Clovis Housing (Santa Fe, Roswell, Carlsbad: apartments, rental, crime)

[winnie]

If you want a good rental check out the houses up near the Clovis off base housing. Lots of guys would split a 3 bedroom house if they could get out of the dorms. That area has always been fine crime wise. Stay the heck away from the immediate CCC area (oak st, spruce st and the like), and south of the tracks. NorthEast end of Clovis is where you want to be, around 21st street and north. or if you can't swing that then stay on base. Lots of the crime there is car thefts and assault.

The base housing units that are two story duplexes were on their way out when I was there. The newer ones are the adobe duplexes up towards the shopette. They were nice. Some had problems with the foundation, but ours (on Market LP) was fine. Of course you have your standard issue white tile floors that is a PIA to keep clean. The yards are hard to maintain as the grass either does not want to grow or it is all over the place. Find out which day you are allowed to water on or you might be strung up for watering on an off day. And the off base units were pretty new when I was there- the ones in Clovis are nice. Chavez Manor was a little older, but the homes were big. Good luck trying to get those tho unless you have a couple kids and can stand being on a waiting list a couple months or possibly more. Never been to the housing near portales.

Don't count on the current Base Housing people for anything. They were never helpful. They would like to fool you into either staying on base or accepting that your BAH is going to possibly afford you a nice rental downtown. They really need to go readjust the BAH for that area. It was enough when I lived there, but we lived (shortly) on 12th st. Not an area I would recommend. But I am a dead shot for 100 yards and own three large rottweilers so I was not too worried.

Women? Be wary of the local gals. High rate of Chlymidia and gonorrhea.. They are looking for a meal ticket. Good buddy of mine found that out the hard way. ENMU in Portales has a good deal of outsiders. Or go to Lubbock. Don't go in uniform, that just attracts all the women losers who know more about your benefits and pay than you do.

Dorms for single airmen. The dorms do allow alcohol (last I knew).

Kelly's on Prince st. for booze. We would go as a group. It was cheap. The Landing gets kind of boring after awhile. Not everyone there is a bible preacher. If you are looking for a fight though, there are plenty of opportunities for it. And some of those cowpokes are pretty tough critters. If you want to go clubbing, go to Lubbock. It is about 1:15 by car. That is where a lot of the single guys would go on the weekend.

Pistol carrying there is on the hip - no concealed carry allowed. You need a permit to bring it on base of course - but there is a decent range on the back road to Portales. We used to go shooting all the time there. Some guys used to go prarrie dog shootin. There are coyotes there too, but most of the locals actually used greyhound dogs to kill them. We would go plink on the back roads. People don't get too uppity about guns there which is something I like about the area.

Lots of offroading there, careful you don't get stuck in the sand though (don't ask me how I know LOL!) And use caution if it has rained alot.

Fourth of July was fun, we used to go shoot fireworks off in the street.

Cannon has a golf course. I don't golf, but I heard it was a decent one. I think there is one downtown too. Bowling alley was kind of lame though.

If you have questions (not attacks) about how to manage being stationed at Cannon, I would love to help. Been there, survived that just fine.

[winnie]

Thought since I am talking to a bunch of military guys here that maybe my story would help you out a little regarding Cannon.

I basically followed my finace' to Wichita Falls where he did his cold training and then we found out towards the end he was going to be stationed at CAFB. I have never been too much of a complainer (I am a native NYer) and I figured what the hay, this is the guy I am going to marry, I better go there too.

So while he was in hot training (F-16 CC) at Luke, I went down there to check out Clovis. Got off the bus at 2 am and found no taxi cabs to take me to the hotel. Great. Here I am, 19 years old, alone and in a strange town in the middle of the night. So I walked down Mabry drive all the way to my hotel. Not a single car, noone harassed me.

The next day I woke up and saw a train track right across the street and thought "well this is lovely". Immediately called up fiance at Luke and proceeded to loudly pi$$ and moan about the S*** hole area I was in. A few weeks later, he arrived at Cannon, and well he pretty much had the same opinion. People stared at you, they talked funny, they drove a little too nicely and there was a "gone fishin" sign on the only barber that was open that day.

A couple months passed and we were miserable. We lived in a 2 bedroom house off 12th st. We could not find anything to do. I wanted to go the heck home. Lucky for me, I was busy going to nursing school.

It was shortly after that we got married. And we wanted to do something special (couldn't go on a big honeymoon because he had to travel most of the next 6 months) so we wound up getting a travel guide to NM. We did our first trip down to Ruidoso and the Inn of the Mountain Gods. We also went to a winery and to White Sands NM. We finally realized what we had to do to make the next 3 years work.

So just about every 2 or 3 day weekend, we traveled. We went up North to Santa Fe, we went to Elephant Butte Lake and went jetskiing. We went fishing, gambling, boating and shooting. We went to Carlsbad and that freaky little town called Roswell. And for the majority of the next three years, we rarely spent a full weekend at Cannon, unless we were out partying with the guys. Which still brings back a lot of really great memories.

There are many good things about living in NM. The weather is very nice. There is a wide variety of things to do if you are a go getter. There is a lot of culture. The people there for the most part are friendly (sadly some guys there are saying that it is no longer true tho ) And if I could find a job out there, then your wives surely can. Either a government job at the base, or at one of the stores in the mall. Just not in a gas station OK???? That is where quite a few of the murders you see on the stats for the city took place.

There are also definate negatives to living there.. I can understand that NM is not for everyone. But I can assure you that even for this gal who was used to NY style livin, it was not the end of the world. I would take NM any day over where I am now in NE PA But the real point of my rambling is that I was one of the people at Cannon cursing the very existance of that place. And now - 3 states and 5 years later, I can say that I have some very fond memories of the base, of the state and even of the town.

[winnie]

CLOVIS, NM 88101
$145,500
3 Bed, 2 Bath
1,450 Sq. Ft.
built 1994. 2 car garage. Brick home. in good area-country meadows.

Look it up on Realtor dot com. (can't type it out or it will get zapped LOL!)

This house would have been about 75K when I left there in 2001. But I could not find a house this cheap now in NY, MA or PA if my life depended on it! Unjustified price - yes. But still cheaper than the median house price in the country.

Look in the north area of the city or in Melrose if you want to buy.

None of the "apartments complexes" there are very nice. Best bet is on base or to rent a home.

Just FYI

[CannonAdvon]

Thanks for all the info.

[Mark S.]

My parents were helping find housing for a friend back when it looked like Cannon was going to close. They found a small house to rent for $400 per month. Once the announcement was made for the base's new mission, the rent went to $1,200 per month.

Yes, military folks are being taken advantage of.

[winnie]

You know..if the townspeople are going to try to take advantage of the military moving down there, then pass it along to all the guys moving there to boycott spending your $$ downtown.

The base accounts for 30% of the economy of the town. Probably even more since the base is getting a bigger mission.

Band together and do your business on base. You really don't need anything much from downtown. The commisary is more than sufficient (and cheap!)and the BX has a pretty decent amount of stuff too. If you have to then order from their catalog. At least those services put money back into the military unlike your big box mart stores.

I can't believe those idiots would try to charge 1200 for a house down there. When I was there 600/month was considered very pricey and it darn well better have been for a 3 bed house in a good part of town. Shame on them!

Hit them in their pockets. If you newcomers there get the word out as to what is going on downtown with price gouging you will eventually straighten those guys out.

And BTW- there is (hopefully still) a really cool barbershop right off the base across from Chavez manor. DH used to get a haircut and scalp massage there for $10 including tip. I used to get jealous just watching LOL! They did a really sharp haircut there too.

[CannonAdvon]

Originally Posted by winnie

I can't believe those idiots would try to charge 1200 for a house down there. When I was there 600/month was considered very pricey and it darn well better have been for a 3 bed house in a good part of town. Shame on them!

That's the problem that I foresee. My BAH rate for that area doesn't cover price gouging. I'll only be getting $600 a month.

[winnie]

If you are eligible for base housing I would strongly consider taking it. There are quite a few units that are nice. I would even live in the dorms before I payed 1200/month for a house in town. Unless you have a couple reliable buddies you could rent with- then IMO you are just caving in to those moron's greediness.

We had a great time there, especially during the summer there would be countless BBQ parties. Walk around to different houses, play spades or dominoes, volleyball and stuff. Things got kind of wild at times, I heard you SOF people really know how to get things going.

DH says that the townspeople are in for a rude awakening when you guys get there. He kind of had an evil look on his face when he said it too LOL!

Also for another thought about what to do there, we used to have picnics for the entire wing out there near the front gate. Volleyball, baseball, tug of war tournaments, stuff for the kids to do etc.. You have a very long period of warm and dry weather you can use to your advantage to schedule stuff like that. Clovis gets about 320 days of sun a year which is more than even FL. They also had a football league and basketball games down at the gym.

They also have (hopefully still less an earthquake hit) a decent pool over there and the swimming season is pretty long too. I remember one year people had their pools open the end of March all the way to Nov.