Last month, I wrote about the impact of the housing crisis in Los Alamos and it’s impact on scientific research at Los Alamos National Laboratory (spoiler: it’s not good). Folks seemed interested in the topic, so I figured we’d go straight to the source and learn a little more.
Stephanie Nakhleh serves on the Los Alamos Planning Commission, writes the excellent Substack We Can Have Nice Things, and has been sounding the alarm on the housing situation in her community for some time. She was also my expert source for the initial post, so the following is a bit of a rehash of prior conversations and a deeper dive into certain details that didn’t make it into the article — enjoy.
Setting the Scene
[00:00 – 04:00] Los Alamos is one of the wealthiest counties in New Mexico and home to one of the most important scientific institutions in the world. Yet the town itself is visibly deteriorated: an empty downtown, aging housing stock, extreme prices, and little new construction. The contradiction is striking—world-class science in a place that cannot house its own workforce.
The Core Problem
[04:00 – 07:30] Los Alamos is built like a suburb, despite having none of the conditions that make suburban development viable.
Roughly 77% of the town is zoned exclusively for single-family homes, and until recently only about 5% of land allowed density above roughly 7 units per acre. Much of White Rock was zoned for extremely large lots, including two-acre minimums. These rules reflect 1970s-era planning assumptions rather than the town’s present economic reality.
Early plans once imagined a town of 30,000 people. Instead, zoning locked Los Alamos into low density, even as demand has intensified.
How Los Alamos Was Built
[07:30 – 12:30] During World War II, the U.S. Army seized land to support the Manhattan Project. Housing was built rapidly and cheaply to support wartime needs.
After the war, the Atomic Energy Commission continued to build and manage housing until the mid-1960s, when the federal government exited the housing business and transferred responsibility to the private market. Commercial properties downtown were often sold to private owners and retained across generations.
Kicking the Can
[12:30 – 15:00] Local leaders have long relied on a convenient story: that the Department of Energy will someday release more land, allowing the town to grow outward rather than densify.
This land transfer is always just over the horizon—and has been for decades. In practice, it functions as a justification for inaction, allowing elected officials to avoid politically difficult infill and zoning reforms while promising future relief that never arrives.
Housing Costs Rise Faster than Incomes
[15:00 – 18:30] Over the past several years, housing costs have exploded far faster than incomes:
Incomes rose roughly 18%
Rents rose 100–130%
New home prices rose ~75%
Median rent reached roughly $2,500/month
Area Median Income sits around $136,000, while many service workers earn closer to $50,000
On paper, Los Alamos looks wealthy. In reality, most workers cannot afford to live there.
How Commuting Kills Science
[18:30 – 26:30] Roughly two-thirds of the laboratory workforce now commutes from surrounding communities. For early-career scientists and young professionals, this has become a retention crisis. Many leave after one to two years, worn down by long drives and isolation.
In extreme cases, interns and new hires have struggled to find housing at any price, leading some to camp in nearby national forests during the summer—an anecdote that has become disturbingly common.
The costs are not just personal. Informal collaboration—hallway conversations, after-work discussions, spontaneous idea exchange—are affected as well. Los Alamos’ scientific productivity depends on agglomeration effects that commuting actively destroys. Science is social.
“Just Pay Them More” Doesn’t Work
[26:30 – 30:00] Raising wages in a supply-constrained housing market does not solve the problem. It simply bids up rents and transfers more income to landowners.
Meanwhile, the Department of Energy and laboratory leadership maintain that they do not build housing—and do not want to manage it. This mirrors the historical exit of the federal government from housing provision in the 1960s, but leaves local governments without meaningful institutional backing for reform.
Enter the NIMBYs
[30:00 – 34:00] Proposals to redevelop empty downtown areas or add townhomes reliably trigger familiar opposition. Arguments quickly shift from parking or scale to anxiety about “the wrong kind of people,” often framed around children, schools, or vague safety concerns.
This resistance persists even as the town visibly declines.
Sovereignty, History, and Limits
[34:00 – 37:00] Nearby tribal land occasionally surfaces as a hypothetical solution, but history complicates the idea. Los Alamos sits on land widely understood as stolen, so the idea of partnering with tribal governments to develop housing on nearby reservation land remains politically intractable.
What Changed in 2022
[37:00 – 41:30] A major development code rewrite in 2022 made real, but limited, progress:
Allowed buildings up to 86 feet (roughly 8 stories) downtown
Reduced parking requirements
Legalized mixed-use development
Technically allowed ADUs, though with restrictions that still limit uptake
The reforms stopped short of eliminating parking mandates entirely or fully embracing density. Developers continue to cite financing challenges, but the counterargument is simple: local governments must remove every avoidable regulatory barrier before claiming the problem is out of their hands.
Permitting, Financing Risk, and State-Level Levers
[41:30 – 46:00] Long permitting timelines increase costs through debt carry and uncertainty, directly undermining feasibility. Even when projects are allowed on paper, process risk kills them in practice.
Potential solutions increasingly point beyond the local level: state preemption, streamlined approvals, and even land value taxation as tools to force underused land into productive use.
None are politically easy. All are becoming materially harder to avoid.
