WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
A Colorado ski town and the surrounding county are using several strategies to help create housing for workers of varying income levels. Both private developers and government entities are involved in the effort.
Nyles Strey moved from Littleton, Colo., to Summit County about a decade ago seeking a change.
Strey said no one is a stranger in his small mountain town of Breckenridge.
He and his wife rent a one-bedroom condo in town. For the past couple of years, they’ve been trying to buy a house.
Finally, they found one. Strey’s old boss was selling his two-bedroom, deed-restricted townhouse in the nearby town of Frisco. He had promised it to the couple, who financially qualified for the home at the time.
But then Strey got a raise at work. Suddenly, the couple made too much money to buy the townhouse. “We ended up making, like, $1,000 too much,” Strey said. “It was just like the most gut wrenching thing ever.”
They later put a deposit down on a new $475,000, two-bedroom house under construction in Fairplay, about a 40-minute drive south of Breckenridge.
Strey and his wife would still prefer to live in Breckenridge, the community he’s grown so fond of.
Many residents in Breckenridge and other parts of Summit County struggle to find housing, a crisis that’s affecting people at nearly every income level. According to a recent survey, the county will need over 2,500 additional rental and for-sale units to meet the housing demand.
Housing the local workforce
Megan Matza and her partner Grant Bigler own a deed-restricted house in the Wellington neighborhood in Breckenridge.
“To me, it kind of looks like Pleasantville. You know, white picket fences, everyone has pretty green yards, you know, cute houses with white trim,” said Matza.
Wellington is the brainchild of a local developer named David O’Neil. In the late ‘90s he wanted to build workforce housing and approached local leaders about buying the land. They gave him the green light under the condition that 80% of the units would be affordable and reserved for area residents.
Over the past two decades, Wellington and the adjacent Lincoln Park have been transformed into one neighborhood with 226 deed restricted and 56 market rate single family homes and duplexes. The neighborhood is walkable, with lots of communal green spaces and views of Breckenridge Ski Resort and Tenmile Range.
Lincoln Park is on the other side of the neighborhood. That’s where Christy and Matt Vawter live in a market rate three-bedroom house with a rental unit above the garage.
Matt, who grew up in Summit County, is a chef and restaurant owner. He’s had a hard time staffing his kitchens because of the housing crisis.
To solve this issue, he leases three homes and rents out rooms to his staff. This is a common practice among business owners in the county, he said.
“The idea was really, once people get here, they have a place to call home, a place to hang their hat and get their feet on the ground,” Vawter said.
The ‘missing middle’
Stables Village is a sustainable, carbon neutral workforce housing development with 61 for-sale units. The single family homes, triplexes and duplexes range in price from the upper $300,000s to the low $800,000s. The developer, Suzanne Allen-Sabo, owns an architecture and interior design firm in the town of Frisco.
Stables Village fits into a housing category called the “missing middle,” which provides housing that falls between a single family home and a big apartment building.
These units give people priced out of the market a chance to become homeowners, Allen-Sabo said.
A ‘game changer’ partnership
Summit County has several strategies designed to increase the amount of affordable workforce housing. One is initiating new development, and that includes a groundbreaking housing partnership between the Dillon Ranger District and the U.S. Forest Service.
The Dillon Ranger District is one of five districts in the 2.3 million acre White River National Forest, the busiest national forest in the country. White River is home to some of the most popular recreation areas and ski resorts in the U.S.
While tourists flock to the high country seeking adventure, Adam Bianchi, district ranger for the Dillon Ranger District, said his employees can barely make ends meet.
“A lot of my employees have multiple jobs, second jobs, third jobs beyond just working here for the U.S. Forest Service,” he said.
In September, Summit County signed a 50-year lease with the White River National Forest. It’s the first step towards building affordable housing for service employees and the local workforce. The development will be a partnership between the national forest, the town of Dillon and Summit County.
The new pilot project will renovate a property, including infrastructure and utilities and build at least 162 long-term affordable rental units. The project also includes a community center, residential parking and a public transit stop. Construction is expected to begin in 2024.
The pilot program could lead to more partnerships between the Forest Service and other communities with housing challenges.
A lottery for housing
In June, Breckenridge oversaw the Stables Village lottery. It garnered a lot of interest and 191 residents entered for a chance to buy one of the 13 available units. Some people received extra tickets if they worked in a certain neighborhood or had lived and worked in Summit County for more than 10 years.
One of those lottery tickets belonged to Nyles Strey. He and his wife Callison already had a contract on the house in Fairplay, but decided to enter the lottery anyway.
Their number was chosen ninth, and they got the house they wanted: a three-bedroom end unit in a triplex.
This story is part of the series “Colorado Dream: Housing Wanted,” a production of KUNC News, an NPR station.
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