Subdivider’s Defense: ‘I’m Not a Bad Guy’ : New Mexico: Selling poor people land--even without basic utilities--is giving them a steppingstone, Ysidro Lopez says in response to lawsuit filed by officials.

Subdivider Ysidro Lopez says he’s tired of being called names for simply “trying to make a dollar.”

Lopez is one of the developers the attorney general and the county are suing for alleged illegal lot-splitting that helped create two colonias in Dona Ana County’s Mesilla Valley.

Lopez says he didn’t do anything illegal or wrong.

“They call you a vermin and a snake and everything else,” Lopez said. “I’m just like anybody else in the capitalistic world trying to make a dollar.”

He said by selling lots in two colonias south of Las Cruces--Mesquite and Las Palmeras--he provided land for people who couldn’t afford it otherwise.

His buyers knew what they were getting, he said.

“I’m not a bad guy at all,” said Lopez, a mechanical engineer who owns an engineering and manufacturing firm in Las Cruces and a grocery store in rural La Mesa.

Selling poor people land--even without basic utilities--is giving them a steppingstone, he said.

“I just figured, well, these are poor people, I’ll try to help them out by selling them some cheap lots--and now it comes around and bites me on the buttocks,” he said.

Lopez was a major player in the creation of Las Palmeras, a small colonia a couple of miles from the Rio Grande and accessible only by a narrow bridge across an irrigation ditch.

A handful of tidy, older homes and mobile homes shaded by big cottonwoods gives way to a collection of ramshackle trailers, reachable only on lanes so deep with blown sand that vehicles readily bog down.

Because of its sandy soils, the subdivision has severe erosion and flooding problems, according to a geohydrologic report done for the attorney general. The report also said some well water is salty and many of the Las Palmeras wells have unsanitary surface seals.

Lopez said his buyers knew they weren’t getting utilities--although since the lawsuit was filed last year he has paid for some electric poles and done some road improvements.

According to Lopez, the cheapest of the three-quarter-acre lots he sold in Las Palmeras cost $7,500; those buyers put at least 5% down and are paying $78 a month for 15 years at 12% interest. Lopez said his profit on those sales was about 40%.

He said he has heard of abuses by other subdividers--selling lots that are too small for septic tanks, or charging interest rates of 18%.

But he said poor people will be hurt by tougher state regulations, because they won’t be able to afford the improved lots.

He points to his newest subdividing effort, Valle Vistoso, a couple of miles from Las Palmeras, where a wide, well maintained dirt road and electricity are part of the package. Those one-acre lots will sell for up to $18,000, he said.