Is the Velarde area really such a bad place to buy a house? (Santa Fe: transplants, lease)

[KarenGH]

Hi - My husband and I will be retiring to somewhere north of Santa Fe next year and my brother and his children will be coming along with us. We've seen a few places with 2 homes near Velarde that would be perfect for all of us but when we mention it we almost always get a "OMG drugs and crime!" reaction from people here locally. Is it really that bad? We tend to mind our own business, we don't care what people do in the privacy of their own homes as long as they don't bother us with it, we can't imagine living in some ritzy gated subdivision and couldn't care less if we're surrounded by trailers. That said, we don't want to have to live in a fortress or deal with losing tools, bikes and whatever else is easy to grab at night on a regular basis. We know that we can't help but to contribute to gentrification wherever we end up buying and don't expect to be welcomed with open arms but is it any more damaging to that area than it is to buy in a place like Abiquiu that has more tourists?

I appreciate any info that you can give me. We don't want to overreact and pass over nice affordable places because people that are far more mainstream and affluent than we are have the wrong impression. Thanks.

[ApartmentNomad]

I have no first-hand knowledge, but you might want to check out the parts about Velarde in Ruben Martinez's Desert America. Based on what I read there, I'd be very reluctant to move to Velarde.

[KarenGH]

Thanks for replying. I looked at the blurb for the book and it sounds like a good way to learn a lot more about the history of the area and how things evolved there. I don't think that we'd have any problem respecting the people that were there long before us because we're fleeing what used to be a beautiful rural location too. Silicon Valley is endlessly expanding and driving prices up so high that even those of us who own our houses from the old days and live an hour away from them can't afford to shop where we live any more. We often get the urge to smack them also for being so rude and arrogant. We really don't like the thought of living surrounded by rich Californians who are afraid of and feel superior to the locals because if that was what we wanted we could just stay here. My husband is Native American (he laughs when I say that and calls me a guilty white liberal) and he often gets treated badly by obnoxious racists here.

I ran a shelter for years so I'm no stranger to drug addictions and I'm not repulsed by addicts at all but the reality that I lived with is that low-income people with expensive habits sometimes support them through easy petty burglaries. My husband has a shop full of woodworking tools that would be painful to have to replace.

I also have a question about buying ag land with water rights. We're not looking to do that but if for some reason that was what we ended up doing is it common to see people lease it to someone else? We don't want to take good land out of production and would rather let someone experienced use it to support their family even if they can't pay for it.

[joqua]

Originally Posted by KarenGH

Thanks for replying. I looked at the blurb for the book and it sounds like a good way to learn a lot more about the history of the area and how things evolved there.

I could be copying something you already read on the area, but for me it pretty much sums it up:

He alights in northern New Mexico, a land of pueblos and piñon trees, of sweeping vistas and old adobes. Many an adventurer and seeker has come to this land before him: Spanish conquistadors, American artists, New Age spiritualists, clipboard-toting Realtors.


The home he rents with his wife-to-be is within earshot of the roiling waters of the Rio Grande, amid old fruit trees and mesas where wild horses roam. Here, Martínez searches for truth and meaning. He is also trying, without much success, to break his drug habit — in a place notorious for its epidemic of heroin overdoses.


"I desired this place," he writes. For a self-described city boy, it's a kind of paradise. But a fraught one. Soon Martínez discovers that northern New Mexico is "Eden with poverty, Eden with drugs, Eden with class warfare."

And a bit more from the same online review:

In northern New Mexico, Martínez tries to grow vegetables in the poor soil. He embraces a new life mission.


"I'd live and write about the West in a veritable Western museum," Martínez says. "An American writer, I would claim my birthright, my place in the lineage."


Soon afterward, he's listening as the drug-dealing couple next door fire insults at each other. Various neighbors and activists invite Martínez into their world, including retired Hispanos with nostalgic memories of a now-fading rural culture and Anglo environmentalists who try to keep the Hispanos from gathering firewood.


Martínez discovers that life in New Mexico is a centuries-old knot of dark history. All the varied groups that live there — the native Pueblo peoples, the Hispanos descended from the Spanish conquistadors, and assorted U.S. transplants — have their own claims to, and obsession with, the land.


To each, Martínez is an empathetic listener. He's also an astute observer, and a disciplined researcher who's perfectly willing to sift through centuries of literature about New Mexico and its history to make sense of what's really going on around him.

Now I need to see if my local library has the book or can obtain it for me.

[joqua]

Originally Posted by KarenGH

I also have a question about buying ag land with water rights. We're not looking to do that but if for some reason that was what we ended up doing is it common to see people lease it to someone else?

The short answer is: YES. But it's important to insure that the water rights convey with land when you purchase it.

It's also not unheard of to "sell" water rights to someone else, but that practice has recently been under review by the State Engineer (overseer of state water rights).

[KarenGH]

Thanks joqua. My online library didn't have it so I ordered the Kindle version. I had to laugh at the part about listening to the couple fighting because I spent many years asking the addicted Bickerson couples to please shut up and stop forcing the rest of us to watch their soap opera. I could live without hearing that again. I guess that's what we're struggling with - we don't see addicts as problems, just as people with problems but that doesn't mean that we want it to become our problem too. We like to think of ourselves as reasonably green but we live in the woods and heat with firewood too. The city dwelling environmentalists freak out because they don't understand that if we don't manage and clean up the wooded parts of our properties then nature will do it for us with wildfires.

We would have to learn a whole lot of we ended up with water rights but for now it's enough to know that buying it doesn't have to mean that no one else gets to use it since we'd just be bumbling amateurs.

[joqua]

Originally Posted by KarenGH

We would have to learn a whole lot of we ended up with water rights but for now it's enough to know that buying it doesn't have to mean that no one else gets to use it since we'd just be bumbling amateurs.

There is a "famous" book, and movie based on the book, titled: The Milagro Beanfield War, by John Nichols. It deals with the water rights (and other) issues peculiar to northern New Mexico.

[KarenGH]

I loved that book. I should read it again now that I've been there a few times because I'll probably pick up on all sorts of things that I missed because I have more questions now.

[threecats407]

Originally Posted by joqua

There is a "famous" book, and movie based on the book, titled: The Milagro Beanfield War, by John Nichols. It deals with the water rights (and other) issues peculiar to northern New Mexico.

To that I would add "River of Traps" which I have read three times now.
"Mayordomo" is also a pretty good treatise on the life of an acequia but nothing I would read again.

[KarenGH]

Thanks threecats - I'll read that one next. I finished Desert America last night. I'm very glad that I read it because to say that it was sobering is an understatement. Although it isn't difficult at all to understand why we would be unwelcome there I don't think that we could be happy surrounded by so much resentment no matter how justified it is. In the end he comes right out and says that those houses take years to sell because only clueless outsiders buy them. It seems like buying one is almost rubbing their face in it that some of us that come from places with higher housing costs get to live in big houses while they struggle to just get by. It also made me feel guilty about the way we whine over gentrification here because the problems that the tech folks cause us are trivial compared to this. We don't want to be hobby farmers and don't need water rights as long as we have a decent well so there's no reason for us to contribute to the problems there just to get a great deal on a house. My naive little "well if we just lease the fields for next to nothing then maybe everyone won't hate us" notion seems so ridiculously oversimplified now.

Abiquiu is beautiful and we loved it there but it has its own set of problems for us. The vast majority of affordable homes seems to be in subdivisions and my husband is a builder. I wouldn't even want to be in the same county as he is when he finds out that everything that he wants to do has to be approved by an architectural committee or that we can't add on to a casita so that there is enough room for all of us.

Thanks so much for all of your help because this has been a great resource. I'm sure that we'll find something that will work next year when we're ready even if we'll be cramped for a while.