ISSUE #212: The "L" Word, II (1/16/22)

"Excluding certain problems from the political debate by making it a crime to discuss them won't lead to the disappearance of these concerns, let alone contribute to a solution."

-- Geert Wilders

ASPEN TIMES COLUMN

The debate rages on. While I stick to the facts, not feelings, Aspen's entrenched Subsidized Housing Industrial Complex continues to lash out in defense of its failed policies.

The blowback has kept this topic in the newspapers for several weeks. And the most emotional arguments only serve to illustrate my point that APCHA has become a mismanaged and unsustainable entitlement program that, without wide-scale reforms, cannot survive.

Read my column in today's Aspen Times HERE.

* * * * * * * 

What is a “local”? I’ve been writing The Red Ant for many years and originally raised this vexing question in 2009. The answer wasn’t entirely clear then, and it’s even less so today. 

Long the source of small-town pride, being an Aspen “local” has always been brag-worthy and cool, replete with accompanying privileges: local’s discounts, local’s night, local’s passes. But just how is “local” status attained? Okay, so you have to live here. But where; what about Pitkin County or Snowmass? And for how long? Is there a threshold after which you’re officially in the club? What happens if you lived here but now you’re only part-time? How does one stay in “local” compliance? Do you have to own your home? What about renters, some of whom have rented for many years? Does a new lease with that address on a driver’s license count? Surely it can be a combination of things, but which ones? Do those in free market housing qualify? And are there special rules for them? Are residents of subsidized housing a special class because they work or used to work here? What about other workers? Mayor Torre frequently refers to “actual locals.” How this this group different? 

Most importantly, who decides?

The reason for my renewed interest in “what is a local” is, of course, local politics, no pun intended. The recent emergency ordinance freezing new short term rental as well as development permits purports to be because these economic activities are detrimental to the community, specifically because they “displace locals.” That’s a weighty accusation for sure, but without knowing who is a “local,” it’s next to impossible to corroborate the veracity of this claim. 

There was certainly a time in our none-too-distant past when Aspen was experiencing tremendous growth. “Scrape and replace” projects were rampant while the town, resort and community were evolving.  During this period of development and growth, there was indeed worker “displacement,” and the community boldly responded to these impacts with the real estate transfer tax (RETT), employee mitigation and a growth management quota system (GMQS) to create and develop subsidized housing. As a result of that foresight, today we have a subsidized housing portfolio with over 3,000 units, housing those who are undeniably “locals,” except of course for the scofflaws, but I digress.

Today, confirmed by the 2020 US Census, we are now in the post-growth stage. Our population has only grown 1.2% and new housing units grew just 2.3% in the past decade. We are not growing and are development-wise at what is called “build-out.” This does not mean there will be no more construction. The development pipeline is full, and beyond that, there will always be re-development, which is technically “economic activity,” not growth. It’s a great accomplishment to achieve a high level of economic activity without growth. And yes, economic activity has real impacts, but these are quite different from the impacts of growth. We absolutely need to look at STRs and re-development and how these impact the community. New impacts call for new tools. Where we once built our way out of the impacts of growth with more growth, we cannot continue to do that. We don’t want more growth, and besides, we’re out of space.

Aspen is generations ahead of other mountain resort communities who are scrambling to respond to the impacts of the Great Migration and the Great Resignation by developing and growing to accommodate their displaced workforces. We’re playing a different game. We too have a housing crisis, but it’s not a shortage. If we manage our existing inventory efficiently, we don’t need more. 

Back to the question of what is a “local” and why it matters. Simply put, it doesn’t. The recent blowback for challenging the assumptions of the emergency ordinance has been swift and heated. She who reveals the sordid underbelly of the subsidized housing “sacred cow” is immediately vilified. I’ve heard from “longtime locals,” “retired locals” and “local” politicians who fervidly ignore the facts. (Recall, these are the housing authority’s and census bureau’s facts, not mine.) Unless we want real growth via changes to our urban growth boundary and land use code, we need to completely overhaul our housing program to make it efficient. Ironically, to a one, the admonitions each acknowledge that our housing program is a disaster, but mere suggestions of ways to save it are apparently insulting, exclusionary and “reek of elitism.” 

I love the debate. These emotional outbursts and personal condemnations only serve to further illustrate my point. I remind, according to the AACP, our guiding document, subsidized housing in Aspen is a privilege, not a right. Yet some “locals” in subsidized housing and their outspoken counterparts insist that the current rules that permit keeping one’s empty bedrooms empty, passing one’s unit to a child, building new ownership units for anyone who wants to live affordably in Aspen and enabling everyone to retire in their units are sacrosanct; aspiring “local” workers and the critical worker housing needs of the community be damned.

 To which I say, “Pssssst, your entitlement is showing.” (Might want to tuck that back in.)

No one is suggesting anyone in compliance lose their housing. We do, however, need to make changes on a “moving forward” basis because the current housing program is unsustainable. Contact TheRedAntEM@comcast.net

ISSUE #210: The Housing Fix is In (1/2/22)

"When you don't take a stand against 

corruption, you tacitly support it."

-- Charles Caleb Colton

The truth hurts. And when APCHA's own data shows that the perceived "housing shortage" in Aspen isn't a shortage at all, but rather a terribly mismanaged taxpayer subsidized housing program, it's time to get real.

What at one point was the gold standard in the subsidized housing world, Aspen's corrupt and broken 3,000 unit program is now the poster-child of what not to do. Today, APCHA prioritizes housing middle-class families and retirees - none of whom work or even consider working in the service industry - over the actual workforce needed to run the resort.

The "workforce housing shortage" is a canard. There is plenty of housing but it is just not efficiently managed. And it will be full of retirees in a matter of years.

Short of IMMEDIATE AND DRASTIC changes, the status quo will sink us. We're already well on the way. And no matter what we build or where, we cannot build our way out of this mess.

Read my column in today's Aspen Times HERE.

And if you are a CITY OF ASPEN REGISTERED VOTER, please contact me to sign the petition to repeal the recent emergency ordinance. It is all a distraction from the local government's failure to properly manage its multi-billion dollar subsidized housing portfolio. They intend to blame and punish the free market for their own failures. Let's stop them in their tracks.

PS On a much lighter note, check out THIS letter to the editor that ran in today's Aspen Daily News, courtesy of local writer Jay Cowan. I was simply tickled. "Queen Elizabeth" does have a nice ring to it.

******

The subsidized housing industrial complex has been unmasked. Revealed through facts, not feelings, Aspen’s worker housing shortage is not due to a lack of inventory. With over 3,000 subsidized housing units of various bedroom sizes in the APCHA inventory, today’s shortage is due to a mismanaged housing program that enables empty bedrooms and prioritizes housing middle class families and retirees over the actual workforce. 

To deflect, the city of Aspen points its fingers at free market real estate, claiming the “great harm” it does to the community, when in fact, it is the free market that provides jobs, generates tax revenue and supports our local businesses. What is doing great harm is the lack of leadership and political will to address our housing problem with the same fervor that we attack the free market. Local bureaucrats refuse to quantify how much new housing will ever be enough. Are they ignorant, just thinking about this for the first time, or defiant, knowing but ignoring the facts because the answer must always be “more”?  The recent emergency ordinance sends one message to free market, “You have too much so we’re coming for you.”

Unsurprisingly, councilman Skippy Mesirow intends to add “thousands” of subsidized housing units by 2040, despite claiming to be anti-growth. In a predictably tone-deaf social media post, he espoused his Orwellian plans to quash development, buy-down private property for his friends who can’t afford to live here, and utilize new technologies to track the occupancy of private residences (and tax them when they’re empty). Empty bedrooms for me, but not for thee. The guy makes Mick Ireland look like a Reagan Republican.

It’s not the residents of Aspen’s subsidized housing who are the problem, they just live in a toxic culture within a broken system. Many have been programmed by guys like Mick to embrace this privilege as an entitlement. Marinate in that cesspool long enough and you too will begin to covet what others have, blame the free market and support steps to punish it. The three stages of subsidized housing vitriol are class-envy, resentment and retribution. We just reached the retribution stage. 

Despite the community’s original intent, instead of essential workers, we are currently subsidizing Aspen’s middle class in our housing inventory; people who don’t and won’t work in the service industry economy. They and their retired counterparts are sophisticated; they’ve reached the critical mass to demand preferential access to the municipal golf course.  

Sadly, the 10.5-acre Lumberyard stands to be developed into more of the same: housing for families and future retirees. The city asks what people want them to build there, not what the community needs. Of course our current subsidized housing owners and aspirants want newer, larger units with underground parking, for themselves. Where does that get us with housing for the service industry workforce? 

Within the city limits, today there are 1187 subsidized housing bedrooms owned by 50-69 year-olds. That’s 45% of our 2627 in-town bedroom inventory. APCHA’s retirement age is 62, so if just half of these house couples, nearly 1800 workers will be displaced when these bedrooms go off-line. If the Lumberyard is built with 300 units, half studio/1-bedrooms and half 2-bedrooms, that’s just 450 new bedrooms, less than 40% of what we will soon lose to retirement.  The trend line is horrifying. It is impossible to build our way out of this problem. 

We are in a housing crisis but it’s not a shortage. It’s time to worry less about hurting people’s feelings through effective management and oversight, and instead take these drastic steps to save our housing program: 

• ·      Stop selling deed-restricted housing. Each APCHA sale from this point forward, including Burlingame 3, must revert to rental. Right-sizing, compliance, financial qualification, work requirements and maintenance are easily addressed with yearly leases and annual requalification, and appreciation goes away. It will take a generation for full turnover, but it’s a monumental step in the right direction.

• ·      Build a campus of small, efficient, short-term rental units at the Lumberyard for the seasonal workforce, with six month leases, November – May. This is not where you bring your dog or raise a family, it’s where you live when you come to Aspen to work and ski. It’s on the bus route so you don’t need a car.

• ·      Alternatively, develop the Lumberyard as a retirement community. Seriously. We need turnover in our housing inventory when people retire. If the community chooses to house retirees, let’s do that, but efficiently.

• ·      Immediately require right-sizing and create retiree buy-out incentives to escalate the process. Start at the top with APCHA deputy director Cindy Christensen who lives alone in a 3-bedroom unit. Empty bedrooms can no longer be tolerated.

• ·      Subsidized housing is a community asset. End entitlement programs such as leaving your deed-restricted housing to a child. This is not private property.

The perversity of permitting glaring inefficiencies within our housing program while punitively sanctioning the private sector is appalling. Without immediate changes, our failed housing program will never house the essential service industry workforce we rely on. And no matter how much is built, we will never have enough.

It’s time for tough choices. Without them, the city has no grounds to bemoan a worker housing crisis because they’re at fault. Sign the petition to repeal the emergency ordinance. The moratorium is simply a distraction. 

ISSUE #209: This is War (12/19/21)

"Be selective in your battles. Don't make every problem a war." -- Anonymous

It's been a hectic couple of weeks around here. Two weeks ago, city council passed an emergency ordinance to stop issuing short term rental (STR) licenses as well as development permits in the city until June 2022. The county soon followed with plans to only allow STRs when the property is a primary residence.

This is all purported to be because of "growth" and local worker "displacement." Except it's not. We do not have a growth issue. (They're confusing growth with economic activity.) Nor do we have a displacement issue. But we do indeed have a crisis that could very well be considered an emergency.

We have a failed housing program that allows for empty bedrooms and enables people to retire in their units. The numbers are staggering, and with time, will only continue to grow - further worsening the crisis. It's one thing when people WANT to live in Aspen affordably, and another entirely when the community desperately needs worker housing. These are two very different things.

Our local electeds have deliberately started a war between the subsidized housing industrial complex and the free market, which incidentally includes many full-time local residents. It's despicable.

Read my column (the first in a series) in today's Aspen Times HERE.

We cannot continue to operate a failed housing program based on feelings when the facts bear a very harsh reality: we have plenty of subsidized housing but we are simply not utilizing it efficiently. These recent punitive actions are just mechanisms for two new revenue streams to fund more housing. The city thinks it can build its way out of this mess. It can't. Without wholesale change to the subsidized housing program, nothing will change. That is, nothing good. It will only get worse.

The facts will illustrate the mess we're in. Stay tuned.

*******

The opening salvo in Aspen’s class warfare has just been fired. And it’s weaponized. The fragile tinderbox of private property owners and those benefitting (or aspiring to) from publicly subsidized housing was deliberately ignited last week when city council enacted a emergency ordinance that immediately put new residential development and new short term rental (STR) licenses on ice until June 2022. 

Described as an effort to “pause” and ascertain what city officials characterize as an explosion of the free-market real estate market and its effects on the community and the environment, and “get a grip” on how to regulate the STR industry that generated $50 million in taxable revenue from January-September 2020, the ordinance reasons that with unprecedented increases in home prices and lack of supply over time, the residential real estate market no longer delivers meaningful or affordable housing for local residents. How conveniently they ignore the 1% RETT that continually fills the subsidized housing coffers to unprecedented levels; all the more to throw at a program fraught with under-utilization, non-compliance and fraud. This manufactured crisis has nothing to do with STRs or free market residential development. The entire issue is about two new funding sources for subsidized housing. The city of Aspen is projecting its failure to efficiently and effectively manage its 3000-unit housing portfolio onto the private real estate market.  

The entire premise of the ordinance is flawed. It states, “The city depends on a lived-in community of year-round locals to support community culture, provide labor and capital to support the local economy and ensure the long-term viability of Aspen and its tourism economy.” This upside-down logic is loaded with bitterness and class envy that attempts to shift the blame for any housing crisis away from the local government when it is absolutely at fault. For years, Aspen has been moving away from forward-thinking growth management policies, and instead inciting class warfare while amassing failed virtue-signaling initiatives (hydro plant, geothermal drilling, mobility lab).  With lack of diverse thought and a groupthink mentality, instead of looking at real trends (STRs, aging demographics, an urban exodus), Aspen’s answer is to regulate and tax to build more housing. 

With over 4000 subsidized housing bedrooms inside the city limits and a year-round population of 7294, we currently have the capacity to house 56% of the local population in their own bedrooms. However, there are nearly 400 empty bedrooms, and almost 1000 owners are retired or will be soon. This is the emergency. Furthermore, Aspen is nearly built out, and our population and jobs numbers aren’t increasing. Are we really going to build for the unlimited demand of people who simply want to live affordably in Aspen? Until there is the political will to completely overhaul APCHA, the city will continue to extort untold sums from the private sector and still never have the competency to fix this “problem” of their own making.

The propaganda that re-development is “growth” and therefore housing mitigation fees must dramatically increase to account for “displaced” workers is a canard: it’s actually just new square feet replacing old square feet. Paying mitigation for redevelopment is simply punitive. Such activity does not generate workers, it provides jobs. The great irony is that the development of subsidized housing with these ill-gotten gains is actual growth, as it increases the capacity of the community. The disdain for STRs also stems from “displacing locals,” but this is another distraction; none of these properties were ever going to be rented to local workers. 

Our electeds also confuse “economic activity” with “growth.” There is no data to even support a “growth” issue here. Pitkin County’s population has only grown by 207 people (1.2%) in 10 years according to the 2020 census. The number of housing units has only grown by 292 (2.3%) in the same time period. And the largest decrease in jobs over the last 5 years has been in construction employment. (Public administration is responsible for the largest job growth, but I digress.) There has certainly been tremendous “economic activity,” and that’s a nationwide trend, but to call this activity “growth” is disingenuous, alarmist and contrary to the facts.

“More subsidized housing” has great political expediency in Aspen. Last week’s assault was socially engineered to limit and regulate private property, and control how it can be used and by whom. The ordinance creates the perverse incentive to leave one’s private property vacant through the force of a punitive regulation that disallows STRs, yet sets the government up to further punish these same property owners with an occupancy tax when the property is inevitably empty. The local government sees no issue with collecting ongoing revenue streams from private property, while prohibiting property owners from deriving a cent that in many cases pays the mortgage and other bills. 

This attempt to control the free market through regulation is strictly intended to generate more subsidized housing ad infinitum, when the only thing currently displacing working locals is our failed housing program that permits empty bedrooms and enables non-workers to retire in units originally intended for the actual workforce.

To be continued.

Remember when they divided Dr. Zhivago’s house into tenements? Local Bolsheviks Skippy, Rachel, Ward, John and Torre are likely eyeing your home for their cabals of dissidents once you’ve been run out of town. 

ISSUE #208: Taj Mahal City Hall: really tall and already too small 11/30/21

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." 

-- Winston Churchill

After years of controversy, the big, ugly, ill-conceived headquarters for our dystopian local government is finally complete. We will likely never know what the true costs are, but for now they're sticking with $34.6 million with a debt payback of $50 million. It's absurd, especially when the monolithic building is already too small for all the departments that were ostensibly to fit under "one roof."

Read my column in today's Aspen Times HERE.

*****

With construction costs of nearly $34.6 million and debt payback totaling just under $50 million, the Taj Mahal city hall, Aspen’s new edifice to bureaucratic excess, formally opens with a celebration on December 8. The 37,500 square foot monolith entertains ongoing controversy over its size, design, cost, interior programming, lack of housing mitigation and even its necessity.

Referred to as the Taj Mahal due to its ridiculous largesse, our monument took on various looks and functions depending on who was on city council when key decisions were made. Originally imagined as “city offices,” the Taj grew dramatically to become today’s sole seat of city government. 

In 2015, city staff had fine-tuned its desires for a “one roof” solution for local government and asked the voters to decide an advisory question, “Which use for the Aspen Armory Site (city hall) do you prefer for a long-range, 50-year plan? Community Use or City Offices (choose one.)” When “Community Use” narrowly prevailed, despite the non-binding nature of the measure, the city took the outcome as a big win and a greenlight for its grandiose plans along Rio Grande Place.

However, in early 2017, the city was sued for abuse of power and had to contend with a referendum petition for the right to vote to overturn council’s land use approvals for the Taj. The suit stemmed from council’s conversion of open space without voter approval, which was required by the city charter. Then remarkably, in a 3-day period, 760 signatures were collected in opposition to council’s land use decision, forcing action. The city deemed the petition effort a failure due to “insufficient signatures” and a “missed deadline,” but when challenged in court, it was the city that had erred. The petitioners had prevailed. And when the city tried to have the abuse of power suit dismissed, it was deemed to have legal standing, leaving the city with three choices: put the issue to a vote, appeal the judge’s ruling or start over elsewhere.

Enter developer Mark Hunt and the building he owns at 517 E. Hopkins in 2018. Hunt proposed a turnkey $23 million sale of 22,000 sf of his building to the city that would have included a scrape-and-replace construction cost of $13.5 million on top of $9.5 million in assessed land value. In addition to the existing 22,000 sf in the Armory and potentially 11,500 sf beneath Connor Park, Hunt’s “annex” proposal would have contributed to over 54,000 total sf of office space. But the acquisition had to be approved by voters. Heavy anti-developer sentiment from city hall and clever “either-or” ballot language tilted the scales toward the Galena Plaza location, which promised a similar price tag for the one-roof solution.

Despite years of citizen lobbying and feedback, little public input was taken into account while the unsightly wall of a building grew, effectively closing off pedestrian access from town along the vital Galena Street corridor, aside from a steep, narrow staircase. Aspen’s town-to-river connection is now irreparably broken. There is no longer a visual sightline from Paradise Bakery straight down to Rio Grande Park. We had the opportunity to physically integrate “the riverfront district” with our commercial core in what had once been an 8-minute walk, but now the largest grade change in the descent is the exact location of our Taj.

Historically, Rio Grande Park and “riverfront district” had been a hub of activity, first as the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad yard, then as a lead and zinc concentrator, and later the city dump. By the mid-1970’s it was a parking lot that featured a farmer’s market. In the 1980’s when Clark’s Market and the Post Office were built, commerce had truly arrived in the area near where increasing numbers of residents were now living. By 1989, the community art park was the precursor to Aspen Theater in the Park, and Galena Plaza was developed into the parking garage. ACRA’s offices and the Pitkin County Library followed. By 2012, Obermeyer Place, the John Denver Sanctuary, the stormwater wetlands project, recycling center and skate park filled in, followed by a new police station and Pitkin County offices in 2018. Today, the Taj Mahal city hall has been built on the last remaining parcel. This hodge-podge of disjointed buildings provides little vitality and has succeeded in cutting the park and riverfront off from town. 

But, a grand staircase awaits. Touted by city manager Sara Ott as “the signature piece of the building,” this centerpiece now serves to connect the three floors of our 47-foot tall new city hall that is already 6,000 sf too small for our needs. Human resources and the parking department don’t fit; they’re now in the Rio Grande Building. ACRA is in the Old Powerhouse but will eventually move into the remodeled Armory. When remodeled, the Old Powerhouse will house the IT, capital assets, special events and transportation departments, as well as provide storage. Meanwhile, analysis paralysis plagues “the future of the Armory” discussions, “activation of Galena Plaza” plans, and whether or not a restaurant will go into the “white box” in the Rio Grande Building where Taster’s once was. 

Remind me, what exactly have we accomplished?

The critical commitments affecting today’s Taj were made in the spring of 2019. You can thank former mayor Steve Skadron, former councilmembers Adam Frisch and Ann Mullins, and councilmember Ward Hauenstein for their “hurry-up” decision-making during a lame duck session, and sitting councilmembers Rachel Richards and Skippy Mesirow, and Mayor Torre, for their unwillingness, despite the latter’s campaign promises, to re-evaluate them.

ISSUE #207: Pacaso - An artful new real estate twist in Aspen (11/21/21)

"Those who can adapt to the sudden paradigm shift and new environment do. Obey the rules. Search for the loopholes. Sneer at the guidelines despite being bound by them. In the end, everyone learns that rules are necessary to make the system run smoothly." 

-- Carlo Zen

Ahhh - this one is a doozy. Have you heard of the new real estate company, Pacaso? They're buying up resort real estate via a novel model that affords its customers co-ownership interests in what amounts to high end real estate. The catch is, the co-owners don't technically own the deed to the property, they own an interest in the property-specific LLC that does. Very clever.

But the ramifications for the affected communities are obvious: legal but unlicensed mini multi-user resorts in local single-family homes, impacts on small town infrastructure when more local homes are occupied 100% of the time, and perhaps the most impactful, no more RETT revenue from that property (benefitting subsidized housing and the Wheeler Opera House) after the initial purchase. And those are the obvious ones.

And it's here, in Aspen.

I did the deep dive. Read my column in today's Aspen Times HERE.

And please let me know what you think!

ISSUE #206: L'Host with the Most. (11/7/21)

"We set a special table for you."

-- L'Hostaria Ristorante greeting

The big news of the off-season in Aspen was last Friday night's closure of L'Hostaria Ristorante after a 25-year run.

Don't worry, I haven't lost my edge. It was simply time to pay a heartfelt tribute to this cherished local institution and long-time personal favorite, as well as to its ownership and staff.

Read my column from today's Aspen Times HERE.

ISSUE #205: Baby Steps Toward a Housing Overhaul (10/26/21)

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. " -- George Bernard Shaw

ASPEN TIMES COLUMN

Sunday's column presented several wise steps being taken by the APCHA board, including the establishment of "standards" that must be met by sellers before listing their units for sale AND a reduction in the age of qualified dependents from 24 to 19.

"Seller standards" are the first - and obvious - step toward mandating that owners care for their property. (It's not like these are free market units that anyone can simply trash and bear the consequences of the market upon sale. Sadly, in Aspen's housing environment, to-date, owners have been able to sell abject pig-sties to a pool of desperate buyers. That ends. But questions remain about who pays....)

By lowering the dependent age, APCHA is taking its first step toward a desperately needed "right-sizing" initiative, given that recent data has shown that the majority of larger units have less than one person per bedroom.

There's still a VERY LONG way to go, but baby steps in the right direction still constitute progress....

Read it HERE.

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