UNM Law School students help create statewide Affordable Housing Plan

This summer, two University of New Mexico School of Law students, Will Martin and Noah Passaris, worked as housing policy interns for Bernalillo County’s Community School Innovation and Strategic Partnerships Department.

Official response and confirmed impact

Martin and Passaris are both second-year law students who discovered their interest in housing law in their Property Law class with Professor Serge Martinez, associate dean of Experiential Learning at the UNM School of Law.

Their work focused on the New Mexico Housing Plan, a statewide strategic effort led by Deanna Creighton, Deputy Director of Bernalillo County’s Community School Innovation and Strategic Partnerships Department.

The plan seeks to develop research-backed, evidence-informed strategies to maintain and expand access to safe, stable and affordable housing for all New Mexicans.

“What surprised me the most in this summer’s project was learning how deep the need for housing reform runs in New Mexico,” said Passaris.

“We are decades behind other states in terms of policy infrastructure and coordinated response.

Watching this gap close through conversations in real time made the stakes of this work feel very real, which is hard to get from a classroom alone.”