A Strong Towns Response to IDO Myths

A Strong Towns Response to Common IDO Myths

From the Board of Strong Towns ABQ - Thank you to all the experts who responded and helped us explore these myths and realities!

Major changes to how a city grows often come with anxiety. That is not unusual, and it is not wrong. Many of these debates are not about whether people care but about how complex systems respond to well-intended choices. Homes, neighborhoods, and stability matter deeply to people. What becomes a problem is when understandable fears harden into claims that do not reflect how the policy actually works, or how similar reforms have played out elsewhere.

As Albuquerque considers updates to its Integrated Development Ordinance (IDO), our zoning code, we have heard a familiar set of concerns. Many of these same fears circulated when the IDO was first adopted in 2017. They deserve a careful, factual response grounded in evidence, precedent, and real outcomes. This is not an argument for growth at any cost, but a response to specific claims about how these policies function in practice.

This piece addresses some of the most common myths we are hearing.

Myth 1: Zoning changes will raise my property taxes or remove the 3% assessment cap

Concerns about property taxes are valid. For many homeowners, especially those on fixed incomes, even small changes can feel frightening, but zoning changes alone do not change how a property is assessed under New Mexico law.

Property taxes in New Mexico are based on current use, not on what zoning might theoretically allow in the future. A parcel that continues to be used as low-density residential is assessed as such, even if the zoning allows additional housing types. The 3% residential assessment cap remains in place unless a property owner makes substantial improvements or changes the use of the parcel.

This is not hypothetical. When Albuquerque adopted the IDO in 2017, similar fears were widespread. Those tax increases did not occur. More recently, cities across New Mexico have updated their zoning codes without triggering mass reassessments. We spoke directly with Councilor Corran in Las Cruces, which recently modernized its zoning code. The feared tax impacts have not materialized there either.

Part of why this myth persists is that state statute uses the term “rezoning” without clearly distinguishing between an individual, parcel-specific request and broad, citywide zoning updates like the IDO. In practice, rezoning has long been understood to mean a property owner seeking a specific change to their parcel, such as from residential to commercial, not a legislative update that changes what could be allowed across an entire city.

It is also worth noting that county assessors are elected officials in New Mexico. Large, automatic tax increases affecting thousands of homeowners would be highly visible and politically damaging. There is little incentive, and no known precedent, for assessors to reinterpret zoning updates in a way that would trigger mass reassessments without any physical change to properties.

As the Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors recently explained in a summary of the 2025 IDO update, zoning changes on their own do not alter how residential properties are assessed or remove the 3% cap absent a change in use or substantial improvement. There is no documented case in New Mexico of a homeowner losing the 3% residential assessment cap solely due to a zoning change, absent a change in use or substantial physical improvement.

What emerges, taken together, is not evidence of an impending tax shift, but a highly technical ambiguity being treated as a likely outcome, despite the absence of precedent, incentive, or real-world examples.  Part of the statutory ambiguity stems from how assessors are allowed to treat vacant or abandoned land. In those cases, assessors may consider a property’s “highest and best use” when determining value. This is a longstanding tool intended to discourage speculation and long-term vacancy, not to penalize people living in their homes.

Importantly, this framework does not apply to occupied residential properties that continue in the same use. Homeowners who are not seeking to redevelop, change use, or make substantial improvements are not reassessed simply because zoning rules change around them.

Ongoing conversations at the state level about clarifying assessment language, including proposals to explicitly exempt accessory dwelling units similar to how we already do for solar power, could further reduce confusion and ensure that zoning modernization does not become a vehicle for misinformation. These are clarifications and changes we would love to see! 

If zoning reform alone caused reassessment, cities throughout New Mexico would already be seeing widespread tax shocks. That simply has not happened, even as several cities in New Mexico have adopted zoning reforms that go even far beyond what the IDO amendments here are proposed to do.

Myth 2: The proposed IDO amendments do nothing for affordability

Affordable housing is not built by words alone. It is built when rules align with how housing is actually financed and constructed.

The IDO amendments include several provisions that explicitly support affordable and workforce housing, including density and development bonuses for affordable builders and reduced parking requirements on major corridors where land costs are highest. Parking mandates are a major driver of housing costs and reducing them can significantly improve project feasibility for nonprofit and workforce housing developers.

More broadly, the amendments legalize housing types that are less expensive to build per unit, such as duplexes, small multifamily buildings, cottage courts, and accessory dwelling units. When these options are illegal, affordability becomes illegal too.

Cities that paired zoning reform with permit streamlining have seen real results. In Austin, changes to zoning and permitting made it one of the places where affordable developers are now able to build more homes, not fewer. The lesson appears to be consistent: When cities reduce regulatory friction and allow modest housing forms, affordability improves across the system.

This does not replace the need for deeply subsidized affordable housing but it does complement it.

Myth 3: These changes will cause gentrification and displacement

Gentrification is often blamed on allowing new housing, but the evidence points in the opposite direction. Displacement happens when new residents are forced to compete for a fixed and limited supply of homes.

This conclusion can feel deeply counterintuitive especially for people who care about protecting vulnerable communities. For decades, many of us have been taught that new development is what causes displacement, and that stopping growth is an act of protection. That instinct comes from a real place of concern and solidarity. The challenge is that housing markets often behave in ways that don’t match our moral intuition.

Research from Kate Pennington at Berkeley found that zoning changes helped neighborhoods absorb higher-income demand without increasing displacement of existing residents. It did not cause competition with existing affordable units, which operate in a largely separate market. When new housing is allowed, pressure on older housing decreases rather than intensifies.

The strongest available evidence points in a consistent direction, and it is worth summarizing plainly:

• New housing is associated with lower nearby rents.

• It reduces the number of people pushed out to poorer neighborhoods.

• It reduces evictions for renters.

• It does not appear to increase displacement of existing residents

• It does bring in some higher-income newcomers, but without forcing current residents out.

The study also helps clarify an important misunderstanding in many local conversations: market-rate housing and affordable housing serve different roles, and they work best together.

Market-rate housing absorbs demand, reduces pressure on older housing, and has positive spillover effects on surrounding rents. Affordable housing, by contrast, is not part of the market. It is means-tested, does not affect rent pressures, and exists to preserve access for very low-income households. These two tools are not in conflict. They are complementary.

This distinction matters deeply for neighborhoods like Barelas and Martineztown, where residents often express a desire for investment and vitality alongside a fear of losing community. What this research helps illuminate is that when cities make normal, modest housing legal again, renters are actually safer. What this research helps clarify is something many people struggle to see at first: inaction can be just as disruptive as change. When cities do not allow enough homes to be built, the resulting scarcity creates exactly the pressures, rising rents, competition, and displacement that people are trying to prevent.

When growth is blocked, higher-income households do not disappear. They compete for the same limited number of homes, driving up rents and increasing displacement risk in exactly the neighborhoods people are trying to protect.

As the IDO amendments move forward, this research helps explain why lifting long-standing bans on casitas, duplexes, and small apartment buildings can help people stay in their neighborhoods, keep families close, and relieve pressure in places where demand is already highest.

The most displacement-prone condition is not growth. It is stagnation paired with scarcity. More homes give people more room to breathe, not less, especially when reform is shared citywide and not concentrated in small areas.

Myth 4: The IDO amendments will ruin existing neighborhoods or destroy neighborhood character

Neighborhood character matters. People value the look, feel, and social fabric of where they live. The fear that change will be sudden or overwhelming is understandable. But it is also important to distinguish between radical transformation and incremental evolution.

The IDO amendments do not mandate redevelopment. They allow small, voluntary, property-by-property decisions over time. It looks like a homeowner adding a casita to help cover costs on a fixed income, a family converting a large home into a duplex so a relative or caregiver can live nearby, a young couple creating a modest rental unit to build financial stability and then a home later returning to single-family use as needs change.

This is what Strong Towns calls bottom-up development. It is incremental, reversible, and responsive to real household needs rather than imposed all at once.

As Strong Towns founder Chuck Marohn has said, “No one’s neighborhood should experience radical change. But that means everyone’s neighborhood must accept some change.”

Cities that have adopted broader reforms than Albuquerque is considering provide useful perspective. In Minneapolis, where fourplexes were legalized citywide, uptake has been gradual. Most neighborhoods look much the same, with modest increases in small multifamily homes rather than wholesale change. In Portland, missing-middle reforms led to some cottage courts and small multifamily projects, while the greatest concentration of new housing occurred along transit corridors where it was already expected, as in Minneapolis.

Neighborhoods were not radically altered. What changed was predictability. Clear rules replaced constant discretionary battles.

Myth 5: Tienditas will overwhelm neighborhoods with traffic or parking

Neighborhood retail, such as tienditas or corner stores, is another frequent source of concern. Fears about traffic and parking are common, but experience shows these uses have gentle uptake and very localized impacts.

Small neighborhood shops primarily serve nearby residents. Most trips are short and often done on foot or bike. These businesses do not function like regional retail destinations. They function like amenities that reduce the need for longer car trips. 

Urbanist Diane Alisa has noted that neighborhood stores survive on a surprisingly small but consistent customer base. They rely on frequent visits from nearby households, not large volumes of regional traffic. That pattern naturally favors walking and short trips rather than driving.

Historically, Albuquerque neighborhoods included corner stores as a normal part of daily life. Their disappearance was not a natural evolution. It was the result of zoning rules that made them illegal.

Relegalizing tienditas does not mean one will appear on every corner. It simply allows them where they make sense and where neighbors choose to support them.

Myth 6: Neighborhood retail will increase access to alcohol, cannabis, or nicotine

This concern deserves a clear and direct response. The IDO proposals explicitly bar neighborhood retail from selling cannabis, alcohol, or nicotine products. These uses are not allowed under the tiendita provisions.

Neighborhood retail under the IDO is limited to small-scale, everyday goods. The intent is to support walkable access to essentials, not to introduce regulated substances into residential areas.

Myth 7: The IDO amendments will threaten the Petroglyphs or allow high-density housing next to them

We have heard claims that the IDO amendments will somehow threaten the Petroglyphs or allow dense development to be built directly adjacent to protected open space. This is simply not accurate.

Nothing in the IDO amendments alters, weakens, or moves existing protections for open space or for Petroglyph National Monument. Those protections remain fully intact.

In fact, the IDO already includes regulations that limit density and building intensity adjacent to open space, including areas near the Petroglyphs. There are no proposals to change or override those rules.

What the amendments do instead is allow more homes to be built within the city, in places where infrastructure already exists.

This distinction is important to highlight. When cities make it illegal to add modest housing through infill, growth does not stop. It moves outward. That outward expansion consumes land, requires new roads, pipes, and utilities, and puts increasing pressure on the very open and cultural spaces residents want to protect. Legalizing infill is one of the strongest tools cities have to preserve open space.

By allowing gentle neighborhood evolution, accessory dwellings, small multifamily homes, and housing along existing corridors, Albuquerque can accommodate growth without pushing farther into the mesa, the foothills, or culturally sensitive lands. This is the opposite of sprawl. It is a strategy of stewardship.

Protecting the Petroglyphs does not mean freezing the rest of the city in place. It means using land we have already developed more responsibly, so we do not feel compelled to expand into places that should remain protected. Freezing the city in place would only encourage more encroachment.

Allowing infill, investing where infrastructure already exists, and supporting incremental neighborhood change is not a threat to our open spaces. It is how we protect them.

Myth 8: These reforms are a developer giveaway driven by special interests

A common claim we hear is that the IDO amendments are a “developer giveaway,” pushed by special interests, national organizations, or industry groups like NAIOP.

This framing misunderstands both how zoning works and who benefits from reform.

Zoning rules are not neutral. For decades, Albuquerque’s zoning has favored a very narrow set of outcomes: large single-family homes on large lots, often at the city’s edge. That system has benefited a specific development model while making many other forms of housing illegal. Duplexes, casitas, cottage courts, small apartment buildings, and neighborhood retail did not disappear because people stopped wanting them. They disappeared because zoning outlawed them.

Reforming those rules is not a giveaway. It is a correction.

The IDO amendments do not subsidize developers, guarantee profits, or mandate new construction. They simply remove barriers so that more people can legally build modest housing if they choose. That includes homeowners, small local builders, nonprofit housing organizations, faith-based groups, and families looking to adapt their property over time.

In fact, rigid zoning often favors the largest, best-capitalized developers. When rules are complex, discretionary, and unpredictable, only those with the resources to navigate years of hearings, appeals, and legal costs can participate. Clear, citywide rules reduce that advantage and open the door to smaller, local actors.

Strong Towns has long argued that healthy cities are built through many small bets, not a handful of large ones. The IDO amendments move Albuquerque closer to that model by allowing incremental, neighborhood-scale investment rather than concentrating development power in a few hands.

It is also worth noting that the core ideas behind these reforms are not new or imported. Casitas, courtyard housing, corner stores, and mixed-use neighborhoods are part of Albuquerque’s own history. Lifting the ban on themis not about outside influence. It is about restoring choices that once existed here.

Disagreement about growth is healthy. But dismissing broad, citywide reforms as a special-interest giveaway avoids a more important question: who benefits from keeping the current rules in place?

Right now, those rules primarily benefit scarcity. Scarcity benefits those who already have housing and disadvantages everyone trying to find it.

Rewriting the rules to allow more homes, in more forms, in more places is not about picking winners. It is about giving Albuquerque the flexibility it needs to grow in a way that is financially resilient, inclusive, and rooted in local needs.

Myth 9: Albuquerque is not growing, so we do not need more housing

Another claim we hear is that Albuquerque’s population is flat or declining, and therefore the city does not need to plan for additional housing. This argument often points out that the estimate of roughly 55,000 new homes by 2045 applies to the entire region, not just the City of Albuquerque.

This framing leaves out several critical facts.

First, Albuquerque is still growing, even if that growth is modest. According to population projections from the University of New Mexico’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research, the city and region are expected to continue adding residents over the coming decades. Growth may not be explosive, but it is steady, and planning systems must account for it.

Second, housing demand is driven not just by population growth, but by household growth.

Between 2010 and 2022, the Albuquerque region added roughly 55,000 residents. During that same period, the number of households grew much faster than the population because average household size declined. In Albuquerque, average household size dropped from about 2.4 people per household to closer to 2.3. That may sound small, but across a city of hundreds of thousands of residents, it has enormous implications for housing demand.

The region’s Housing Needs Assessment makes this clear [link is PDF]. Even with modest population growth, shrinking household size alone creates the need for tens of thousands of additional homes. The report estimates that a reduction of just 0.1 in average household size requires roughly 23,800 additional housing units to house the same population. This dynamic is already underway in Albuquerque, driven by aging residents, fewer households with children, and more single-person households.

Third, while the headline number of 55,000 to 60,000 homes reflects regional need, a large share of that demand falls within Albuquerque itself. The same assessment estimates that roughly 30,000 additional homes are needed within city limits by 2045 to meet projected household growth and address existing shortages.

Finally, the Housing Needs Assessment does not simply call for more housing anywhere. It explicitly recommends moving beyond strict, exclusionary single-family zoning and encouraging a mix of housing types across neighborhoods. This is not ideological. It is a response to math, demographics, and economics.

If Albuquerque plans only for yesterday’s household patterns, it will fail today’s residents. Smaller households need smaller, more flexible housing options. Older residents need ways to downsize without leaving their neighborhoods. Young families need attainable homes close to jobs and schools.

The question is not whether Albuquerque will grow rapidly. The question is whether we will adapt to the way people already live here.

Planning for modest growth, shrinking households, and changing housing needs is not alarmist. It is responsible.

What These Changes Are Actually About

At their core, the IDO amendments are about restoring flexibility, predictability, and opportunity.

They allow modest homes that help young families stay in Albuquerque. They allow downsizing residents to remain in their neighborhoods as they age. They allow homeowners to create small amounts of value rather than being locked into a single, inflexible use forever.

Albuquerque’s most beloved places were shaped by incremental change over time, not by rigid zoning maps frozen in place. The IDO amendments simply allow neighborhoods to continue evolving in that tradition.

These changes are not radical. They are corrective. They build on reforms the city has already made and lessons we have already learned.

We encourage residents to look past the talking points, ask real questions, and engage with what is actually being proposed. A strong city is one that grows carefully, incrementally, and with room for its people to adapt.