This “News and Commentary” article is a report on the January 14, 2026 City Council Land Use And Planning Zoning (LUPZ) Committee’s first meeting of the new year on major amendments to the Integrated Development Ordinance (IDO). The article was written by Steve Holman who attended the meeting on January 14, 2026. Steven Holman is a resident of City Council District 7 which the mid heights city council district. He has written two previous articles. Mr. Holman has not been compensated for any of his articles and the articles are published as a public service by www.PeteDinelli.com. Links to Mr. Holman’s previous columns can be found in the postscript.
INTRODUCTION
The Integrated Development Ordinance (IDO) is essentially all of the city zoning laws on how properties are zoned for residential, commercial or industrial use. The Integrated Development Ordinance includes zoning and subdivision regulations to govern land use and all development within the City of Albuquerque. It establishes the City’s system of planning citywide. The IDO allows the Albuquerque City Council to amend it every two years. This amendment process has resulted in well over 500 amendments the last two years resulting in mass confusion to the public.
With the re-election of Mayor Tim Keller and a new Albuquerque City Council, there is a major controversy emerging within the city and on the Albuquerque City Council involving Mayor Tim Keller, his Planning Department and a few members of the Albuquerque City Council who want to enact another wave of blanket amendments to the Integrated Development Ordinance. Mayor Tim Keller and the City Planning Department want to double or triple housing density in established neighborhoods as a way to address what they claim is the City’s affordable housing shortage.
According to a recent study by Root Policy Research, Albuquerque is 13,000 to 28,000 housing units short of meeting the demand for housing for low-income residents. When supply doesn’t meet demand, rents go up for residents. Mayor Keller, the Planning Department and supporters of the changes say the changes would improve quality of life and address Albuquerque’s housing shortage, which is worst for low-income renters. The emphasis is increasing affordable housing at the expense of established neighborhoods with expectation that established neighborhoods and residential property owners will simply go along and increase density on their properties and pay for it themselves.
For 2026, the City Council is considering more than 140 more amendments to its Integrated Development Ordinance (IDO). The biggest and most dramatic changes would be to completely “up rezone” all residential homes in established neighborhoods. If approved by the city council, townhomes and duplexes could be built in every neighborhood in Albuquerque, as well as some small businesses like bodegas, coffee shops and restaurants as permissive use and deny adjacent property owners the right to object or oppose the development forcing litigation and perhaps class action lawsuits.
The link to a quoted or relied upon news article is here:
Residential zoning covers 27% of the city’s land and 68% of its properties. City officials have said that 68% of the city’s existing housing is single-family detached homes with 120,000 existing residential lots with already built homes. The proposed amendments to the IDO include a mandate for “upzoning” of all existing residential properties to increase density and allow casita, duplex development and townhome development on virtually every single residential property in established neighborhoods in the city as permissive use requiring no city applications with no rights to contest nor appeal the upgrading to the determent of residential property owners. The mandatory upzoning will allow for the development of apartment or commercial use, such as bodegas, on all corner lots in residential areas.
The Bernalillo County property tax code is clear. The taxable value of a property is 33 1/3% of the assessed value as determined by the Bernalillo County Assessor. Under the property tax code, residential property assessments may NOT rise more than 3% per year UNLESS THE PROPERTY CHANGES OWNERSHIP, IS IMPROVED OR IS REZONED. (Emphasis added.)
The mandatory upzoning will allow the Bernalillo County assessor to increase property values and increase property taxes. Such a scenario has played out in Las Cruces, New Mexico where property taxes in fact were raised dramatically because of “upzoning”.
NEWS AND COMMENTARY REPORT BY STEVE HOLMAN
At the first Land Use Planning and Zoning hearing on January 14, 2026 regarding the Integrated Development Ordinance (IDO) update amendments, Councilor Nichole Rogers added an amendment to remove language that was potentially illegally added by the Planning Department. This language would have rezoned nearly all single-family homes city-wide without following the process for notice and public comment under the law.
The Planning Department said it was an error in language and interpretation, acknowledging there was a flood of demands from residents to the city council questioning its addition and requesting its removal.
During this meeting, the Planning Department was also forced to recognize that rezoning a property does remove the 3% cap on how much property taxes may be increased. The Planning Department also said that yes people can have their home values reassessed and see tax increases, but historically the county hasn’t always done this but there is nothing in the law that would prevent it from happening.
The admission of this is huge, as it directly confirms that a rezoning can equal reassessment at market value for property taxes, which means property tax increases. What they failed to acknowledge is the current class action law suit against the Bernalillo County Treasurer for wrongfully reassessing properties. So the threat of property tax increases is incredibly real.
There is still real danger of forced rezoning for thousands who live along mass transit corridors and activity centers in the city. Residences along those areas will see Single Family Rezoned from R-1 to R-T. A note of interest is that these are primarily along bus routes and don’t impact the wealthier areas of the city in the upper North East heights and majority of the west side. Why then are we pushing forced zoning changes along these corridors and communities that could potentially displace people with property tax increases?
Pressure on Albuquerque Council Members via emails, calls, and petition signatures are what moved the needle in a better direction. The work isn’t done though, we have to continue getting more people involved like friends, family, and neighbors to contact their elected officials.
WHAT IS AT STAKE?
To understand what is still at risk within the IDO, we have to ask what is gentrification?
Gentrification is the process where a neighborhood experiences an influx of wealthier residents and businesses that drives rising property values, increases in rent, and changes the area’s demographic and cultural character.
The chief driver of gentrification is the growing demand for urbanized living by the wealthy. Communities with lower property values located in urban core areas near good jobs and transit, often with historic and cultural character, are attractive to wealthy newcomers and susceptible to gentrified redevelopment.
What are the tools of gentrification?
There are many, but the most common tools are;
- Zoning changes allowing for higher density and mixed use
- Relaxed regulatory measures
- Exclusion of community involvement
- New amenities like retail
- Real estate speculation
- Real estate land grabs
- Removal or lack of renter protections
- Increased housing costs
- Changes in racial makeup of communities
The primary outcomes of gentrification are displacement and cultural shifts.
GENTRIFICATION TOOLS IN ACTION
When we see what the tools of gentrification are, we see that many of them are not addressed in the IDO or are sometimes actually a part of it.
The most lucrative parts of the city for gentrification are the urban core areas with transportation, historic character and culture.
A prime example is the forced rezoning along transit corridors and activity zones that would lift the 3% cap on property taxes and allow for reassessment. Some might be protected by overlay zones, but the vast majority would not. Increase in property taxation is how you displace people with it predominantly effecting low income homes and senior citizens who own their homes but who are on fixed incomes.
The IDO also allows for permissive mixed use across almost all properties that are single family zoned city wide. This allows for townhomes, duplexes, apartments, with retail use on corner lots within established neighborhoods. Why would this negatively impact communities?
Because multiple tools of gentrification are used and they are:
- Real estate speculation by developers and investors are in no way addressed in the IDO. There is nothing preventing them from forcing shifts in market pricing that would make affordability even worse.
- The IDO does next to nothing to address renters. The city offers tax incentives to try and boost “affordable” housing that are often used to help corporate real estate increase earnings and still charge $1,300 for a studio apartment. But there is no mandated permanent affordable housing of any kind.
- The IDO offers no protections for renters against price inflation or the prevention of corporate landlord ownership.
- There is nothing in the IDO that prevents real estate investors and developers from purchasing multiple homes along a street to convert to high end apartments, duplexes and townhomes raising the cost of housing.
- With the IDO already allowing mixed use on single family properties, this streamlines the process of construction, removing large parts of the planning process and incentivizing construction in existing residential communities to take advantage of existing infrastructure.
- Community organizations, neighborhood associations and residents would have no say in what happens, just receiving a single email of notice and the only recourse being to file a lawsuit, of which the opposition are required to cover the cost. This takes away the ability for communities to have self-determination.
- Amenities like the addition of retail in the IDO act to gentrify. There is nothing preventing high cost boutique retail that makes the area more attractive to the wealthy, further increasing real estate values. Nor is there any guarantee that grocers won’t be corporately owned or have affordable pricing.
- While the IDO does have small overlay zones for preservation and protection in a few places, much of the city’s historic neighborhoods and non-white communities do not. So there are little safeguards to prevent displacement and demographic changes that destroy culture.
As we can see, there are a lot of ways the tools of gentrification are at work here. While gentrification is possible city-wide, it is most impacting on those living along transportation routes, in working class communities, historic communities, and predominantly non-white neighborhoods. This is due to their locations and desirability.
The IDO makes Albuquerque more appealing to the wealthy by encouraging construction and investment from developers through deregulatory measures and removal of community self-determination.
Beyond the dangers of gentrification, the IDO also does not allow for proper planning to address our limited supply of water or the impacts of climate change. It also doesn’t mandate racial impact studies before any rezoning.
MISCONCEPTIONS
There is a lot of incorrect information being disseminated from politically backed organizations and even political figures.
We know the myth of Albuquerque needing 55,000 new homes has been repeatedly disproven as an inaccurate developer manufactured crisis. The other myth is that middle housing and duplexes are somehow banned. They are not, in fact you can currently build apartments, duplexes, and townhomes but like any other kind of housing it has to go through the process of planning, community notice and input under the law. Much of the push of this has been for a “modernization” of our zoning code. Our zoning code was completely re-written when the IDO was adopted in 2017.
We have more than sufficient housing supply, but it is not affordable. The push for building more homes is based on outdated supply and demand principles to hopefully lower costs with a deregulatory free market solution. But as the studies are revealing more and more, building more housing has minimal impacts to price due to developers and real estate investment interests inflating costs while largely targeting marginalized communities.
The city has the means to address the housing crisis of cost as well as the needs of the unhoused. The city has 125,000 to 150,000 pre-platted lots for residential construction. There are millions of square feet in empty office and retail space that could be converted to housing.
We have the tools in place. If Albuquerque is truly pro-housing, then who is willing to take bold measures and regulate against the monied interests to lower costs?
WHY A PUSH FOR THIS?
Our elected officials have chosen to obsess over what other cities and states are legislating, instead of directly addressing our own unique needs.
We are not Portland. We are not Seattle. We are not Minneapolis. We are not Austin. We are not Denver. We are Albuquerque and that is what makes us unique and beautiful.
When you write laws to bring in corporations and invest to make your city and state economically attractive, it should not be at the cost of history, community, identity, and the environment.
Unfortunately, due to ideological rigidity in combination with the influence of national organizations and interests, we are seeing a failure of leadership to listen to the very people who built Albuquerque and New Mexico.
Instead, we now are seeing prioritization of “profit over people” as these disastrous policies are being lifted up by political figures to the county and state.
Developers and investors are the only ones who will benefit from this in the amount of $14.2 billion dollars in property values to exploit for profit in Albuquerque. If you add in the county and state, it is an even more lucrative proposition for these developer and investor interests.
Please, don’t let our collective homes be sold out to the highest bidder. The cost to the people and culture of New Mexico is too great.
A CALL TO ACTION
This is a call to action and your help would be appreciated!
The new Albuquerque City Council Land Use Planning and Zoning Committee appointed by City Council President Klarrisa Pena will be meeting for the first time and another hearing will be held on the proposed amendments.
The next meeting of the City Council LUPZ committee will be held on January 28 in the City Council Chambers in basement of city hall commencing at 5:00 p.m. You can sign up to speak at the meeting the day before by going to the City Council web page.
Please reach out to your city councilor and demand answers to the following questions:
- Why is there the removal of community recourse and self-determination for proposed residential construction?
- Why is there such a lack of transparency around changes being made to zoning codes?
- Are you demanding an audit and the inspector general to investigate forced zoning changes in the IDO?
- Forced zoning changes remove the 3% property tax cap and could have harmful effects on taxes for many, so why is this being pushed through and do you support it?
Most importantly do not be placated by excuses. Demand accountability and demand that these toxic proposals be investigated and not be enacted.
The emails to contact all 9 City Councilors followed by their Policy Analyst to voice your opinions are:
- stelles@cabq.gov
- stephenchavez@cabq.gov
- joaquinbaca@cabq.gov
- bacajoaquin9@gmail.com
- namolina@cabq.gov
- kpena@cabq.gov
- cquezada@cabq.gov
- bbassan@cabq.gov
- dawnmarie@cabq.gov
- danlewis@cabq.gov
- galvarez@cabq.gov
- nrogers@cabq.gov
- district6@cabq.gov
- tfiebelkorn@cabq.gov
- seanforan@cabq.gov
- dchampine@cabq.gov
- eromero@cabq.gov
- rgrout@cabq.gov
- rrmiller@cabq.gov
Below is the link to the petition against the proposed amendments:
https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-exclusionary-upzoning-of-mayor-keller-and-councilor-fiebelkorn
The next meeting of the City Council LUPZ committee will be held on January 28 in the City Council Chambers in basement of city hall commencing at 5:00 p.m. You can sign up to speak at the meeting the day before by going to the City Council web page.
Respectfully yours,
Steven Holman, Albuquerque Homeowner
DINELLI COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS
The proposed amendments to the Integrated Development Ordinance are supposed to address the city’s so called “housing crisis” and to increase affordable housing. The term affordable housing is about as misleading as it gets. It is a term often used by politicians, elected officials and developers to promote their own personal or political agendas to gain support for their positions and government funding for development projects. When the term “affordable housing” is used by the politicians, elected officials and developer’s, what they actually mean is “subsidized government housing” also known as Section 8 federal subsidized housing.
EXISTING HOMEOWNERS CANNOT AFFORD UPZONING CONSTRUCTION COST
Mayor Tim Keller, his Planning Department and all the City Councilors who support upzoning want to double or triple housing density in established neighborhoods over strenuous objections from property owners and neighborhood associations. They essentially are saying they want “upzoning development” by existing residential property owners to increase density and allow casita, duplex development and townhome development in virtually every established neighborhood in the city. Ostensibly, they believe existing property owners can afford to build on their own properties whether they own the home outright or if there is a mortgage.
Residential zoning covers 27% of the city’s land and 68% of its properties. City officials have said that 68% of the city’s existing housing is single-family detached homes with 120,000 existing residential lots with already built homes. It allows only single-family homes, which city officials say has contributed to exclusionary patterns and limits housing options for lower-income households. The new rezoning process is designed to loosen those restrictions and allow to double or triple housing development in established neighborhoods ignoring what the neighborhoods want.
Two years ago, the Albuquerque City Council approved amendments to the Integrated Development Ordinance (IDO) that allows for casitas to be built on virtually all existing residential lots zoned as R-1 of upwards of 120,000 homes. The city also offered pre-approved casita architectural plans. The city’s casita development plan has been a total failure with only 14 casitas approved to be built by the City Planning Department.
The overwhelming majority of existing homeowners cannot afford the construction costs of a free-standing casita or the conversion of their homes to a duplex or townhome. Construction costs are consistent when it comes to building an entire house or adding a free-standing casita or converting a residence to a duplex or town home. There is no real differentiation between the basic construction costs to construct “affordable housing” and other types of housing.
According to the Homebuilders Digest construction costs cover everything from materials to the actual construction. In Albuquerque there are four basic categories of construction:
- A value-based custom home would start around $175 per square foot. This is a home that would have builder-grade finishes, such as ceramic tile, laminate flooring, basic cabinets, level one granite or quartz, aluminum or builder-grade vinyl windows, value series appliances, and basic plumbing and electrical fixtures.
- A mid-range home would start at around $225 per square foot. Mid-range finishes would include porcelain tile, engineered wood, mid-level cabinets with soft close, level two or three granite or quartz, and a moderate budget for plumbing and electrical fixtures. It would also have premium vinyl or fiberglass windows and higher-end appliances.
- Ahigh-end custom home would start at around $275 per square foot. This home would have all high-end custom finishes, fiberglass or wood windows, and professional appliances.
- A home with energy efficiency features would range between $200 to $400 per square foot depending on selections for mechanical systems, windows, plumbing and lighting fixtures, cabinets, appliances, flooring, and more.
The link to the relied upon or quoted source is here:
https://www.homebuilderdigest.com/cost-guides/how-much-does-it-cost-to-build-a-house-in-albuquerque/
The minimum hard construction cost to build a 750 square foot free standing casita or convert an existing residence to a duplex by adding on 750 square feet of living space at the value base cost of $175 or the mid-range cost of $225 would between $131,250 (750 square ft. X $175) or $168,750 (750 X $225). The homeowner who does not have the cash savings to pay the construction costs, a second or third mortgage on the residence would be required.
Simply put, only developers and investors who speculate will be able to double or triple density by buying up existing homes for purposes of building casitas or converting residences to a duplex or townhome. After that is done, the profit motive will be to sell or rent at the highest level and not for affordable housing.
ZONING CHANGES WILL DESTROY NEIGHBORHOODS
Mayor Tim Keller, the City Planning and City Councilors who want to allow apartment development or retail business development (i.e small convenience stores or “bodegas”) on all corner residential lots in all established neighborhoods to benefit developers and to deprive adjacent property owners the right to object and appeal. Such development will no doubt result in magnets for crime and heavy traffic patterns destroying the tranquility, livability and character of established neighborhoods.
Keller and the Planning Department erroneously believe that increased density will increase affordable housing as they simply ignore the market forces and the profit motive. They argue in essence that “flooding the market” with more housing than what is needed will result in lower cost of housing and make available more housing for sale and rent. It’s a false and very misleading narrative.
The one thing Albuquerque does have is open space that can be developed. There is no need to increase density in established neighborhoods that will destroy a neighborhood’s character. Sources within the Planning Department have confirmed the city has already “pre-platted” residential development of 125,000 to 150,000 residential lots. If Mayor Keller, Feibelkorn and City Planning want to allow “upzoning” they should do so only on undeveloped, vacant land and vacant commercial properties and leave existing neighborhoods alone without forcing them to sue.
EXISTING RESIDENTAIL PROPERTY OWNERS CAN EXPECT PROPERTTY TAX INCREASES LEADING TO GENTRIFICATION
The Bernalillo County property tax code is clear. The taxable value of a property is 33 1/3% of the assessed value as determined by the Bernalillo County Assessor. Under the property tax code, residential property assessments may NOT rise more than 3% per year unless the property changes ownership, is improved or is REZONED. (Emphasis added.)
What should be alarming to all existing residential property owners is that the Planning Department has failed to take into account how the upzoning zoning changes from R-1 to R-L they are proposing will likely change Bernalillo County’s property value assessments and tax assessments.
Rezoning all residential property from R-1 to R-L will affect the property tax cap of 3% and allow for increases in property taxes. Simply put, increasing density increases real property values for tax assessment. Government entities never resist the temptation to increase property taxes and property taxes historically never, ever come down.
The “upzoning” agenda of the Planning Department and Mayor Tim Keller will make gentrification an official city policy because real property taxes will soar and lower income property owners will not be able to afford the increase in property taxes and be forced to sell their properties to speculators and developers resulting in displacement and gentrification.
One thing is clear, there is absolutely no language in the existing Integrated Development Ordinance amendments that specifically require affordable housing. There is no language in the proposed amendments that address private equity and developer price speculation.
CONCLUSION
The sinister and underhanded changes to the Integrated Development Ordinance (IDO) by the Planning Department are an affront to the general public’s bests interest and their home ownership. The general public needs to voice their concerns loud and clear before the city is simply turned over to developers who will destroy our community and make gentrification a matter of city policy.
City voters and residents are encouraged to contact their city councilors and voice their objections to the proposed amendments and attend city council meetings.
The next meeting of the City Council LUPZ committee will be held on January 28 in the City Council Chamber in basement of city hall commencing at 5:00 p.m. You can sign up to speak at the meeting the day before by going to the City Council web page.
POSTCRIPT
The link to related News and Commentary articles are here: