John Builds New homes

Before and After of project completion. New Life Homes converted a derelict 110 unit motel and night club into 71 housing units for mixed income peoples. The project was completed in September 2013.

John Bloomfield is the executive director of New Life Homes which consists of twelve New Mexico nonprofit corporations that own, manage, and develop permanent supportive housing for the most vulnerable in the community. In this interview, he shares with me his exciting career journey and delves into the homeless crisis and the issue of affordable housing in the United States, and how New Life Homes seeks to rectify this crisis in Albuquerque. 

When did you start your career in affordable housing? 

I’ve worked in a dozen different professions in different countries so I’m not a dedicated guru but I started buying properties from fleeing whites in Rhodesia and Johannesburg. When the whites were leaving, I was buying inner-city assets so that’s where I got involved and I still have many of the tenants from the 80s. So, I have a history of buying these dilapidated assets and converting them into affordable housing. 

I read that you used to work as a development economist in Africa - could you tell me more about that? 

I actually started my career in journalism, as you are, but as a development economist, I only had one position in that role which was working for the Development Bank of Southern Africa. My responsibilities were to provide economic input into a particular region. The housing part of my career really began when I bought up these assets from the whites who were fleeing the country.

Did you enjoy your time as a development economist?

Not really. It was an organisation that had a political agenda, and I was actually banned. I did a report on unemployment which was very exciting. I went to every little village in the country to evaluate the efficiency of the economic relief programme and the outcome was that it was just an eye opener into the feudal system that existed in Southern Africa at the time.

The beneficiaries of the programme were not those targeted - which is often the case. So when I published my report I was then banned from writing anything. I used to write frequently for a variety of South African publications, so that experience was an eye-opener into the sort of last gasps of the apartheid regime which the Development Bank was a part of. 

What did you do after you were banned? 

I continued to write, not just locally but elsewhere. I did look at some of your stuff, you know the important thing is to pick up a nuance or a complexity of all these issues. I did go on to work for the first Black-owned financial organisation in South Africa, the African Bank. 

The CEO was a friend of mine, who had been in prison in Robben Island and was a member of the PAC*. He combined that with international banking experience as he worked in the Middle East and North America. He was a very exciting guy to work with and we really grew that bank which started with little assets so I did that in the late 80s. 

Who are the most vulnerable in the community which New Life Homes provides affordable housing for? 

We serve very marginalised communities. This includes people with mental illness that often people don’t want to serve. Many people aren’t able to live independently but their desire for independence is so great that we want to provide supportive housing for them. We serve the transgender community which is another group that has been marginalised and isolated in Albuquerque. We also serve refugees and about 25% of our tenants were formerly homeless. 

In one of your articles published in 2020 in the Albuquerque Journal titled “Homeless in Albuquerque,” you described how you often come across homeless persons sleeping outside your properties. Has this changed since you wrote this piece and are there any initiatives being taken to mitigate the homeless crisis? 

That’s a good question. Every morning I do a sweep of our properties and this morning, for example, I found maybe a dozen people sleeping inside the storage areas. They camouflage and hide and I am always respectful when I tell them they shouldn’t be here and then they go. The homeless problem has gotten worse. I believe there is a solution which is to do what we’ve done which is to convert blighted buildings into affordable housing. The city of Albuquerque has 1300 blighted buildings and one of the issues is that it is a very political environment. We’ve had a lot of projects, one of which was bumped at the last minute by a group that had particular contacts. A great piece on affordable housing is done by PBS called Poverty, Politics, and Profit and I’d encourage people to read that. So to answer your question, yes I think there is a solution here which is to use these blighted buildings.

You also mentioned in this article that in your projects you home formerly homeless residents with Ph.D. and interesting life narratives. If you don’t mind sharing this with me, is there a particular life story that has stuck with you the most? Anonymously of course. 

One who’s been a resident for many years has a Ph.D. from Cornell and was lecturing at the local university here. He’s a schizophrenic, it runs in the family, and he has been unable to function in the real world as he is very paranoid. What he does is generate this wonderful monthly nutrition newsletter. He’s an expert in local varieties of food supplements and he measures his body weight and is very healthy. What we do is we try and allow our tenants the opportunity to contribute, so he feels really part of the community. He’s just one that comes to mind. 

What does subsidised healthcare look like in the United States for those with mental illnesses and what support are you able to give your tenants who struggle with their mental health? 

The US has a programme for people with disabilities called Medicaid and most of our tenants are on Medicaid because a majority of them are on Social Security Disability Income which comes with that, so that is a good safety net for them. In terms of mental health generally in the United States, part of the problem was that during the Reagan administration, they closed a lot of the mental hospitals where people were housed and put them on the streets. 

Our organisation does three things: we develop new projects, we manage existing projects, and then we provide support services which is the third arm of what we do. That’s kind of been dormant since COVID as we would provide financial literacy classes. We also deliver lectures, and teach people how to cook good meals. We get free food delivered here on Saturdays from Trader Joe's and so we provide support in this way. We have 500 residents and we know every single one of them and we don’t want anyone to fall through the cracks. We just want to be the sounding board, my staff and I are always available 24/7 to deal with any crisis. 

In this sense, we have created a sense of community as a boutique organisation with our support services which we think works well to support our tenants’ mental health without being professionals. 

Could you tell me more about your housing cooperative “Chimurungu”, was this your first experience managing affordable housing? 

Chimurungu, which means ‘let’s do it together’, is managed by my eldest son, who works as a corporate banker and lives in Johannesburg. So that was really my first time exploring and renovating properties. It was the confluence of, as I said earlier, whites fleeing and selling these assets for next to nothing and my work put me in touch with a lot of the Black leadership whom I would then put in as tenants in my properties. It was during a unique set of circumstances, as populations were restricted to living in certain parts of South Africa. 

How would you describe your experience in South Africa?

I first went when I was 19/20 years old. I got a job for The Star* in Johannesburg - it was in two distinct pieces and it was horrifying. I would work with journalists that I couldn’t go into restaurants with, it was the height of Soweto. All of those early memories left an element of distaste. I survived and I enjoyed it because we were operating in a different world. On the one hand, I was flying around in corporate jets and another part was in Soweto and strategising liberation strategies. We also had a lot of great people whom I’m still friends with, who came from all over and were kind of living this alternative reality in South Africa. 

I got a lot of flack as there was a lot of opposition to going to work in any capacity in South Africa but I was fortunate to work for many of the major change organisations that weren’t doing things that would get me detained or imprisoned like some of my colleagues were. It was an exciting time by virtue of that specific set of circumstances. 

Why is the annual December homeless memorial vigil in Albuquerque so significant? 

Albuquerque has an incredible climate, unlike a lot of parts of the USA that have challenging winters. It is shocking how many people have passed in a city like Albuquerque because it is possible to survive on the streets. There’s just no excuse why such a wealthy country like the United States would have 60-70 deaths in Albuquerque  every year due to homelessness. It’s very troubling. 

How has COVID affected the business of New Life Homes?

It really hasn’t. Only myself and a couple of others actually had COVID but we were on top of it from the very beginning. We required people to wear masks indoors - even now during the food-drops - so I don’t really think it has affected our business except in those areas I mentioned earlier like the financial literacy classes. 

Something else we were doing was also allowing our space to be used by other non-profits. We had properties with great community spaces that were used quite frequently. For example, we had a dedicated group assisting people who were released from incarceration and that has stopped since COVID. We haven’t really rekindled it because we aren’t totally satisfied that COVID has gone to the extent that we would like it to be gone. 

Are there any specific goals you want to achieve for New Life Homes in the next few years? 

Part of the challenge for me is succession planning. A big goal and what really gets me excited has been new projects and developing something from nothing but we haven’t had new ones because of the politics that I talked about earlier. The way these are funded is through equity debt and grants and we have been pretty successful - but without the core funding piece, these projects don’t happen. 

They won’t happen until the political situation changes and there is a bigger commitment towards supportive housing for the most vulnerable. I think that the funding continues to go to the upper tier of the affordable housing spectrum. So that limits my goals and causes me to look abroad, personally, which is what I’ve been doing. But I would be really happy to be re-engaged should that political climate be a little more conducive for me to continue to do what we’re doing.

When you say ‘upper tier of affordable housing’ what does that mean and what does that look like? 

Here, there are income-related tiers called area-median-income and they vary throughout the United States. So, if you are serving 30% or below those would consist of people who maybe earn $1000 USD or less a month. Those are the people we serve. 40% would be maybe around $1500-2000 USD, and it goes up to 50%, 60%, and 80%. A majority of affordable housing developers serve the upper tier which is 60-80% - certainly above 50%. 

Why is that? 

The reason for that is the cash flow. Part of the problem is that these projects don't have cash flow at the very lower end and you have to compensate by having a lot of grants. Which we do. And our business model is to have no debt and several projects actually have no debt which is very unusual. 

Typically, affordable housing is funded through 65% equity, that is someone who buys the tax credits through a syndicator, and then 35% debt. Our debt-equity ratio for most of our projects is 95:5. That means we have great longevity and whatever happens in the housing market outside doesn’t affect us because we are going to survive. It's a really good model that obviously requires a lot more work. So, the upper tier is this 60-80%, certainly above 50%. What is most odd in Albuquerque is that you can see private property developers competing for that market. This is actually causing the displacement of some of the private markets, which I’ve tried to point out again and again to the powers that be. 

Why would you subside to help the upper tier when that is already provided by the private sector? They, of course, are aware of that but again, the money is in the upper tier and that is where all of the funding is going.

That is really disappointing

It is. If you follow the facts, you’ll see where it leads. And there just aren’t enough affordable housing projects because the funding is just not there. 

What has been your biggest challenge so far at New Life Homes? 

The politics that I mentioned. The challenge is cutting through the politics and I hate  schmoozing, it’s just not my scene. I think that’s needed so when I think of my successor, they would have to be someone who is better able to deal with the political side of things that is required in this work. 

*The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) is a South African national liberation Pan-Africanist movement that is now a political party. 

*The Soweto uprising was a series of demonstrations and protests led by Black school children in South Africa that began in 1976. Students from various schools began to protest in the streets of Soweto in response to the introduction of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in Black schools.

*The Star is a daily newspaper based in Gauteng, South Africa. 

Link to the PBS piece here. 

Interview by Lina Idrees