In New Mexico, real estate scarcity discovers a repair on Route 66: Renovated motels

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Albuquerque, N.M.
| Oct. 06, 2026, 1:08 p.m. ET

|6 minutes checked out

Karina Chavez’s dad, a U.S. resident, had actually been a designer in Mexico when financial collapse in 1994 sent out the household to America and, ultimately, to Albuquerque.

His degree didn’t move, so Richard Chavez started to offer homes. When the property market went digital, he required his child to action in to assist. They worked side by side for 15 years, and they ended up being specifically close.

He passed away 2 years back. His photo is still on her organization site, the 2 of them arm in arm, and a crystal locket engraved with their faces hangs from her SUV’s rearview mirror.

“I can’t bring myself to bring the photo down,” she states. “Everything I understand is from him.”

What she drew from him, together with the trade, was a conviction that a city should have space for individuals who keep it running.
And what she found– what is all at once an organization strategy and a method to chip away at Albuquerque’s real estate lack– was that an outdated structure might be real estate stock in camouflage.

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The image of the motel is repaired in the old American view of the roadway: a low court of spaces bent around a lot, vehicles nosed approximately almost every door, a red neon indication assuring “job” over an Aqua Velva blue swimming pool.

The word motel itself was created in 1925, a year before Route 66 ended up being a part of the map, and the 2 matured together. A household might drive up until sunset and discover shelter blinking simply over the horizon.

The interstates came. Path 66 was struck from the federal map in 1985. The motels it fed were delegated whatever the marketplace would bear. Some stayed extended-stay spaces leased by the week, then by the hour, then not. Roadsides were thinned to a scattering of survivors.

Albuquerque when had practically 100 of them. By one price quote, maybe 40 now stay.

A couple of have actually been brought back, neon relit, as traveler draws. Some are boarded shells. Some were taken down. Others have actually been sliced into something brand-new: little apartment or condos for Albuquerque’s low-income homeowners who typically have a hard time to discover someplace to live.

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Ms. Chavez has actually done that 3 times in 5 years. These financial investments are not acts of charity. They are personal financial investments anticipated to produce rental earnings, although occupants can utilize Section 8 real estate coupons. Among her homes got a low-interest loan by means of the state’s Ventana Fund, which assists budget friendly real estate jobs.

She thinks neighborhood function and revenue can inhabit the very same space. “The factor we do this is since we wish to make Albuquerque much better, and we wish to develop budget friendly real estate, and we wish to ensure everyone has a home,” Ms. Chavez states.
She and her hubby initially purchased Adobe Manor, an uninhabited 16-room motel on Route 66, in 2023.

A waiting list for Adobe’s studios led Ms. Chavez to get 2 more motels along the old highway’s course: Route 66 Headquarters and Rainbow Apartments, bringing her overall to 47 studios.

Initially, she believed they would offer homes for refugees. As an immigrant herself, she stated,”I resembled, ‘Oh, it’s going to resemble my karma, pay it forward.'”

The studios showed too little for lots of households.

“So we house mainly veterans, and we house a great deal of single moms, and we have a great deal of collaborations with Cross of Hope and Catholic Charities,”she states.

Energies and Wi-Fi are folded into the lease.”Otherwise, different expenses simply makes it harder for them,”she states.
The systems appear and long lasting; the numbers need to work for her renters.

Forty-seven houses can matter considerably to individuals residing in them. Versus an Albuquerque lack approximated at approximately 20,000 cost effective rentals, nevertheless, they likewise expose the scale of what stays reversed.

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That deficiency is nationwide. The National Low Income Housing Coalition approximates that the U.S. does not have 7.2 million rental homes budget-friendly and readily available to incredibly low-income families.

There are examples of comparable jobs around the nation. California’s openly funded Homekey had actually granted$3.6 billion by 2024 to 259 tasks incorporating almost 16,000 homes, consisting of motel and hotel conversions. In Denver, the not-for-profit Colorado Coalition for the Homeless transformed a previous hotel into 139 supplied studios for individuals emerging from homelessness. In Madison, Wisconsin, a personal designer turned a Super 8 into 129 compact studios without public aid– a design better to Ms. Chavez’s financial investment.

Albuquerque has actually attempted to close that space one task at a time. The city has actually funded traditional apartment or condo advancements, maintained older budget friendly complexes, loosened up guidelines for yard casitas and little home advancements, and motivated designers to turn motels, hotels, and workplaces into homes.

Along Central Avenue, the not-for-profit New Life Homes fixed up Luna Lodge into 30 cost effective houses in 2013 and resumed the Sundowner as 71 mixed-income houses the list below year. Both jobs integrated tax credits, public cash, and not-for-profit advancement.

More just recently, Albuquerque purchased the previous SureStay hotel in 2023 and resumed it in late 2024 as Los Altos Lofts, 90 city-owned economical houses. That year, Albuquerque likewise used $4 million in space funding for conversions, though it eventually went to 2 workplace tasks.

Renia Ehrenfeucht, a teacher of neighborhood and local preparation at the University of New Mexico, sees such tasks as pieces of an incremental technique– essential, in part, since Albuquerque is not a boomtown.

“We can have a real estate crunch even without having a growing population,” she states. More individuals are living alone, the population is aging, and some older homes end up being uninhabitable. At the exact same time, slow development makes brand-new jobs harder to fund, especially at leas that lower-income citizens can pay.

That assists describe the appeal of motel conversions. They seem “a relatively expense efficient method to get little effective systems,” Ms. Ehrenfeucht states. Walls, energies, and personal restrooms are currently there, though designers might require to include cooking areas, storage, availability, and the personal privacy that turns a space into a home.

A lot of budget-friendly advancements need public aid or not-for-profit assistance. What is less typical is the personal designer, like Ms. Chavez, who can take a look at relatively modest leas and state, in Ms. Ehrenfeucht’s words, “I can make this pencil.”

The real estate agent’s personal jobs can not eliminate a 20,000-unit deficit. To dismiss them on that ground, Ms. Ehrenfeucht states, would suggest “there ‘d never ever be any excellent job due to the fact that it’s never ever enough.”

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The Route 66 anniversary calls attention to the neon, the commerce, the open roadway. Ms. Ehrenfeucht states,” the larger concern is about all these several histories and several futures the roadway has to provide. “

Ms. Chavez’s 4th motel is among those futures.

When she discovered the old Motel Hacienda for sale, Ms. Chavez anticipated a 4th studio conversion. The other conversions had waiting lists. Her company design worked.

“I brought my daddy here and I stated,’ Oh, budget friendly real estate,'” she states. “He’s like,’No, we require a neighborhood location.'”

Her dad, among 10 kids, matured in Guadalajara, where Sundays indicated church, a park, and a household meal. He pictured such a location for southwest Albuquerque, where households might collect and regional business owners might own services.

“My papa’s concept resembled, ‘Hey, if my mommy wishes to go get her nails done, I can go sit there, enjoy the video game at the sports bar, the kids can go have a paleta,'” Ms. Chavez states.

This is now a various sort of improvement of an old Route 66 motel. The U-shaped court is ending up being a series of dining establishments, along with a nail beauty parlor, hair salon, and paletería (ice-pop store). Among the bars was painted blue to match pieces of the old pool exposed below the car park.

The improvement needed brand-new sewage system lines, an updated water meter, and a transformer. Her dad passed away as work was underway; his friend, the bulk financier, assisted her continue.

She has actually had reservations.

“Sometimes I’m like, should I have simply left it as the motel and simply kept generating income, or did I do the best thing?” she states. Then she goes there and feels her papa’s spirit.

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Early in the job, prepares required an available pathway to pass the home’s only tree. Everybody stated to eliminate it. Her dad informed them: “That tree remains.” They bent the walkway around it, cutting one root to make space. Everybody cautioned the tree would pass away. The next year, it returned growing.

“We resembled, OK,” Ms. Chavez states. “He was right.”