City effort to use vacant/underutilized land worthwhile, should be expanded to County/APS

While Albuquerque’s population growth has largely stalled in recent years the City still faces challenges with a lack of housing and developable land as the City has become landlocked by the mountains, tribal lands, Air Force Base, and volcanoes. The idea of using or selling off these lands is worthwhile. You can check out the website here. Of course, while our strong preference is for as much land as reasonable to be sold off and used for market housing or other economic uses, that may not always be possible.

As the Albuquerque Journal reports, using its new website the City is hoping to bring more of these vacant lands into use. We applaud the City for this effort and for putting a list of properties together on a website. Hopefully it results in numerous beneficial uses, preferably by the private sector. The County should make a concerted effort to do the same and Albuquerque Public Schools which is seeing annual declines of 1,500 students should have unused properties available as well.

Returning government-owned lands to the private sector, especially those that are unused, unnecessary, or should simply be consolidated (especially since the County bought it’s own headquarters downtown) would be a win-win. Whether the challenge is the housing situation or simply bringing properties back onto the tax rolls (thus lowering taxes for the rest of us) this is a worthwhile effort with numerous benefits.

Click below to check out the City’s website. Perhaps you’ll have a use for City property!