on amphetamines to fuel his first 43 novels. Beginning with A Scanner Darkly, his 44th, he did without his favorite drug. It wasn’t his best book, but it was far from his worst. It sold well and was made into a movie featuring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., and two other celebrity actors. Inspired by Dick’s success without relying on his dependency—and in accordance with current astrological omens—I’m inviting you to try doing without one of your addictions or compulsions or obsessions as you work on your labor of love.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Ninety percent of all apples in the world are descended from a forest of apple trees in southeast Kazakhstan. Most of us have GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “I’m always waiting for a tasted just a few types of apples, but there’s a much door to open in a wall without doors,” wrote Gemini author Fernando Pessoa. Huh? Pessoa was consistent- wider assortment of flavors in that natural wonderly eccentric in his many writings, and I find this partic- land. You know how wine is described as having taste ular statement especially odd. I’m going to alter it so it notes and aromas? The apple flavor of Kazakhstan’s makes more sense and fits your current needs. Here’s apples may be tinged with hints of roses, strawberries, your motto for the coming weeks: “I’m always ready to anise, pineapples, coconuts, lemon peels, pears, potatoes, or popcorn. Can you imagine traveling to that forfigure out how to make a new door in a wall without est and exploring a far more complex and nuanced doors, and call on all necessary help to make it.” relationship with a commonplace food? During the CANCER (June 21-July 22): You can’t drive to the coming weeks, I invite you to experiment with arousing Kamchatka Peninsula. It’s a 104,000-square-mile area metaphorically similar experiences. In what old familwith a sub-Arctic climate in the far east of Russia. No iar persons, places, or things could you find a surprisroads connect it to the rest of the world. Its major city, ing wealth of previously unexplored depth and variety? Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, is surrounded by volcaCAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Author Andrew Tilin noes. If you want to travel there, you must arrive by plane or ship. And yet Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky has testified that he sometimes had the feeling that his life long had a thriving tourist industry. More so before the was in pieces—but then realized that most of the pieces pandemic, but even now, outsiders have come to para- were good and interesting. So his sense of being a mess glide, hunt for bears, and marvel at the scenery. In this of unassembled puzzle parts gave way to a deeper contentment—an understanding that the jumble was just horoscope, I am making an outlandish metaphorical fine the way it was. I recommend you cultivate and enjoy comparison of you to the Kamchatka Peninsula. Like an experience like that in the coming weeks, Capricorn. that land, people sometimes find it a challenge to reach you. And yet when they do, you can be quite AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Indian poet Meena welcoming. Is this a problem? Maybe, maybe not. Alexander (1951–2018) was bon under the sign of What do you think? Now is a good time to re-evaluate. Aquarius. She became famous after she moved to the US at age 29, but was raised in India and the Sudan. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Biting midges, also known as no-see-ums, are blood-sucking flies that spread various In her poem “Where Do You Come From?,” she wrote, “Mama beat me when I was a child for stealing diseases. Yuck, right? Wouldn’t the world be a better honey from a honey pot.” I’m sorry to hear she was place if we used science to kill off all biting midges treated so badly for enjoying herself. She wasn’t comeverywhere? Well, there would be a disappointing mitting a crime! The honey belonged to her family, trade-off if we did. The creepy bugs are the primary pollinators for several crops grown in the topics, includ- and her family had plenty of money to buy more honey. This vignette is my way of advising you, in ing cacao. So if we got rid of the no-see-ums, there’d accordance with astrological omens, to carry out your probably be no more chocolate. I’m guessing that you personal version of “stealing the honey from the honmay be dealing with a comparable dilemma, Leo: an eypot,” dear Aquarius. Take what’s rightfully yours. influence that has both a downside and an upside. The central question is: Can you be all you want to be with- PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): The bad news is that the out it in your life? Or not? Now is a good time to ponder narrow buffer zone between North Korea and South the best way to shape your future relationship. Korea is laced with landmines. Anyone who walks there is at risk for getting blown up. The good news is VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): According to my analysis that because people avoid the place, it has become of your imminent astrological potentials, you already an unprecedented nature preserve—a wildlife refuge are or will soon be floating and whirling and churning where endangered species like the red-crowned along on an ocean of emotion. In other words, you crane and Korean fox can thrive. In the coming will be experiencing more feelings and stronger feelweeks and months, I’d love to see you engage in a ings than you have in quite some time. This doesn’t comparable project, Pisces: finding a benevolent use have to be a problem as long as you do the following: for a previously taboo or wasted part of your life. 1. Be proud and appreciative about being able to feel Homework: If you have a question whose answer so much. 2. Since only a small percentage of your might be interesting to other readers, send it. Maybe feelings need to be translated into practical actions, I’ll address it in the column. Truthrooster@gmail.com don’t take them too seriously. 3. Enjoy the ride!
Go to RealAstrology.com to check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes and Daily Text Message Horoscopes. The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at 1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700. © CO P Y R I G H T 2 0 2 1 R O B B R E Z S N Y 22
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COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENTS LEGALS War Spanish Yankee in the jungle where did the seasons go? Lord if I die before this day please take my soul The spiders they say nothing, the snakes they wished I'd go. Lord if I die before this day please take my soul. There's a soldier out there praying, And I'm doing the same. It's hot as hell and then begins the rain. I hear my mom crying, And I think I hear his too. Lord if we die today please take our souls. New Mexico Veterans since 1848 have been Through all of the U.S. Military conflicts And awarded more Combat Ribbons per capita Then any State in the U.S. Gallo To Donate: NMPOST1.COM
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EspanolaHumane.org • petango.com/espanola ARLEKINO is currently in foster care after he arrived at Española Humane as a stray, with a broken leg requiring amputation. Arlekino is Russian for “Harlequin,” an agile trickster from the Italian commedia dell’arte, famous for his nimble movement and light-hearted character – and his fosters say he matches this profile perfectly! Arle learned how to sit, shake, and even beg on his single hind leg in no time, and this 1 year-old Pittie mix also picked up on house training and leash walking immediately. Arlekino loves all dogs and all people equally, and despite his young age, he is relaxed and easy. This handsome gentleman will make a perfect addition to a family where he can receive a lot of love and affection. Apply on our website to schedule a meet and greet with his fosters! SPONSORED BY
GRIFFIN is looking for a soft place to land. This 3 year-old handsome, quiet boy is shy here at the shelter with all the unfamiliar faces – he aches for a gentle person to call his own. Please apply on our website to give Griffin a home where can forever be snug as a bug in a rug!
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LEGAL NOTICE TO CREDITORS/ NAME CHANGE STATE OF NEW MEXICO COUNTY OF SANTA FE IN THE MATTER OF THE ESTATE OF GEORGE ANCONA, DECEASED. No. 2021-0034 NOTICE TO CREDITORS NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that Helga von Sydow Ancona has been appointed Personal Representative of this Estate. All persons having claims against this Estate are required to present their claims within four months after the date of the first publication of this Notice or the claims will be forever barred. Claims must be presented to Helga von Sydow Ancona, c/o Randall S. Bell Esq., 1225-G S. St. Francis Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505, or filed with the Santa Fe County Probate Court, 100 Catron St., Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501. Dated: February 3, 2021 RANDALL S. BELL Attorney for the Personal Representative 1225-G S. St. Francis Street Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 (505) 988-8926 FAX (505) 982-9594 randallbell@qwestoffice.net STATE OF NEW MEXICO COUNTY OF SANTA FE FIRST JUDICIAL DISTRICT IN THE MATTER OF THE ESTATE OF BUD GIDDAY, Deceased. No. D-101-PB-2021-00035 NOTICE TO CREDITORS NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the undersigned has been appointed Personal Representative of this estate. All persons having claims against this estate are required to present their claims within four months after the date of the first publication of this notice or the claims will be forever barred. Claims must be presented either to the undersigned Personal Representative in care of Karen Aubrey, Esq., Aubrey Law Firm, LLC, Post Office Box 8435, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504-8435, or filed with the First Judicial District Court, Santa Fe County Judicial Complex, Post Office Box 2268, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504-2268. Dated: February 23, 2021. AUBREY LAW FIRM, LLC By: /s/ KAREN AUBREY P. O. Box 8435 Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504-8435 (505) 982-4287; facsimile (505) 986-8349 ka@ karenaubreylaw.com Attorney for Personal Representative Jeffrey Gidday •
MARCH 10-16, 2021
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