A Word About Los Alamos & Rent

There is not a doubt in anyone’s mind that the topic of rents, mortgage payments, and how much each individual is paying for one or the other is a worldwide issue. Before the recent fluctuations in interest rates, the historically low cost of borrowing money to purchase a home made buying more financially attractive than renting. Whether you pay rent here in Los Alamos or not, there are a few things to keep in mind. Some of these facts might make you feel a lot better about your current housing situation in Los Alamos.

How Important Are YOU?

While most of us are willing to acknowledge that there is something of a hierarchy attached to the importance of jobs, modern minds have begun to understand that the proverbial “rocket scientist” is really just as important in the grand scheme of things as “schoolteacher”, “doctor”, “lawyer”, and (for a lot of us lately) “fast food worker”. If nothing else, our experiences through the pandemic of not being able to go into a store, sit in a restaurant, or receive a package or mail because there was quite literally nobody to deliver it, have changed our values in a lasting way.

In the early 1940’s when Los Alamos was still a military installation doing top-secret work for the war effort, housing was assigned much in the same way it was assigned at any military installation. But instead of being assigned by rank, it was assigned based upon how important YOUR job was to the mission.

Of course, top staff members, prominent scientists, and other important persons were immediately assigned to Bathtub Row. The Ranch School Master Houses had indoor plumbing, decent kitchen facilities, were of a good size, and had the fabled bathtub. If you didn’t rate a Master House, you had very limited options when it came to your quarters.

Newcomers would be sent to the housing office, which was located in an old converted garage left from the ranch school days. They would fill out a form to establish their job or function on the Army post, and their family size. They would then be given a housing assignment and informed of what their rent would be each month.

A married couple rated one bedroom. Married with a child got a you a second bedroom. More than one child and you might get a three bedroom if there was one available. It was pretty common for Los Alamos residents to joke that nobody had better have more than three children at the most, and more than two kids was pushing it. Keep in mind that most of the three bedroom units available at that time were much smaller than the Group housing we are familiar with today. Ever considered living in your travel trailer with your kids for an extended period of time? Oh, and don’t forget that all of those modern conveniences available in your travel trailer wouldn’t have been a thing at all. Families didn’t even have their own furniture.

What Would YOU Pay to Live in a Shoebox?

The topic of Rents in Los Alamos really didn’t become a subject of discussion until 1944 when an influx of new workers caused the Army to hurriedly contract Morgan and Sons to “build” some 28 duplexes on an already flat and treeless section of land east of Bathtub Row. These pre fab duplexes would have essentially been the first housing in the vicinity of what is now Sage Loop.

To call the housing project slapdash would probably be generous. There were eight one bedroom units, fifteen two bedroom units and five three bedroom units. The area was dubbed “Morganville” for the construction contractor. Buildings were boring and essentially identical and the streets were rigidly uniform. One resident was heard to call the houses “Little Horrors”. After all, the Army was desperately trying to make their budget stretch and had cut corners everywhere they could. These were supposed to be “temporary”. Why spend the cash to make them nice?

Morganville was really the first time that residents of Los Alamos had experienced a serious decline in the quality of housing. Suddenly the Sundt Apartments looked rather posh. And yet rents in Los Alamos were not determined by what housing unit you were assigned. They were determined by your salary.

Kay Mark, wife of physicist Carson Mark, was said to have called the system of housing and rents in Los Alamos a “curious experiment in socialism: To each according to his need; from each according to his salary.”

Anyone who earned less than $2600 per year paid $17/mo in rent. While it’s difficult to imagine living on $2600 per year, that was a respectable salary in 1944. It’s equally impossible to imagine paying $17/mo in rent! But if you were one of the highest paid scientists at that time you might have been paying $67/mo in rent. Would you be irritated if you were a scientist paying three times the amount of rent for your cramped, poorly constructed and cheaply built Morganville house when a regular day laborer was paying $17/mo for a much nicer place in a prettier neighborhood?

It’s such an interesting system. And if you truly appreciate the evolution of the housing market here in Los Alamos, take a moment to see just how far things have come in some areas, and how they haven’t changed at all in others. It simply doesn’t do any justice to the history of housing in Los Alamos not to consider the way it all began. There is nowhere else like it and whether you fully understand it or not, moving to Los Alamos makes YOU a part of this amazing history!

The good news is that the Morganville houses are no longer part of the housing pool here in Los Alamos. And while we’re not paying $17 or even $67 per month for housing, the home prices are certainly beginning to stabilize in response to national trends in interest rates and home buying. So when you’re ready to talk housing here in Los Alamos, please give me a call! I’m your hometown Los Alamos Real Estate Broker, and I’d love to chat with you!