What happens when a mountain community approaches workforce housing as if responding to a disaster?
Those of us in attendance at the Spring Colorado City and County Managers Association (CCCMA) conference in Glenwood on April 14th got a glimpse of two communities that recently treated housing as a crisis. The panel included Winter Park Manager Keith Riesberg, and Salida Administrator Drew Nelson. Both reported a rapid acceleration of housing policy since the Summer of 2021 motivated by community input to their organizations. What they heard, move now on housing. Unlike typical policymaking, the policy horizon has tightened recently from years in the future to “how do we get through the next 1-2 years” to how do we do roll something out immediately.
Reisberg credits an actual disaster with informing Winter Park’s approach. “It was community response to the East Troublesome Fire” when many Short-Term Rental (STR) owners in the upper Fraser valley contacted the town to offer their STR units as long-term rentals to the “several hundred” households displaced by that fire. Prompted by compassion, and success placing families, a different relationship soon emerged between the town and STR owners. Concurrent with the COVID pandemic, that fire “brought community leaders together to ask how they could get something done this year?”
One approach in Winter Park was that the assistant town manager, Alisha Janes, effectively became a full-time housing responder tasked with standing-up an STR program for workers quickly. Janes said that a committee hatched the “pay for STR” idea last August. It was implemented through emergency ordinance. Forms were drafted and a website was created in October. The first transaction occurred before November in preparation for the influx of workers for ski season. Reisberg said, “once you launch, you need to start addressing the policy questions.”
In moving quickly, not all obstacles can be anticipated. In spite of a willingness to help, it turns out that many STR owners are wary of seasonal workers. STR owners, Reisberg noted “were hesitant” to rent directly to workers passing through a seasonal revolving door. Their solution was to use general fund money to pay STR owners a margin on what they perceive as a loss and have established business owners who are clamoring for employees be the lease-holders for the tenants. This provided the STR owner a “higher level of security” and because of Colorado law, also makes it easier to remove a problem tenant. The short term communications program is known as named “Good Neighbor” while the program entitled “Short Term Fix” offers cash for the season to STR owners who instead lease to workers in increments depending on the length of lease and number of bedrooms, from $5,000 up to $20,000. It is a program that existed until the $325,000 allocated by the town ran out in December. As of April, the program has not been started up for 2022 yet.
The rapid deployment of policy can be messy. Salida also developed a relationship with their STR owner community recently. Asked how, Nelson smiles, shakes his head, “we did a good job of getting our STR owners engaged by pissing them off. We slapped the beehive.” The engagement tools were policies adopted by the Salida town council capped licensed STRs to one unit per block, no more than 3.5% of total residential units in town and limited STR license holders to Chaffee County residents only. Those regulations vary per zone district. After a rough start, Nelson notes, “we are seeing the dividends of that engagement.”
The towns are not alone in taking a learning-by-doing approach to what Nelson describes as Salida’s “sizable un-housed population.” Another signal to Nelson’s council about the nature of the crisis has been the number of new Not for Profit Organizations (NPOs) emerging to serve workers. Those include Chaffee Hospitality Inc. which operates pop-up shelters in churches and other locations. Another new NPO called BETCH Salida (Bringing Everyone Through the Crisis of Housing) is providing rental assistance and safe outdoor space according to their website. The fact that the community was mobilizing prompted the town to innovate on the fly, like Salida buying 10 RVs to populate a new RV park on a site originally proposed for tiny homes. The RV’s for this site will be purchased in 2022 utilizing ARPA funds.
The trends impacting these municipalities are national. Across the country, both individual and institutional investors are gobbling up housing stock. Many owners are converting units to short term rentals for income generation, often taking long term rental units off the market. An increase in remote workers renting units that were previously only sought by workers also has impacts on a seasonal workforce being able to find a roof as well as for local businesses that want to employ them. Nelson credits the success to the fact that “all of our programs are run through the business community.” One slap to the beehive is the policy that only locals can own STRs. Take in that limit to property rights in for a moment. Asked if push-back to that idea put a wet blanket on leaders who are typically risk-averse, both Reisberg and Nelson reported that elected officials instead were emboldened by others taking action in the community and by clear support from local business owners.
Despite the name, Winter Park is becoming a year-round destination with workers coming and going for various jobs each season. Unlike some other resort towns, Winter Park has many more private rental units than hotel beds. Salida also has limited overnight lodging for the number of visitors. The seasonal flow of Salida’s workers tends to coincide with runoff, and the beginning of many raft companies summer season on the Arkansas river but the “lack of trust” in temporary workers impacts all workers looking for shelter. Nelson was surprised to learn that the need for a place to stay for a few nights for work also extends to hospital workers who don’t want a 6-month lease to work for a multi-day contract. Salida has named their STR program Open Doors.
The housing issue isn’t new to either municipality. Salida’s administrator says the town had been moving deliberately forward on housing policy since a 2016 needs assessment. Inclusionary zoning was added in 2018. Salida enacted a multi-jurisdictional housing authority in2021, a solution that Grand County officials from Winter Park to Granby are currently discussing. Salida was also “looking at” acquiring property for housing. Last summer the town was in discussions with local Federal land managers who were considering closing dispersed camping near Salida. Asked when Salida realized it was in crisis, Nelson said, “when citizens started coming before city council at every meeting to ask if they could just camp in town.” Those requests reframed the urgency. Soon thereafter Salida allowed camping workers to stay outside city hall where bathrooms and nearby amenities existed.
The conversation at CCCMA was unusual for anyone whose participated in housing policy discussions for the past couple decades expecting risk-averse leaders cogitating on whether certain time-tested approaches might be accepted in their community someday. What is different now? For one, the urgency was defined by the business community. For two, leaders are shaping policies on the run. How do they get away with that?
Reisberg is quick to also say that their approach is informed with cautions. Paying STR owners in Winter Park, Reisberg says it had to make economic sense to the owners. Town is aware that those dollars are not a long-term investment in solving the issue. He points out that council weighs every housing dollar spent or invested against the number of workers housed or units created. Town is wary of getting itself into the landlord or property management business. The backdrop has generated unusual political license to act swiftly rather than trying to answer all the possible questions up front.
The urgency is bending political norms. Noting how the crisis has impacted Salida and Chaffee County’s rather conservative politics, Nelson said that the city had little opposition recently when it utilized eminent domain “for the first time since being founded in 1880” to acquire a failed apartment project to build housing on the site. It has also recently increased its inclusionary zoning ratio for new development from one unit per 8 to one per 6. Does inclusionary zoning drive developers away? Nelson insists instead that it signals for them to come to the city to negotiate up front and get creative. For developers who build housing for under 60% AMI, he points to a developer who came in requesting to do a Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) project at one location in town if they could transfer those credits to build market rate units in another location.
Towards the end of the session, moderator Kim Newcomer of Slate Communications asked how often the two managers had been tasked with evaluating or re-calibrating their approaches to the crisis. Reisberg quipped “every two weeks when we have a council meeting.” He insists that in Winter Park, “we are viewing this as a temporary solution.” Nelson said they have “changed fees” or enacted new housing policy in Salida “each month for the past six months.” Though both noted that they are trying to address the housing crisis with existing staff without making many long-term commitments they also acknowledged that operating in crisis mode for so long will likely have to shift to more sustainable approaches.
Asked “how does this end?” Nelson said, “when we get through the emergency phase, I hope we can prioritize rooftops over tents for people. Housing insecurity is going to send workers somewhere else.” A crisis puts everyone out of their comfort zones, the choice of roofs or tents is not something one expects to hear from leaders in mountain communities.
Both leaders express hope that many approved but unbuilt units in each of their communities will come on-line soon, and that other long-term public housing investment strategies that involve years instead of weeks to bear fruit will do so within the next 12 to 24 months so that the churn of temporary solutions can slow.
