Funding for New Mexico in Focus is provided by viewers like you.

>>Nash: This week on New Mexico in Focus, a long awaited report from the state's Epstein Truth Commission has arrived, and we were in Santa Fe to get a first look.

>>Rachel: I used this survivor platform to stand on the right side of every survivor's journey toward truth and justice.

I am holding on to faith that real accountability will be achieved.

>>Nash: Plus, how a new federal housing bill could help here at home, where affordable places to are increasingly scarce.

New Mexico in Focus starts now.

Thanks for joining us this week I'm Nash Jones.

We are really warming up to the show's fresh new look.

I hope you are too.

We got a good one for you tonight.

If you have been paying attention to your bank statement, you know it's getting more and more difficult to pay for your basic needs.

Near the top of that list is shelter.

Or in the language of policy debates and political campaigns, housing.

Couple that with the reality that there simply aren't enough houses to meet demand in New Mexico, even for those who can't afford them.

And the situation is starting to boil over.

New Mexico's senior U.S.

senator recently helped force a bill through Congress and into law.

That's meant to cauterize the hemorrhaging housing situation here in just a bit We are going to bring you a two part conversation with a pair of experts about how much healing we might expect from the 21st Century Road to Housing Act.

Also tonight, we will throw some context around the State Public Regulation Commission's controversial decision to let a Louisiana based private equity group snap up New Mexico's largest gas utility.

And at the bottom of the hour, we are going to tell you about mosquito food.

It's not what it sounds like, especially if what comes to mind are your ankles and your wrists and other exposed skin.

Here in the summertime, we have brought in a PhD candidate from New Mexico State University to help explain.

But we begin tonight at the state Capitol.

Disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein died in a New York City jail cell in 2019.

But questions have continued to swirl worldwide about the extent of his crimes and who else may have been involved.

It's an especially painful scandal here in New Mexico, where for years Epstein owned the Zorro Ranch property in Santa Fe County.

It was, by many accounts, a house of terror for victims, but there have been few clear cut answers about what exactly happened there and even less accountability.

That's why the state legislature assigned four lawmakers to Republicans and two Democrats to uncover the truth.

We headed to Santa Fe this week to find out what they█ve learned so far, and a warning, this story discusses sexual abuse of children.

>> Nash: We're here at the state Capitol, at the roundhouse, where a House special Investigative Committee, better known as the Epstein Truth Commission, just released its interim report.

This is the first time that we have heard about the findings of this commission since it began its work, and we had a chance to speak one on one with its chair, Representative Andrea Romero.

Thanks for your time.

Can you walk us through a little bit about the report and particularly anything that New Mexicans didn't already know?

>> Romero: We just received information on subpoenas at the end of last month, and we've been going through so much of that.

And so when we were talking about what we're putting together today, it's really a fully fledged story about how we got to this place.

In reviewing the publicly available documents and putting that story together.

We've never had an ability to have that foundational knowledge about where we even starting from.

>> Nash: And now you've subpoenaed a number of government agencies, but no individuals.

Why not?

>> Romero: We're building a foundation of evidence that's rooted in the documentation that is available.

In order to know what we should ask witnesses, what we should ask individuals surrounding the story so that we have foundational knowledge about what we need to know before we get them in the room.

>> Nash: Have you hit any hurdles in this process so far?

>> Romero: A few, you know, as we've subpoenaed various parties, we've received some responses, not all to what we've requested, both from in state and federally.

Some of our in-state documentation that we've been trying to work on is limited within the New Mexico Department of Justice.

Other than them, every other state entity has complied.

The issues have really been at the federal level.

Anyone that has been part of this investigation from the Southern District of New York and other federal agencies have really failed to comply with the subpoena.

And the breadth of information we know is out there.

>> Nash: With that in mind, are you as far along in this process as you'd hope to be at this point?

>> Romero: You know, we knew that this was going to be a challenge in the volume of information that we were going to have to review.

I think the difficulty that we've been up against is when folks fail to comply with the subpoena, then it really creates more hurdles for us because there's more information out there that is limiting our ability to move more quickly through the process and identify the folks who we need to get interviewed.

And so that will continue to delay us.

If we have to file a lawsuit or go after documents that we need.

And that will just further extend the timeline for us that we want to report back to the public with.

>> Nash: You're meant to finish this up by the end of the year.

Do you have enough time?

And if you do run out of time, what options exist?

>> Romero: We have been clear with the public that if we need more time and we aren█t at the place that the public deserves with the information that we're compiling, that we will ask for more time in the next session.

We already know there's a list of bills that we're going to be working on in the coming session.

We'll talk about that today.

And so there is going to be a level of work that will happen after December 31st, no matter what.

>> Nash: And do you think that there's an appetite to give you more time?

If you did, if the commission did request, you know, that's that's up to the public to decide.

And certainly we've gone through the entire house to get to this place unanimously.

If we need more time, we will make that that same request.

But at this point, we're going to keep working as hard as we can to get to that deadline.

>> Nash: Chairman, thanks for your time.

>> Romero: Thank you so much.

>> Nash: After we spoke with the representative, we sat in on the committee's meeting where they outlined their interim report and some of the foundation that they say that they have set with the information they've gathered so far.

>> Romero: We got to work 100 days ago and issued 20 subpoenas between June 5th and June 30th.

11 were met with full compliance.

Two partial seven were refused or simply ignored.

Among them the Federal Aviation Administration, which withholds flight records from US and the U.S.

Attorney's Office, and the Southern District of New York, which holds the investigative files for New Mexico that we handed over in 2019 and never got back.

In the seven years since Jeffrey Epstein died.

In the two decades since his crimes first grew attention of law enforcement.

No government, federal, state or local has ever compiled an account of what he did in New Mexico.

There are some court records that tell pieces of the story in other states cases for other states victims, but there has never been an official narrative for New Mexico.

Jeffrey Epstein kept a presence in Santa Fe before he bought roughly 7600 acres of ranch land near Stanley, New Mexico, on March 1st, 1993, from the family of sitting Governor of New Mexico, Bruce King.

He held it through a trust.

He named it Zorro Ranch, and it remained in New Mexico until the day he died.

At the ranch, employees and contractors signed nondisclosure agreements.

Access inside the main house was tightly controlled, and visitors came in through a mud room by the kitchen and went no further.

80 of those flights that we have obtained on the list contain no passenger information at all, and roughly 26 passengers appear as female first names or initials.

Ages are unknown.

Identities are unknown.

>> Anaya: For now, this next piece is about survivors.

So we will be talking about sexual assault.

And so I wanted to preface this section with that.

Federal court record and FBI files established that minors were brought to Zorro Ranch and abuse there.

The federal indictment of Ghisla Maxwell charges that a girl was groomed at the ranch in 1996, beginning with an unsolicited topless massage.

A sworn statement at Maxwell sentencing describes a 15 year old flown to the ranch in 2004 and molested for hours separate incidents, different children eight years apart.

The evidence reviewed to date supports the conclusion that Epstein abuse at least five women and girls at Zorro Ranch between 1996 and 2012.

One of them has since passed, and the commission has counted at least 30 other individuals who potentially were abused in New Mexico.

People we cannot yet confirm in most cases because their names are blacked out of the federal record.

>> Romero: Most of what's in this report has been publicly available since the EFTA released this past February.

We claim no scoop on this information.

What we claim is the work that New Mexico.

Somebody finally sat down, read through it, verified every fact against original evidence, and assembled an official story.

But the record we worked is from a redacted record.

All of the EFTA, the Epstien File Transparency Act files.

Every page should be released, and our investigation requires it.

And the survivors deserve nothing less.

>> Nash: There was a place in the agenda for survivor testimony and when I spoke with Representative Romero ahead of the meeting, she said they hadn't had anybody sign up.

She reiterated that during the meeting, but then somebody did speak up from the crowd, saying that she intended to share her testimony.

This was Rachael Benavidez, a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein.

>> Benavidez: Unfortunately, I was misled, deceived, sexually assaulted and abused at Zorro Ranch by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell only years after the fact that I realized that my mentors and people I thought were friends were actually complicit in these crimes.

This was a monster who used power, intimidation, wealth, influence, false pretenses, and amassed disguise to gain access and exploit the one thing that meant everything to me at that time my hard earned career.

He exploited us all.

While my survivor sisters continued to show up in Washington demanding justice and accountability, questioning the powers that that be about the withholding of justice.

I too, am here today asking these very same questions.

There is a mountain of evidence this government has been sitting on for decades.

We don't need more paper files sitting as artifacts.

We need the black and white words and names within those files to jump off the page and become real time answers and actions.

Let there be no mistake.

I use this survivor platform to stand on the right side of every survivor's journey toward truth and justice.

I am holding on to faith that real accountability will be achieved.

>> Nash: The committee says they also have a legislative agenda.

>> Romero: We need to close the registration loophole for convicted sex offenders, and to end the statute of limitations on human trafficking in New Mexico.

>> Nash: At the end of the meeting, the committee also unanimously approved for new subpoenas, >> Romero: first, to the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions, then to the New Mexico Department of Public Safety.

The New Mexico Taxation Revenue Department and to 10,000 Wave Spa.

I'm asking the commission, is there any opposition to approving subpoenas for issuance?

No, no, no.

With that.

All four subpoenas are approved, and we do as a commission anticipate in-person inspection of the ranch property in the in the near term with the cooperation of the current owners.

>>Nash: Thanks, as always, to our hard working crew for helping us get up to Santa Fe for that highly anticipated hearing, and to Representative Romero for taking the time to speak with us.

There's also another effort to get to the bottom of the Zorro Ranch scandal, running on a parallel but entirely separate track.

Well, the Truth Commission is after transparency and a full public accounting.

This one is focused on crimes.

Years ago, the New Mexico Department of Justice fired up a criminal investigation into Epstein's activities here.

But the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York in 2019 asked New Mexico authorities to stand down as they dug in to Epstein's crimes.

New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez reopened that inquiry this past February.

Torres has turned up nothing but handfuls of dirt since.

That's because prosecutors in New York and at the US Justice Department in Washington have refused to turn over the full, unredacted Epstein files to assist in Torres's investigation.

The AG has sent a pair of letters asking for the records, but the feds have said no, citing court orders in New York and victim privacy.

So on Wednesday, Torrez sued the feds in a final attempt to get his hands on the full cache of Epstein files.

The longtime prosecutor said in a statement, quote, New Mexico has a duty to protect survivors and investigate crimes committed in our state so that perpetrators can be held accountable.

We asked the Department of Justice to cooperate by providing access to records that may be critical to identifying victims, witnesses, and additional criminal conduct at Zorro Ranch.

Their delay is actively hurting our criminal investigation and delaying Justice Epstein.

Survivors deserve will be keeping a close eye on Torres's lawsuit, along with the Truth Commission's remaining work, and we'll have updates for you as they surface.

Crisis is a label that gets slapped on far too many situations these days, but it certainly fits when it comes to paying for a roof over your head in the US in 2026.

Things are particularly dire here in New Mexico, where some estimates show a shortage of 90,000 housing units.

If you throw a $300,000 price tag on each one of those, our state is staring into the face of a $27 billion monster.

Couple that with a spike in rental costs in New Mexico that far outstrips the national average.

And well, yikes.

Democratic U.S.

Senator Martin Heinrich cosponsored the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, which is actually a package of four bills to address the crisis.

And even though President Trump refused to sign it, the act became law on July 11th anyway.

To help us understand how the new law could land here at home.

I sat down with Isidoro Hernandez, executive director of Housing New Mexico, and Elizabeth Elia, an attorney with the New Mexico Center for Housing Law.

Here's part one of our conversation.

>> Nash: Thank you both so much for being here on New Mexico in Focus.

Isidoro, I want to start with you.

For people who may not be familiar with your organization, Housing New Mexico.

Can you start by explaining what your agency does?

>> Hernandez: Definitely.

Thank you, Nash.

Thank you for inviting us.

Housing New Mexico or the Mortgage Finance Authority, was created in 1975.

We basically started with one program, which was to have a below market interest rate mortgages for first time homebuyers.

Fast forward to 1997.

Governor Johnson at the time transferred all of the housing programs that were at various state agencies over to the Mortgage Finance Authority to have a one stop shop and more efficiently deliver those products or the housing services across the state.

And since then, we've grown tremendously.

We now have close to 40 programs, about as many different funders, and we serve the entire state as a quasi-governmental entity where we're not a state agency, but we do serve the entire state.

And -- about two years ago, we determined that the Mortgage Finance Authority doesn't fully describe what we do as an agency.

So we rebranded to Housing New Mexico.

>> Nash: Yeah, makes sense.

Well, we are talking about this new big federal housing bill.

What role will Housing New Mexico play in rolling this thing out?

>> Hernandez: Our role will be to really get our arms around this bill and take full advantage of any funding that is available to come to the state, so we can make sure we aggressively pursue it and and bring it to the state to serve the families of New Mexico.

>> Nash: Okay.

Well, thanks for laying that out.

I'd like to next lay out kind of what is our current situation in terms of New Mexico's housing stock right now?

How far short are we?

>> Hernadez: I'll start by saying that in 2022, we published a housing strategy for the state.

We've updated here earlier this year, and the indications are that we need anywhere from 3200 to 3400 rental units.

This is for families that are very low income, that are struggling to find units.

It's estimated that by 19 -- 2045, there's about 58,000 units that will be needed.

About 40,000, just under 40,000 of single family ownership units and about 18,000 of rental units.

So there is a big need, and it's more acute with the lower income or very low income families.

>> Nash: Okay, and now Elizabeth, Senator Martin Heinrich, who co-sponsored the bill, said that it is going to quickly bring affordable housing onto the market, that it will cut the bureaucratic red tape that stands in the way of that.

How will it do that?

>> Elia: Well, with regard to the adjective, quickly, I think that's all in the eye of the beholder.

There is, like Isidoro said, there is a ton in this bill, in the act.

It covers many, many dozens of federal programs.

And it creates -- I would like to -- have a done account yet, but I think several dozen new pilot programs and all of those have their own time -- >> Nash: Of four for bills, if I understand that right.

>> Elia: Right, and so it creates a whole bunch of pilot programs that all have their own time frames.

So, that -- the long of the short of it is, we don't exactly know how long it will take, but we should start seeing some changes right away.

Other pilot programs will need to have regulations developed over the next 12 to 24 months for many of them, and many of the pilot programs are for a set duration like 3 to 7 years.

And then have a look back period and ongoing reporting to determine if they should become permanent programs.

>> Nash: And so if that's kind of the timeline, for even, getting folks to apply for and get accepted into these pilot programs, then I imagine actual impact on the ground on housing stock would be a little further down the line.

>> Elia: I think that's true.

One of the things that we should expect about this bill, this is not one giant program that's top down, delivered from HUD or from the IRS or the federal government, like certain other housing programs have been in the past, where you're going to be able to say, this is the effect of 21st Century road to housing.

We now have this new program, this will kind of infiltrate and filter through federal, state and local housing, not just funding, but also zoning laws, building codes, all kinds of areas.

So basically what we should start feeling over the next -- starting in the next 12 months and hopefully going on for many years, is sort of this -- this feeling of ground up growth of housing.

One of the other things that's really cool about the bill, in my opinion, the act in my opinion, is that it doesn't ignore the fact that we have a lot of housing right now that we need to preserve both subsidized housing, but also housing that is not subsidized, that lower income people are living in their aging in and that housing needs to be protected for the long term.

>> Nash: Okay.

And, Director Hernandez, what does the law change when it comes to private investment?

Speaking of preserving some of these units and and what could that mean for both renters and for homeowners?

>> Hernandez: One of the things that stands out to me in that bill, and Elizabeth can help me out here, is that there's a cap on corporate investments into single family homes, that think no more than 350 that they can own.

So I think limiting I don't know how a how much of a problem it is here in New Mexico, but there are other states where there█s a lot of corporate investment in single family homes.

So that takes away from the ownership possibilities or the supply of homes out there.

So I think by limiting that, it will definitely help, I think, and maybe become having more homes become available for for homeownership.

As far as other private investments, there█s -- don't know the full details of it.

But I think with banks are allowed to invest more now without hitting some of the caps that they previously had into affordable housing.

So it went from 15 to 20%.

So I think that will bring more capital into the affordable housing market as well.

>> Nash: Okay.

And what about protections for folks renting homes right now?

>> Elia: There are some tweaks to existing housing subsidy programs, like the Section 8 voucher program.

>> Nash: What does that change about Section 8?

>> Elia: There are for the past few years, HUD has been working on developing best practices to get landlords to voluntarily participate in the section 8 tenant-based voucher program.

Because one of the problems that we see with tenant-based vouchers is that there aren't enough landlords around the country that want to accept them.

That's been a huge problem in New Mexico that we've been trying to work on at the state and local level as well.

And so the softer, the soft approach to that is to create more incentives and more kind of outreach to landlords to get them to participate in the program.

And the act does -- create further incentives and further reassurances for landlords to to get them to participate in the Section 8 voucher program, for example, one of the reasons landlords hav historically not wanted to do it is because when a tenant comes to rent an apartment and they have a voucher, the housing authority or another agency has to come and inspect that unit and make sure it meets housing quality standards set by HUD.

And that can take time.

And so the local response has been from states and localities that are trying to help landlords participate in the program has been to to reimburse landlords for that lost time.

HUD has -- the act has gone one better by allowing landlords to -- qualify their units as satisfying housing quality standards before a tenant even comes to them.

So basically, it allows landlords to choose to opt in and have their units pre-certified as being eligible to receive vouchers so that people can go there.

>> Nash: So this incentive, maybe more landlords are going to be accepting these vouchers.

But it sounds like maybe on the protection side of things, maybe that's going to fall to state and local policy.

>> Elia: Yes, there are definitely the -- Road to Housing Act is absolutely full of carrots and sticks from the federal government to states, localities and tribes to get them to to act in certain ways, change their laws in certain ways, including their -- their protections of low income households.

One carrot that I'll mention that I think is just wonderful.

It's a pilot program.

It's really small.

I don't think we're going to see -- I don't think -- I would be delighted, but surprised if New Mexico even gets to participate in the pilot program because it's so very small to get started.

>> Nash: Meaning only a couple will be accepted.

In a couple of states.

>> Elia: Only -- there are only ten -- only ten applications will be accepted into this pilot program, whether it be states or localities and so, so teeny tiny.

But it's a whole home renovation -- forgivable grant that -- can be given out to either low income homeowners or small mom and pop landlords with up to 1 to 4 rental units where they can do massive repairs on that property.

If it's a rental unit, then they have to make commitments to keep the units affordable for a specific number of years.

So that's one of the kind of carrots that they're -- you know, a program that would be really nice to see through the pilot stage.

>> Nash: Well, fingers crossed one might come to New Mexico.

Thank you all for laying this out.

I'm going to ask you to stick around.

We can get into a few more specifics around this bill.

Thanks.

Thanks to Isidoro Hernandez and Elizabeth Elia for walking us through the housing landscape.

I'll be back at the table with them in just a few minutes to dive deeper into that new federal housing law.

But first, an update on a story we have been following for months.

Last week, we brought you an update on the proposed acquisition of PNM by the New York based private equity giant Blackstone.

We took you to a packed and spirited public comment hearing before the Public Regulation Commission, a panel of three state regulators with the power to decide whether the takeover goes through.

This case has garnered considerable public attention and for good reason.

All the while, however, another similar deal on the PRC█s docket has flown a bit more under the radar.

Just a couple days after that rowdy hearing on the Blackstone PNM deal, the PRC greenlit another private equity buyout of a different public utility before a far sparser crowd.

Regulators gave Louisiana based Bernard Capital Partners the go ahead to purchase New Mexico Gas Company for $1.25 billion.

The PRC approved it on a 2 to 1 vote, with Commissioners Patrick O'Connell and Greg Neubert in favor, despite considerable pushback.

Not one of the outside parties who filed documents in this case supported the deal.

Attorney General Raúl Torrez also opposed it, and none of the public commenters at the hearing were supportive of the move either.

>>Carl: Utilities are constructed monopolies, and as such are extremely susceptible to economic distortion due to the lack of competitive market forces turning an energy monopoly over to a private equity corporation will not end well for New Mexico or its citizens.

>>Zephyr: There are some industries where private equity can afford can afford to get it wrong.

The utilities are not one of them.

Our utilities are not another asset to be bought, sold, leveraged and packaged into an investment portfolio.

It's how hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans heat their homes, cook their meals and survive the winter.

>>Jonathan: Commissioners, I think a lot of us are unfortunately starting to lose faith in this public comment process.

But public comment isn't only about changing votes, it's also about creating a public record so that years from now, when New Mexicans ask how control of their gas utility ended up in the hands of a private equity firm, they also find the record showing that people stood here and warned you.

>>Nash: Commissioner Gabriel Aguilera sided with the objectors.

>>Gabriel: The modest benefits offered by the joint applicants are outweighed by the inherent risk and uncertainty tied to the transaction.

>>Nash: The deal includes some short term temporary relief, including a base rate freeze at about $22.5 million in rate credits, working out to just under $3.40 per customer each month for a year.

Bernard will also invest $7 million in low income assistance and 10 million towards unspecified economic development programs.

>>Gabriel: Beyond these direct benefits to New Mexico gas companies█ customers.

The rest of the package is minimal, theoretical or speculative.

Aguilera Echoed A.G.

Torres in arguing for a more substantial rate credit considering the magnitude of the sale.

Commissioner Nibert, the PRC█s lone Republican, argued state law does not require commissioners to weigh whether the public benefits from a merger like this.

>>Greg: Basically, the legislature tells us that we have to approve the transaction that's before us unless it's unlawful.

I don't think there's anything in the record that reflects that this transaction is unlawful, or it is inconsistent with the public interest.

And as I view the record, I see that at least the status quo remains.

>>Nash: The other yes vote came from O'Connell, the commission's chair.

The Albuquerque Democrat called the deal reasonable and pointed to the commission's ability to set utility rates as a powerful safeguard once the private equity group owns NM gas.

So if you want to make sure that this entity that is by definition, going to pursue a profit, there more powerful things out there like performance based rates.

So that's a way to design rates in a way that the company's opportunity to earn a return is tied more directly to the outcomes that New Mexico wants to see.

>>Nash: And with that, the majority of commissioners went ahead with what hearing examiners, basically the judges in the case had recommended they do.

Back in June, we spoke with Albuquerque Journal reporter Justin Horwath about that recommendation, which he saw more of than intended.

Sections of it had been redacted, but in a way that allowed Horwath to easily see behind the blacked out sections.

>>Justin: I read the redacted language, and it turned out that the hearing examiners weren't as confident in the recommendation for the sale as they had expressed in the public version of the report in the unredacted passages.

>>Nash: That included who exactly invests in Bernard█s funds that will own stakes in New Mexico gas?

>>Justin: It appeared, you know, it's it's the state regulators don't really know who's ponying up the cash.

Hearing examiners had said specifically that jurisdiction, in order for us to have jurisdiction over this company, we need to know who the investors are.

>>Nash: In Horwath█s coverage of the approval, He reported Bernhard did not disclose the fund's investors as part of the deal, but stated they include institutions like pension funds.

>>Anjali: In order to figure out what is the preference of these single mosquitoes whenever they are given between the skito snack diet and then the blood.

So this is something that is done in collaboration with Doctor Atnonio at Texas A&M.

And this is a really fun collaborative work and it is present in my paper also.

So we give individual mosquito a choice between skito snack diet And blood and they so preference for the sktito snack.

>>Nash: Stick around for our story about skito snacks in a little over ten minutes.

Now let's get back to the table and our conversation about the new federal housing bill.

When we left off, I was exploring the nitty gritty of that legislation with housing New Mexico's Isidoro Hernandez and Elizabeth Elia of the New Mexico Center for Housing Law.

Next, the three of us get into how the law will affect mobile and manufactured homes, plus some more contemplative questions like what, if any, responsibility governments have when it comes to providing people with a place to live?

>>Nash: Welcome back.

Thanks for sticking around to dig a bit deeper into this new federal housing law.

Elizabeth, New Mexico leads the country in the number of manufactured and mobile homes per capita.

How does this new law affect those regulations?

>>Elizabeth: Yes, you're absolutely right Nash.

New Mexico, just a little data.

New Mexico had 15% of our housing stock is manufactured housing.

The national average is 5%.

So we're triple the national average in our reliance on affordable housing, on manufactured housing.

And as-- as we mentioned earlier manufactured housing very often is what housing policy folks consider organic affordable housing, meaning that it is not receiving any type of subsidy.

It's housing that that costs less and is affordable to lower income people, and that lower income people are often living in without additional subsidy from government entities.

So for New Mexico and across the country, but especially in New Mexico, it's an it's incredibly important that we recognize the role that manufactured housing is playing in our state and make sure that that stays available for folks.

The other thing that's really critical about manufactured housing is that it is as common or more common in rural areas as it is in urban areas, so it is not an urban rural housing issue.

>>Nash: It█s across the state.

So-- What does this new law do for them?

>>Elizabeth: This new law does a bunch of things that are, in my opinion, pretty exciting.

A lot of it is based is is aimed at making it easier for homeowners to finance manufactured housing.

So one of the really kind of cool things is because manufactured housing is less expensive than site built housing.

Paradoxically, it can be a lot harder for folks to get traditional mortgage loans for that housing, because the fees and points that mortgage lenders assess are based on on kind of a set schedule, where it's more profitable for lenders, for traditional mortgage lenders, excuse me to make loans for higher cost housing.

And so one of the important things that, again, it starts as a pilot program in the act is to is to create incentives and an avenue forward for for traditional loans.

FHA insured loans for properties worth $100,000 or less.

Traditionally, those folks have not been able to get traditional loans because they're just not profitable for lenders.

And so that's driven a lot of New Mexicans into real estate contracts or kind of alternative financing that is just rife for abuse and hardship.

So that's a wonderful change that that we can expect to see here.

>>Nash: Well, and you talk about wonderful changes.

And earlier in the show, a lot of this is sounding really good.

I am curious though.

Are you all seeing as experts in housing and housing law, places where this is going to either fall short or at least be limited in its impact here in New Mexico?

>>Elizabeth: Sure.

Yes I think yes.

Well, again, an awful lot of this is pilot programs.

Regulations haven't been written yet.

We don't know if these pilot programs will ever even reach us in New Mexico.

So there's uncertainty there.

Which I was talking with before the show.

And we were saying this is sort of a throw the pasta against the wall and see what sticks kind of thing.

So, so some of that pasta won't stick and it sounds great, but it may not play out.

There are also policy implications to to many of the provisions that I think Isidoro and I might have differences of opinions about whether there are good, good changes or not.

And some of those involve the, the, the streamlining or I would say deregulating certain parts of the housing market to in order to expedite new development and also continued really strong reliance on the on private investors to drive our affordable housing supply in our country, which has been kind of the Mo of of HUD and federal housing policy since 1980 or so.

So that's intensifying.

And I think there's a lot of, you know, a lot of debate we could have about whether that's that's ultimately a fool's errand or detrimental.

>>Isidoro: And I think, you know in addition to that, while we're optimistic about it, we█re also very realistic that it's not going to happen overnight.

I think there's all of the new programs.

I think there's a total of 12 new programs in all, with the exception of one of them is actually funded.

So Congress will have to come back and fund those programs.

There was bipartisan support in both the chambers for this legislation.

So I think I'm hopeful that there'll be funding for those programs.

Secondly, I think there's like 32 different regulations or reforms that will happen across many different entities, a total of seven, 17 different entities that are involved in this.

So the collaboration and the reporting and working together, it's complex.

One of the positive things about this bill is that it does have some deadlines within it.

I think some initial preliminary data to be reported in January of ‘27 and then in July of ‘27, then enactment of the new regulation.

So I think there's it'll have a pretty good pace for federal government to get some of these things in place, but it's not going to happen overnight.

But I think it's definitely a step in the right direction.

>>Nash: So it's not it's not going to happen overnight.

What are some local and state stop gaps basically while we wait for stock to increase, wait for the impact of this federal bill.

What can happen locally in the meantime?

>>Elizabeth: I would say that not even as a stopgap, I would say that anybody at the state or local or tribal level that is involved in housing needs to be examining this with a fine tooth comb.

The act, because there's there's work to be done now at the state, tribal and local government levels to to be ready to be able to apply for some of these pilot programs.

So, for example, some of the pilot programs give priority to jurisdictions that have amended their zoning laws in certain ways.

So if you want to participate in a pilot program, then it's time to to to look at your zoning laws again and see, see what you can do.

There are there's a lot of education for for renters, for landlords, for homebuyers, for veterans.

There's so a lot of education can can begin now to say these changes are coming.

You should next time you go talk to a lender ask about VA loans.

There are some interesting changes there.

So you know there█s-- >>Nash: Now█s the time to start preparing.

>>Elizabeth: Yes.

>>Nash: Isidoro, does housing New Mexico have the resources it needs to meet this moment and meet the demand?

>>Isidoro: I'll tell you that there's always room, a lot of room for additional resources.

There's a huge housing need out there, and we're grateful for the funds that we do have, and especially what the state legislature allocates to us.

But there's a need for more resources, as we're >>Nash: As we're talking about the government assisting folks in these ways, in staying sheltered, being able to access homes, Elizabeth, I'm curious if we could zoom out a little bit.

What do you see as the responsibility of a government to make sure that people are housed?

What is the right balance of private and public investment?

>>Elizabeth: That's a fantastic question, Nash, and I think we could talk about that for hours and hours.

I'm not sure we have time.

In my personal view, the responsibility of the government is to ensure that the general health, safety and welfare of the population, and that includes housing.

And so that means managing resources in a way that best meets the needs of the of the greatest number of people when it comes to housing policy, like I mentioned, for the last more than 20 years, now, 30 years, 40 years, the the thinking has been that private market forces are more efficient and better able to do that than than government agencies like HUD.

And so there's been increasing efforts to to pull in private market forces to invest in and then own affordable housing.

>>Nash: But has that proven to be true?

Well, it depends on how you look at it.

I think certainly programs like the low income Housing Tax Credit and the Opportunity Zones program, which is much newer and kind of modeled on the low income housing tax credit in certain ways, has been very successful in creating money for housing and the development of affordable housing, but that housing has been affordable for higher income, low income people, people around 60% of the area median income.

It's not helping the most vulnerable.

And that is that's to be expected, quite honestly, because because ultimately private investors are investing in housing because it's the it's they're making money off of drilling.

>>Nash: So it's a profit enterprise.

It's not incentivized to help the most vulnerable.

But the government may be better positioned to to do that kind of work.

>>Elizabeth: Some view would say yes.

My view would be to say the reason that private investors are putting money into low income housing tax credits and opportunity zones, which are all expanded in the act, is because they are making money and they want to make money as safely as possible.

But but their goal is not necessarily to house the lowest income people.

And I would and the alternative would be and they're doing it because they are shielding income from taxes.

So money that they would be paying taxes on their instead putting into these these tax deferral or tax avoidance programs that create housing.

We could of course, just collect those taxes and then use the money in other ways to build housing to, to, to do other things.

>>Nash: Elizabeth I think you're right.

We could talk about this forever.

But I appreciate your insights and Isidoro as well on this bill and and how it might show up here in New Mexico.

Thanks for your time.

Isidoro: Thank you.

Elizabeth: Thank you very much.

>>Nash: Thanks again to Isidoro Hernandez and Elizabeth Elia for sharing their insights on the state's precarious housing situation, and what some federal help might mean.

As promised, we are going to end tonight's show by telling you about mosquito food.

We know the often feared insects have been on many of your minds lately, with a couple of the state's residents testing positive for West Nile virus in the last couple of weeks.

So we wanted to bring you a story about an effort to help learn about and mitigate these deadly pests.

In order to research mosquitoes in a lab, they have to stay alive, so they have to eat.

Biology PhD candidate at New Mexico State University, Anjali Karki and her team have been working on a way to do that without blood.

Initially, this skito snack, as they call it, was engineered to feed the mosquitoes that transmit yellow fever, Zika and dengue.

Now she's whipped up a batch for the ones carrying malaria.

She zoomed in from Las Cruces to tell us more about her research and how it could help.

Anjali Karki, welcome to New Mexico, in Focus.

Thanks so much for being here.

>>Anjali: Thank you for inviting >>Nash: So before we get into the new mosquito food that you've developed, let's talk about the need for such a thing.

Why are large populations of mosquitoes being reared in labs across the world?

>>Anjali: It almost sounds like backwards, right?

Mosquitoes are the dangerous animal known to humans.

And funnily enough, we are actually breeding large number of mosquitoes in the research facilities.

So mainly these mosquitoes are real for the research purposes and for the population control strategy.

>>Nash: What kind of research?

>>Anjali: So there are different types of purposes in it could be for their new insecticide resistance or it could be for the repellents testing.

It could be for the antiviral drug development or for the mosquito virus interaction.

It could be also for the victor population control and so on.

>>Nash: Okay.

One method that that lab mosquitoes can be used for is something called the sterile insect technique.

This is something that could be used rather than, say, insecticides to to kill off mosquitoes to prevent the illnesses that they're vectors for.

Can you talk about how that works?

>>Anjali: Of course.

This is a really interesting technique that has been developed way before my time.

So this the way it works is it is an eco friendly form of the population control methods, and it involves mass reading of the insects.

The way it works for the mosquito is that meal mosquitoes are screened from the female mosquitoes and then they are sterilized, and these sterile males are then released into the wild.

And then these males will compete with the wild males and then meet with the wild female mosquitoes, which will render these female mosquitoes to lay on fertilized eggs, which will never hatch.

And by this way, they are expected to control or reduce the population in the next generation.

>>Nash: With the prospect of releasing millions of these mosquitoes into the wild.

I'd imagine comes with some trepidation or fear.

Where is this being done and how successful has it been?

>>Anjali: So it has been done in the field, like the control of the new World schools.

It has been also done in fruit flies and for tik-tik flies, and it has been done for over 75-- 70 years.

But the success rate, that is something that-- you know, regular monitoring surveillance and then a regular field release and all.

So it depends on how well the investigation has been going on, you know.

>>Nash: Okay.

Well, to in order to raise these sterile mosquitoes in the lab, they have to eat, right?

They have to get nourished.

How is that typically done?

>>Anjali: So the common understanding is that all mosquitoes are bad or they bite humans.

But the thing is only female mosquitoes bite humans.

And this is because they requires the nutrients from the blood to lay eggs.

So male mosquitoes can survive on the nectars or the fruit juices and sugar solutions, which is providing the laboratory setting.

So at present, the mosquitoes are provided this sugar solution and then the blood meals in the lab by the by using the live animals or the isolated vertebrate from the animals.

>>Nash: Okay, so isolated blood is fed too It sounds like just the female mosquitoes.

Is that right?

>>Anjali: Yes.

>>Nash: And that is from live animals, how is that sourced?

>>Anjali: That is usually.

That is something provided commercially, like a slaughterhouse or the blood banks, or either by directly using the live animals.

It is a very complex process, I guess.

I don't know the details about how it is manufactured and bottled and provided to the different facilities, but it involves different testings and use of different anticoagulants and all.

But it is a very expensive process and requires a trained personnel to handle all the things, and it could be expensive.

>>Nash: So the expense could be a drawback to using this method.

What are some of the other drawbacks?

What were some of the problems that your research is trying to solve for?

>>Anjali: So a problem that we often see with the mass reading of the mosquitoes in the laboratory setting is the need of the continuous supply of the fresh vertebrate blood, which could be expensive, not only the expense, but the way it is handled.

It needs to be left properly and that the personnel which is handling the blood during the blood feeding needs to be trained.

So those are all the things that are the reason that makes the demand for the alternatives to these blood mills interesting.

>>Nash: Are there are there any I mean, some of this research is happening worldwide.

I'd imagine there's some ethical concerns for particular cultures around using live animal blood.

>>Anjali: Yes, there is some ethical use of the live animals.

Has this one ethical, economic and safety concerns with them.

And they have different kind of complex logistic that is involved in them, which can make the laboratory work pushback, the laboratory work to pass through those ethical concerns and ethical reports and all.

>>Nash: Well, so your team at NMSU has developed an alternative to using isolated blood to feed these mosquitoes, which you call skito snack.

I love the name.

What's what is the alternative made of?

>>Anjali: So thank you for the introducing the diet.

That name is really interesting.

And that is something my professor Dr.

Immo Hansen come up with.

So this diet is made of all the ingredients that be could be retained from the actual blood.

So it has bovine serum albumin which is a source of amino acids.

It has iron source.

It has cholesterol source.

It has different salts and buffers which mimics the piece of the blood.

And it has also phagostimulant.

So phagostimulant is something that stimulates the feeding behavior in insects.

So it is a complex mixture or it is a detail mixture of all those nutrients which is in a optimized form to provide or to maximize the egg number has read and all for the mosquito reading.

>>Nash: Okay.

And it resembles blood in those ways.

Is it synthetic or where you sourcing the ingredients?

>>Anjali: All of the ingredients are commercially sourced or commercially available animal source say.

>>Nash: And what has been the process in your lab for kind of perfecting the recipe, finding out what the mosquitoes actually like?

>>Anjali: So this diet is actually the result of the hard labor of many other former graduate students in the lab.

But for this research, the strategy that I have used to develop this diet is that I modify the skito snack recipe and the by adding or removing one thing at a time.

So thereby I have prepared several different versions of this diet.

And then I did an extensive series of feeding essay where the optimized mixture of the nutrients for the mosquitoes was developed to maximize their A or feeding rate, and then housing.

And I also screened for the iron sources like the phagostimulant source like um-- and then the nutrient source.

>>Nash: And I was-- I was reading in your paper that the mosquitoes actually appear to like snack better than blood.

>>Anjali: That is correct.

>>Nash: How can you tell?

>>Anjali: We can tell that by doing a [inaudible] In order to figure out what is the preference of these single mosquitoes whenever they are given a choice between the skito snack diet and then the blood, So this is something that is done in collaboration with Doctor Antonio at Texas A&M.

And this is a really fun, collaborative work.

And it is present in my paper also.

So we give individual mosquito choice between skito snack diet and blood and they prefer the skito snack diet.

And we have actual data to show that.

>>Nash: Well good work on that.

The original skito snack was developed for mosquitoes that are responsible for transmitting yellow fever, dengue, Zika.

Did you have to update the snack for the mosquito that carries malaria?

Or is it just that you had access to a mosquito that carries malaria in order to test this out on?

>>Anjali: Thing is, we actually optimize this diet or for the malaria mosquitoes.

So yes, just like you said previously in 2018, this diet has been developed for the yellow fever mosquito But our preliminary study shows that mosquitoes, which are a vector for malaria do not like to feed on this style.

And that's where my research comes in.

>>Nash: Just last month, mosquitoes that carry West Nile were detected here in Bernalillo County along the Rio Grande could theoretically skito snack to to nourish those types of mosquitoes in the lab?

If we if if a sterilization technique were to be used?

>>Anjali: I really like this question because this diet is supposed to be in a bigger picture.

It is supposed to replace the blood which is required for the reproduction mosquitoes and Culex mosquitoes, which are actually the vector for this West Nile virus is also requires the blood to reproduce or to lay eggs.

So we expect this to work on West Nile virus transmitting mosquitoes also.

>>Nash: Also recently, the New World screw worm, which is a flesh eating parasitic fly, cropped up last month in in Texas.

One case in New Mexico in a dog.

Same same deal.

It could it could potentially be used for that fly?

>>Anjali: Just like you said, it is a parasitic fly.

And then the real danger comes from the larvae which actually is the place of the animals.

It, it matters whether the blood has a role to play in the, in its reproductive cycle for the new world school worm.

which turns out that the adults of the newer screw worm doesn't feed on blood, and there is a differences in their anatomy and their reproductive cycles between the mosquito and then the newer screw worm.

So for it to work on, for the skito snack to work on newer screw worm, it will definitely require some modification, I would say, for the mastering, but as it is, I, I couldn't say anything without the proper or rigorous testing.

>>Nash: Okay, now have have you distributed this skito snack at this point, or where do things stand with this actually getting to be used in labs across the world?

>>Anjali: That is the bigger theme.

For this whole research.

My doctor, Immo Hansen, has been working tirelessly on this Diplomate of Artificial Diet for over a year or over since 2020 2015.

And at present, we have this interesting opportunity to collaborate with IAEA, which is the International Atomic-- Atomic Energy Agency.

And so as we speak, it will it is in the process right now.

So hopefully in the future we would be able to distribute or market it as a artificial diet for mosquito rearing globe throughout the globe, but free of cost.

We have distributed this type to different labs within the US, but it is just for testing because they reach out to us saying that, hey, can we test this diet for our mosquito or laboratory mosquitoes?

And we just provided them, but not not in a bigger scale.

>>Nash: All right.

Well congratulations Anjali, on your research and thanks so much for coming on New Mexico in Focus to explain it to us.

Thank you so much for having me.

>>Nash: Thanks to Anjali Karki for explaining her work on mosquito management and everyone else who contributed to the show.

Before I go, one more shout out to NMPBS█ Jonah McDonald and the rest of our team who worked so hard to update the graphics, animations, and overall look of this program.

It has been a long time coming.

For New Mexico PBS, I'm Nash Jones, until next week, Stay focused.

Funding for New Mexico in Focus is provided by viewers like you.