I recently read about the Santa Fe Civic Housing Authority exploring the purchase of the old St. Catherine Indian School to renovate it for low- and middle-income housing, a senior living campus or a school (“Housing authority in talks to purchase St. Catherine,” April 18). All such uses could help invigorate the city, reinforcing concepts of community diversity, vitality and pride in our downtown area.
This is exactly the kind of project a public bank for Santa Fe could finance. Instead of borrowing from a private bank in some other state and paying it interest and fees, the housing authority instead could borrow from our own public bank. In this way our community’s money would be invested in a local project and reap its share of public bank profits from the loan while earning a new source of nontax revenue for our community.
Diane Karp – Santa Fe
