Breckenridge’s long history of creating a vibrant affordable housing program could prove to be a valuable model as the new West Mountain Regional Housing Coalition looks to up its game in the Roaring Fork Valley and Garfield County.
A big difference, though, is the nearly two dozen deed-restricted housing projects and a successful buy-down program in the Summit County resort town that have been the result of a more concentrated, single-community effort.
West Mountain Coalition Program Director April Long attended a Garfield County Housing Summit at the Ute Theater and Events Center in Rifle on Feb. 22 – featuring longtime Breckenridge Housing and Childcare Manager Laurie Best, who talked about their efforts over the past 25 years – hoping to learn a few things and get some advice.
“It’s absolutely more challenging to do it the way we’re doing it,” Long said after listening to Best’s presentation.
Long was referencing the multi-jurisdictional, regional approach, encompassing three counties and 11 municipalities, that the local coalition is taking, as opposed to each jurisdiction trying to address the lack of affordable housing on their own.
Breckenridge and Summit County’s efforts have involved mostly just those two jurisdictions and the local housing authority working together to put funding in place, secure land, build housing projects — some through public-private partnerships — and to implement a buy-down program for existing housing units.
The same has been true in the Roaring Fork Valley, where Aspen was an early leader in developing an affordable housing program that has been modeled to varying degrees in Carbondale, Basalt and other individual communities.
“All the easier options have been worked on for decades,” Long said. “But what I think we’re seeing here, with our unique demographics, is that when you do it jurisdiction by jurisdiction, or employer by employer, there are some holes in what our community really needs.”
Last week’s Housing Summit was hosted by the Garfield County Public Libraries as part of its ongoing speaker series on local and regional issues.
There’s no “gold star solution” to a major problem like providing more affordable housing to serve the region’s workforce, acknowledged Kevin Hettler, chief financial officer for the library district, when introducing Best.
“But we do want to look at these different options as we consider how we solve some of the problems we’re facing, and do it collectively,” he said.
Best began working for the town of Breckenridge in 2000 when the lack of affordable housing was becoming more apparent.
“By then, the local elected officials had really acknowledged that we were becoming more of a job center, and that it was going to impact the character of the community,” she said. “They also knew that there was going to be competition for housing, that housing prices were going to go up and that there wasn’t going to be enough housing.”
What began with about 90 deed-restricted units in 2000 has grown to about 1,400 units today, with another 650 in the pipeline. A buy-down program initiated in 2021 has also resulted in 43 existing housing units being purchased and secured with long-term deed restrictions to maintain their affordability for median-income families.
Funding milestones came in 2006 with voter approval of a sales tax and impact fee to fund affordable housing efforts, and renewal of that tax in 2016 for another 30 years, resulting in approximately $5.5 million per year.
In 2022, a new licensing program and fee was also imposed on short-term vacation rentals, which now generates about $7 million a year toward affordable housing.
Even with all that, “It’s still the number one priority for our city council, because the problem is not solved,” Best said.
A bonus for Breckenridge has been community buy-in. A large percentage of the town’s residents now live in deed-restricted housing, so they support the continued efforts.
“They get the concept, so there’s not this ‘us versus them,’” she said.
The town’s updated housing blueprint calls for 35% of its housing to be resident-occupied and for 50% of the local jobs to be filled by people living in Breckenridge. It also calls for investing $50 million over the next five years, leveraged by another $350 million in private sector funds.
From a regional standpoint, that financial potential could be even greater. But it would require much broader support, Long said.
“Our challenge is that we have a workforce that spreads across a dozen different jurisdictions,” she said. “Those jurisdictions want to use their funding in their own geographic jurisdiction, understandably, but we function more as a region and don’t necessarily follow jurisdictional boundaries.”
The housing coalition is hoping to launch its own regional buy-down program by this summer, bolstered by a recent $2 million grant from Pitkin County.
Coalition compares Summit County successes with local affordable housing efforts
