The Regional Housing Authority Workbook  is designed to help citizens, housing advocates, planners, and local officials understand how the regional housing authority law can be a tool to address affordable housing issues in their community and region.  The sections of the workbook offer several steps to help you use the regional housing authority law to your community’s advantage.

Section I focuses on determining the extent of the affordable housing issue in your community or region.  Determining the scale of the problem will help determine the scale of the approach and the resources necessary to create affordable housing.

Section II explores the mechanisms within the Regional Housing Authority Law and how it could fill gaps in your current efforts. The enabling legislation is not a silver bullet to the affordable housing needs of Colorado communities, but it does offer a flexible framework to meet local needs to finance and build more affordable housing. 

Section III offers a framework for evaluating the potential usefulness of the regional housing authority law and reach agreement on how you would like to use it.

Section IV contains sample intergovernmental agreements for creating a regional housing authority from a few jurisdictions that have created or attempted to create a regional housing authority.

Section V contains an appendix with a number of affordable housing resources, including how to create a housing trust fund.

Community problem solving is rarely, if ever, a linear process.  Consequently, the suggestions in this workbook need to be tested and tempered by local political realities, community history with the issue of affordable housing, and common sense. 

If a step or suggestion in the workbook doesn’t make sense in your area of Colorado, do what makes the most sense to you instead.  The solution to affordable housing is not a ‘one-size-fits-all” proposition.  Although the tools may be similar, how they are employed from community to community and region to region will, thankfully, vary. 

The regional housing authority law creates a framework in which a variety of solutions can fit.  See what works best for you.  If you find the enabling legislation limiting – innovate!  Affordable housing is a dynamic problem that requires innovative solutions.  The Regional Housing Authority Law is one place to start.

This workbook was prepared at part of the same Colorado Heritage Planning Grant from the Department of Local Affairs in 2002 through which Healthy Mountain Communities helped the governments of the Lower Roaring Fork Valley created the Roaring Fork Community Housing Fund.