Most of us are familiar with the concept of remodeling our home. Even when I help clients find their “dream home” I hear them talking eagerly about making changes. Here in Los Alamos, the ability to remodel or change your living space is what makes life possible in a place where moving to a home with different features or amenities isn’t always possible. So what would life in Los Alamos be like if you were unable to do a minor remodel or weekend project to improve your space?

That’s probably a difficult concept to imagine. Sure. Plenty of folks live in rented housing. Either they’re living in a temporary location and don’t want to commit to a purchase or they’re saving up a down payment or waiting for a raise or a promotion so that they can purchase their own home. When we rent, we’re often in apartment complexes where we can’t paint the wall or a rental home where the landlord is ultimately responsible for changes and remodels or updating.

But what if there was absolutely NO possibility of EVER purchasing your own home or changing your space? In the early days of life in Los Alamos, even the furniture belonged to the Zia Company!

We’ve talked some about this in the past. I think it’s difficult to imagine what it was like in those days simply because our modern minds can’t grasp it. In 1954 Norris Bradbury spoke out against the “disposal” of government housing in Los Alamos because his number one concern was how the Laboratory would be able to remain fully staffed if they lost any of the pool of homes. Hanford, Washington and Oak Ridge, Tennessee had gone through similar issues with privatized housing, but there were alternative housing options for Laboratory employees in the surrounding areas. Here in Los Alamos, that’s always been a difficult fact of life and continues to be one today. There’s just not enough land to build on!

The issue of privatized housing or the disposal of government owned homes was permanently tabled in 1954. However, by 1957 the Laboratory staffing was being deeply affected by a high number of employees leaving their jobs while citing “lack of opportunity to own their own home” as the number one reason for leaving Los Alamos. Who could blame them? In the 1950s especially, home ownership was the biggest part of the American Dream!

Plans were moving forward to allow private citizens to own homes on Barranca Mesa, but this didn’t alleviate the housing pinch for everybody. In my last blog post I talked about the point system and how the number of points your family had determined whether or not you could even apply to purchase a private lot on Barranca Mesa. To say nothing of the enormous cost of building your own home from scratch!

To try and bridge this gap, Los Alamos got its first remodel opportunity since the government owned homes were placed on their foundations. It was actually a sound plan for both parties. Back then, if you moved houses in Los Alamos, Zia Company moved you. You can imagine the costs associated with moving people across town on an almost constant basis. With this in mind, the Atomic Energy Commission agreed to pay for certain modifications to the existing housing. After all, if residents were happy with their current homes, they wouldn’t need to move. Less cross town moves means less money spent on moving expenses.

The first remodeling contract provided funds to add one bedroom and one bathroom to 30 existing homes. There were quite a few rules though. A resident couldn’t request a fireplace, a carport, or the movement of existing walls in their remodel requests. Of course, the housing office was swamped with requests for just those things and so very much more!

The AEC managed to squeeze their budget to provide for another 80 home remodels. This time they allowed two bedroom additions. However, residents who had their homes remodeled had to agree to remain in that home for two years. The exception to this rule was if a larger home came available within that timeframe. But if you added two bedrooms to your existing two or three bedroom, the likelihood of a house bigger than four or five bedrooms coming available was almost nil. Certainly a family might have had to pass up a nicer home of a similar size, but that was the risk you took when you agreed to the remodel terms.

Over 500 residents made requests for remodeling projects in their existing homes. The budget initially accomodated the first 30, and then an additional 80, and finally 4 remodel projects that ran the project money dry. 500 requests, but only 114 accepted. Still, it was a huge improvement and it did alleviate some of the housing crunch issues.

According to Craig Martin’s book, Quads Shoeboxes and Sunken Living Rooms, the residents called the list of proposed modifications the “Needy & Greedy Additions”. This name was meant to be ironic.

If your family had four or more children, your request was made because you were “needy”.

If you were called “greedy”, it wasn’t because your requests were outrageous. It was because you were making reasonable remodeling requests in a place where you couldn’t take on even the simplest DIY project on your own.

Unfortunately, as you might have guessed, the 114 remodeling requests were given to those with the most housing points. The final project converted many Group 11 three bedroom homes into five bedroom houses, added one or two bedrooms onto several Group 12 four bedroom homes, and many interior walls were removed from Group 13 single story duplexes to turn them into five bedroom single family homes. Given that, it became very clear that the remodeling project was geared more toward helping larger families get housing space that had room for their expanding needs! As I’ve said before, families tended to be pretty large in the 1950s. Can YOU imagine cramming a family of six into a two or three bedroom home? Yikes!

Regardless of whether or not you want to remodel your existing home or you love it the way it is, I’m sure we can all agree that living in Los Alamos is an adventure! When you’re ready to buy or sell a home here in this unique community, give me a call! I’m your hometown real estate broker and I’d love to chat Los Alamos Real Estate with you!