By Kevin Hendricks
For the third consecutive year, Livability.com has recognized Rio Rancho as one of the top 100 places to live in America. This year, Rio Rancho climbed to the 31st spot with a LivScore of 716, a jump from its 81st ranking and LivScore of 714 in 2024.
The LivScore, curated by Livability and Applied Geographic Solutions, is based on about 100 data points across eight broad categories: economy, housing and cost of living, amenities, transportation, environment, safety, education, and health.
“Living in Rio Rancho, NM, sure is enchanting. After all, this growing city — with a current population of approximately 107,705 — is located in the Land of Enchantment, surrounded by mountainous deserts and impressive mesas under a bright blue sky with never-ending sunshine (nearly 300 days of it annually),” the report said.
The report also praised the city’s stunning desert landscapes, affordable housing, excellent schools and endless outdoor activities.
Based on a proprietary algorithm that weights each of the categories, more than 2,000 cities that fit the population constraint (75,000-500,000) were assigned a LivScore. Rio Rancho and Santa Fe, which had a LivScore of 641, were the only cities in New Mexico to make the top 100 list.
Rio Rancho was listed as the 9th best place to live in the Southwest and the 12th best place to live with a population between 100,000-149,000.
“Beneath the cerulean skies of New Mexico, Rio Rancho epitomizes the Land of Enchantment,” the report said. “Stunning desert landscapes, affordable housing, excellent schools and endless outdoor activities (thanks to year-round sunshine!) cultivate a strong sense of community.”
31st? Now, if we only added a complete bicycle trail system looping throughout the city; more trees along roads and in the parks (low water, native species); attractive shaded bus stops (and more buses); better road markings and barriers for pedestrian safety, we’d be sure to rise in the ratings.
I live in Placitas. I can see the west side of the Rio Grande from my house. When the wind blows in March and April, there are times when I can’t even see Rio Rancho. People that used to live there and talked about shoveling sand out of their walkways with a snow shovel. There are very few trees, it’s all scrub and snake weed, The Amrep installed water system is losing at least a million gallons a year for the last at least 11 years, the water rates went up 50% a number of years ago that was supposed to last for five years and they never came back down to where they were because the leaks keep losing more water and getting worse. The Rio Rancho Event Center has been losing $3 million a year for at least a decade and if you look at their calendar they’re lucky to have 6 events per month. Some months they only have one or three. How that gets high ratings for livability when there’s a bunch of empty space and then clusters of homes built on top of each other with adjoining backyards separated by brick walls is beyond my comprehension. You couldn’t pay me to live there.