When affordable housing becomes hazardous
Are the living conditions at Mountain Vista apartments safe?
In a previous article, Boomtown explored the broader issue of housing insecurity in Los Alamos, profiling several residents who struggled to find safe and affordable housing. This follow-up delves deeper into the specific conditions at Mountain Vista apartments, where tenants reported hazardous living environments despite living in a federally subsidized housing complex.
LeAnn Slocum still remembers the day she came home to find a foot-wide hole in her kitchen ceiling. Water and black mold poured onto the floor, the latest crisis in an ongoing battle she’d been fighting for years at Mountain Vista apartments, an income-restricted complex in Los Alamos.
“I called the landlord; they acted like I’m exaggerating,” she said. “They just painted over it.” When Slocum requested they take care of the whole problem, they assured her the paint would fix it, but, within days, she could see mold growing through the paint again. “I started sending pictures, emails, I’m complaining, I’m putting in work orders,” she said. “They never acknowledged me again on it.”
Slocum moved with her young daughter to Mountain Vista in July 2015. For nearly nine years, she lived with persistent maintenance issues that ranged from annoying to potentially life-threatening. Not only did mold grow unchecked, but water leaked through light fixtures and pests invaded her living space. Despite her repeated complaints, the issues were never fully resolved, she said, and she eventually had to move out. (Boomtown reached out to complex manager Monarch Properties multiple times for comment but did not hear back.)
“Just disgusting, frankly”
Mold exposure poses significant health risks, especially for vulnerable populations like infants, the elderly, and those with weakened immune systems or respiratory conditions. According to several sources I spoke to, “vulnerable” describes many residents of Mountain Vista.
“Most of the people living in that [one-bedroom-apartment] building are elderly or disabled, and it has a huge mold problem,” said a former resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Several of the bathrooms have had the ceiling cave in from mold and moisture.”
In this resource for landlords and tenants on mold remediation, the New Mexico Department of Health states that mold needs damp conditions and a nutrition source to grow, commonly appearing in kitchens, bathrooms, and poorly ventilated areas. The department stresses that “exposure to mold inside a home is not healthy for anyone,” emphasizing the importance of quick identification and remediation.
Isaiah Cisneros, another former resident, said things went downhill dramatically when he lived at Mountain Vista, which was around the same time as Slocum. “I started seeing a lot of black mold in my kitchen,” he recalled. Management promised to replace his cabinets promptly, but they never did. Later, when his lease was up for renewal, “They just threw a contract in my face and told me to sign it or get out. And I kind of really didn’t have a choice so I had to sign.” Cisneros said he wanted to leave because “an apartment that had been pretty nice that I really didn’t mind living in ended up being just disgusting, frankly.” He added, “The house was starting to smell like mold. ... It hadn’t gotten to the point where I was getting sick — but I could tell it was getting towards that point.”
A current resident corroborates these accounts. “The mold problem at Mountain Vista has been ongoing,” they wrote in a message. “I know of another tenant there that had it.” They spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal: “There’s a clause that says you can’t badmouth Monarch, it’s grounds for eviction.”
The USDA-RD housing program: a safety net with holes
These testimonies raise questions about the oversight of federally subsidized housing programs and the protections available to low-income tenants.
Serge Martinez, a housing lawyer with the New Mexico Center for Housing Law, sees the situation at Mountain Vista as emblematic of a larger crisis affecting low-income renters across the state. “There really aren’t tenant protections,” Martinez said. “People can be in pretty dire conditions, and there really isn’t anything they can do.”
The lack of legal protections often traps tenants in substandard housing. “Tenants do the math,” Martinez explained. “They’d rather stay in poor conditions than face homelessness or the hassle of moving.” This reluctance to report issues is worsened by how easily landlords can terminate leases, especially for month-to-month tenants. “A tenant deemed a troublemaker is not a protected class,” he added.
The problem is compounded in federally subsidized housing like Mountain Vista, which falls under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development (USDA-RD) program, also known as Section 515 housing. This initiative provides housing for over 400,000 low-income families across rural America through low-interest loans and tenant subsidies. However, an NBC investigation found that many USDA-RD buildings have fallen into disrepair, endangering vulnerable tenants due to limited resources and inconsistent oversight.
Mountain Vista residents’ fears of eviction are not unfounded. In Española, tenants at a similar USDA-RD complex faced eviction threats in 2023, despite the illegality of such actions under USDA regulations. “People are so scared,” said Wolf Bomgardner, an attorney with the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican in the August 2023 piece linked above. “They’ve lived there for decades, and they don’t know where they would go if forced out. New Mexico is in the midst of a housing crisis.”
Regulations without teeth
While these programs do have their own set of regulations, the federal government has a long track record of failing to ensure the basic safety of the housing it subsidizes.
“It’s kind of weak enforcement, I will say,” Martinez said. He explained that while tenants have the right under the regulations to file a grievance and pay rent into an escrow account instead of to the owner, the process is complicated and easily misunderstood.
“Your guess is as good as mine but I’m sure the answer is no,” Martinez said when asked if tenants are aware of these rights. “Because under New Mexico law there’s also provisions for abating your rent that are slightly different, and probably equally Byzantine in the way you do it.”
This lack of awareness and the complexity of the process effectively leaves many tenants without recourse. A recent USDA-RD inspection report for Mountain Vista, which Los Alamos County had to obtain through a Freedom of Information Act request, illustrates this disconnect. While the report noted several life safety concerns, including inoperable smoke detectors and missing GFCI outlets, it still rated the property as in “average” condition.
Mold wasn’t mentioned in the report anywhere.
Local authorities: limited power and lots of frustration
Dan Osborn, housing program coordinator for Los Alamos County, expressed frustration with the limitations faced by local authorities in addressing these issues.
“We really don’t have the tools to do that,” Osborn said, referring to the county’s inability to police federally subsidized housing. “It’s not something that we’re empowered by the state or federal government to be able to intervene on any of their programs or processes.”
This lack of local control leaves apartment residents in a precarious position, caught between unresponsive property management and distant federal oversight. The situation in Los Alamos is particularly acute due to the town’s unique economic makeup. With a high median income driven by Los Alamos National Laboratory employees and a low supply of housing overall, the struggle to maintain affordable housing for lower- and even moderate-income residents is severe.
“Los Alamos has this problem where they need working-class people to support the logistics of the town and the Lab, but they make it so difficult … It’s the richest county with [the] biggest workforce labor shortage,” the anonymous resident wrote in their message to me. “They need the working class and logistics, but they don’t want to pay a living wage or provide affordable housing.”
“Quite a convoluted process”
While Los Alamos County has been aware of complaints about conditions at Mountain Vista Apartments, they report that their ability to intervene has been severely limited. An email obtained through an Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) request reveals the process county officials encountered when attempting to address mold issues in January 2024.
David A. Martinez, the building safety manager for the Los Alamos County Community Development Department (CDD), detailed in that email his efforts to find a government entity responsible for addressing mold complaints:
The Construction Industries Division stated that mold issues are not covered in the building code and are considered strictly tenant-landlord disputes
The State Environmental Division does not handle mold complaints
The State Health Department also does not handle mold issues
Tenants were directed to a Landlord Tenant Hotline, which only provided a recording and information about investigation fees
In his email to Paul Andrus, head of CDD, the building inspector concluded, “As you can see it is quite a convoluted process, but the underlying issue is this is a civil dispute between landlord and tenant. Unfortunately, the building division does not regulate mold issues.”
Proposed solutions and the need for political will
As a housing lawyer, Serge Martinez sees this as a common issue in communities with significant income disparities. “You can’t retain low-wage workers if there’s nowhere for them to live,” he said. “But often, the political will to address these issues is lacking.”
He suggests that a multi-pronged approach is necessary to address these systemic issues. “It’s not one thing, it’s not two things, it’s 20 things that need to happen,” he said. Among his suggestions are investing in the construction of affordable housing, implementing rent control measures (while acknowledging the controversy surrounding such policies), and streamlining zoning and building processes to facilitate more housing development.
“We keep saying, ‘Yeah, someone’s got to do something!’ But then everyone is expecting someone else to come in.”
For his part, Osborn emphasizes that any solutions must be accompanied by stronger tenant protections and enforcement mechanisms. “Until and unless we wanted to look at some sort of local rental housing code, there are not a lot of protections in place,” he said.
“We keep saying, ‘Yeah, someone’s got to do something!’ But then everyone is expecting someone else to come in,” said Martinez. “It requires a lot of political will to do this stuff because building more affordable housing, more public housing, creating more subsidies for housing, takes money and it takes time. It takes desire. It takes community agreement that having everybody stably housed is a public good.”
Federal action and local impact
Boomtown reached out to Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández’s office, as there have been a number of problems with federally-subsidized housing in her district. A spokesperson from her office responded Tuesday with an acknowledgment of the challenges facing USDA housing programs in New Mexico’s 3rd District, which includes Los Alamos: “The Congresswoman’s office continues to work with United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in effort to make sure the Department completes its Section 515 property inspections in a timely manner as there are numerous Section 515 properties throughout New Mexico’s 3rd District,” the statement reads.
The statement further points to Leger Fernández’s push for increased funding: “For FY2025 appropriations, the Congresswoman requested $90 million to preserve and rehabilitate existing affordable rural housing rental units through USDA’s Multifamily Housing Preservation and Revitalization Program, which includes the Section 515 properties. This would represent a 164.7% increase over the FY2024 appropriation of $34 million for the Program.”
This substantial funding increase, if approved, could potentially address some of the systemic issues plaguing properties like Mountain Vista. However, whether such a measure is likely to be approved remains to be seen. Last September, the congresswoman passed an amendment to the FY2024 Agriculture Appropriations Bill that would have increased funding to the USDA rural housing inspections, but the amendment ultimately was not included in the final spending package.
In March 2024, an appropriations bill actually reduced funding for Section 515 rural rental housing from $70 million to $60 million, while also cutting $2 million from Multi-family Rental Preservation and Revitalization (MPR) funds, potentially limiting resources for maintaining and improving existing USDA-supported rural housing like Mountain Vista.
Federal appropriations can seem abstract and distant, but for residents like LeAnn Slocum, who has since moved into another home, and others still living at Mountain Vista, the implications are immediate. Slocum hopes that increased attention will lead to meaningful changes. “That’s why now, I’m not afraid to talk,” Slocum said. “Because I hate that people have to go through that. It’s not fair. Especially when you’re low income. ... Just because you don’t have the best paying job or you’re in a situation where you can’t get better housing, we shouldn’t have to live like that.”
“Minimum standards for habitability”
At the intersection of federal policy and local conditions lies the crux: a need for robust housing standards that protect all residents, regardless of income. While federal funding is key, local regulations and enforcement would have to play a role in ensuring safe, affordable housing.
A 2019 analysis by the National Center for Healthy Housing, commissioned by the New Mexico Department of Health, revealed significant gaps in housing codes across New Mexico jurisdictions. The study compared local housing codes in twenty jurisdictions against the National Healthy Housing Standard (NHHS), which outlines best practices for ensuring safe and healthy living environments.
The report found that while many local rental-housing codes analyzed are inadequate, other jurisdictions in New Mexico (including Los Alamos) lack a comprehensive rental housing code altogether. This absence leaves renters vulnerable to potential health hazards, as there are no enforceable local regulations ensuring that properties meet basic standards for safety and habitability. Key areas where counties like Los Alamos fall short include moisture control, ventilation, and pest management — factors critical to maintaining indoor air quality and preventing respiratory issues.
“Communities in New Mexico have opportunities to strengthen the minimum standards for habitability of housing. These enhanced minimum standards can set enforceable expectations for the dwellings that can create living environments that reduce respiratory hazards,” the report conclusion reads.
Changes at the local, state, and federal level are needed to amend the struggle for safe, affordable housing for New Mexico's most vulnerable residents.
At the local level, a lack of a rental-housing code and inadequate building-safety policies often leave county officials feeling powerless to intervene, even when they recognize serious problems. Osborn expresses frustration with the lack of authority given to local building safety inspectors to mandate improvements: “In the case of Mountain Vista, we pressed them, and they did inspections, and they have — under their protocols. And inspections have come back, but they said everything’s in good shape up there,” he said. “And unfortunately we have to just sort of accept that.”
What a plight (literally and figuratively) on one of the wealthiest communities in the nation. I lived on North Mesa when those apartments were built. A woman who worked for me was approved for one of them. She was so proud to live in her beautiful new place.
I am saddened to read that they have not only fallen into disrepair, but harbor black mold—a serious health hazard.
Seems like a suit in the making. Is the current landlord someone local or an absentee?
June Wall
It seems inefficient to handle this so patchworkly in local jurisdictions. Have you come across examples where it's handled statewide, successfully?