Communities search for affordable housing solutions
David Frey - Aspen Daily News Correspondent
Sat
10/07/2006
06:01PM MST
GLENWOOD SRPINGS -- In Summit County, where more than two-thirds of the houses are second homes, the average home price is nearly 10 times the average income. In Steamboat Springs, housing prices have risen so high that families are disappearing from town. In Grand County, home to Winter Park, the construction industry is booming, but construction workers have trouble finding housing.
Those are some of the problems communities across the state face as rising housing prices outpace incomes and threaten to change the face of towns throughout the resort region, housing advocates say.
"We're all scrambling for solutions," said Susan Shirley, director of the Mountain Regional Housing Corp., a valley nonprofit seeking affordable housing solutions. It was one of the hosts of an affordable housing workshop on Thursday aimed at providing solutions to an issue that is plaguing both high-end towns like Aspen, even with its extensive affordable housing program, and Rifle, long considered a worker's haven, where booming demand is driving up prices and driving down inventory.
"It's the No. 1 issue from Aspen to Parachute," Shirley said. "It's the key issue of employers, of school districts, for the health of communities. It's a balancing of the type of people in the community."
It's not just an issue of the poor, said Geneva Powell, director of the Garfield County Housing Authority.
"People making $40,000 to $70,000, which we would call middle-income America, are having trouble finding housing," she said.
Communities are having trouble figuring out what to do about it. Some are reluctant to get into the housing business. Some struggle with getting support from taxpayers, and from neighbors who don't want to live next door to affordable housing complexes. Some look for free-market solutions.
"Whenever you mention affordable housing, employee housing, you have those who don't want it," said Jim Sheehan of the Grand County Housing Authority.
Presenters looked to a range of alternatives, from building housing projects to offering loans to partnerships between governments and private developers.
Shirley said the Roaring Fork Valley is looking at streamlining its affordable housing system. Three organizations -- Mountain Regional Housing Corp. (which is creating the Keator Grove affordable housing project in Carbondale and administers Carbondale's Thompson Corner project), Garfield County Housing Authority (which administers deed-restricted housing in Glenwood Springs and Garfield County and handles low-income and senior housing) and the Roaring Fork Community Housing Fund (which works to fund loans for developments) -- address affordable housing between Basalt and Parachute. Those groups are looking at coming under one umbrella, she said.
In Steamboat Springs, the Yampa Valley Housing Authority built Fox Creek Village, a 30-unit deed-restricted condominium project. At $199,000, the priciest units are two-thirds of market prices, said authority director Elizabeth Black. The project finished Aug. 31, with 294 people lined up in the lottery.
"I got up at the open house and said, 'Yeah, we built housing,' but what did we do? We're keeping the people here. We're keeping our constituents here."
In Garfield County, home to much of the workforce for both Pitkin and Eagle counties, affordable housing is dwindling, according to a 2005 housing assessment. It found even a shortage of 628 units just for those who work within Garfield County, and some 2,895 new units needed by 2025.
While wages rose 18 percent between 1999 and 2005, home prices rose 48 percent and condo prices rose 22 percent.
"Our community is really losing its soul," said Carbondale Trustee Scott Chaplin. "People who were born and raised there can't afford to live there."
Rifle Mayor Keith Lambert said his town is seeing teachers and police offers unable to afford homes in town -- complaints that upvalley communities have voiced for years as they saw their workforce moving to places like Rifle. The city's police chief is seeking to extend boundaries that would let officers commute from homes in Grand Junction, he said.
"We were the affordable housing region, but we're not anymore," Lambert said.
dfrey@aspendailynews.com
Mon, 09 Oct 2006 14:03:40 MDT
