April 4, 2024 Newsletter

Attend our “How to Make a Public Comment” training on 4/9/24

Erin Thornton will be hosting a 45 minute training on the best tips and tricks to make an effective public comment at city council hearings and meetings. This is a great opportunity and very timely for our duplex campaign (more below). 

The meeting will be on Google Meet. The link is: meet.google.com/awc-pgah-dfc. 

It will be from 6:30-7:30pm. 

There will be another on 4/27 (details TBD).

Support the upcoming duplex proposal

Duplex Proposal: Call or Email your council person to advocate for this proposal. 

Feel free to write your own comment, or you can say something like this: 

Dear Councilor <Councilor Name Here>,

I am writing to express my support for Councilor Fiebelkorn’s proposed duplex amendment.  Albuquerque is faced with inflated housing prices, little housing supply, and a rising rate of citizens experiencing homelessness. Permissively allowing duplex housing will allow for greater diversity of housing types and help increase the overall supply of housing.

Thank you for helping support incremental housing in Albuquerque.

-<Your Name Here>

Other hints to help tailor this letter to your city councilor:

• Consider your councilor's views on people experiencing homelessness. You may need to adjust your messaging accordingly.

• Include ideas about reduced infrastructure burden. Duplexes reduce the amount of linear feet of public infrastructure per housing unit.

• Explain why you or someone you know may want a more modestly sized house with less upkeep.

• Explain the benefits of additional housing along designated transit corridors and centers.

Councilor Contact Information:

Additionally, we have started a task force to plan our strategy for our duplex campaign. If you'd like to join, email strongtownsabq@gmail.com.

Duplex Proposal: SAVE THE DATE FOR CITY COUNCIL MEETING 6/3/24

We are going to coordinate a huge showing of support for this duplex proposal at the City Council meeting. The tentative hearing date for this proposal is June 3, 2024. 

Please save the date and plan on joining us to make a public comment. It could be a long night if we all can participate. 

If you can’t participate, you can submit a public comment in support of the proposal. More details will be available closer to the meeting. 

Other cities that have successfully passed these types of resolutions have done so with a huge groundswell of public support. We can replicate that if we get our community to engage and show-up! Portland was successful by having 106 people show up to one of their first city council meetings to make a comment for change. For the following proposal, they had over 15,000 comments. Let’s try and beat that! 

Duplex Proposal: Partnering with other groups and building a coalition 

There are many groups in the city that would like to advocate for the duplex proposal. We need YOUR HELP to get connected with them. If you have contacts to any groups that you believe would like to partner with us to advocate for this housing proposal, please let us know by emailing us the contact at strongtownsabq@gmail.com. We would love all the help we can get in this regard! 

March 31, 2024 Cleanup Day Recap

Strong Towns ABQ was able to gather up a small but mighty cleaning force at the early hours on Sunday morning. The goal was a simple one, to clean up as much trash as possible at Lueking South Park. Strong Towns understands that in order to thrive in a community it must be safe, and a clean environment. With some help from the local government providing cleaning supplies and trash pick up, they were able to accomplish their goal.