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.

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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.