ISSUE #266: APCHA's Under-the-Radar Sale to Mayor Torre (12/31/23)
January 5 "He wasn't sorry when you didn't know.
Think about that and remember it."
-- Anonymous
Well, 2023 wrapped up with a doozy. Following a lead I received last summer, I unraveled this "story" through some good old fashioned detective work, research and open records requests to unveil a sneaky deal that netted Mayor Torre a condo in Aspen for life.
In case you were tiring of housing-related generalizations (no less factual, but without names), this one, if nothing else, puts a name and a face on the corruption and mismanagement of our subsidized housing program.
I apologize for the delay in getting this out to you. It's been a whirlwind.
Read it here... (I am intentionally NOT linking to the actual column in The Aspen Times today. The censors at the paper reacted impetuously to the city's pushback about the column and heavily edited my piece after it ran, making it flat, untrue and frankly lame.) Here is the piece - as submitted:
Hundreds of local deed restricted housing units that were established long ago exist within the APCHA portfolio. Due to archaic policies from the earliest days of subsidized housing, each is a complex puzzle, and many stand to revert to the free market in coming years.
APCHA recently implemented a policy that updates these deed restrictions into perpetuity when affected units change ownership. It’s a small but important effort to preserve our housing inventory.
But what happens when APCHA, operating as a department of the city, bends the rules, sets a fellow bureaucrat up for life and takes steps to keep it secret? Ask Mayor Torre.
Last summer, on August 17, Mayor Torre purchased a 419 sf studio apartment in the Tom Thumb Building at 400 E. Hyman Avenue for $106,363. Prior to August 17, Torre had rented this Category 2 unit for 19 years.
One of three residential units in the downtown mixed-use building that was built in 1982, unit A301 was privately owned but bound by a deed restriction to house an “employee” of “moderate income” there. This early deed restriction pre-dates APCHA, yet today’s housing authority oversees its resident tenant qualifications.
In the case of unit A301, August 17 was a busy day with three related transactions recorded with the Pitkin County Clerk: an affidavit cleared the title to an individual owner who transferred it to APCHA and APCHA transferred it to Torre.
APCHA had the sales listing and is in the chain of title: seller to APCHA then APCHA to Torre, but strangely, on the settlement documents the sale is just between the seller and Torre. Even the title company said regarding the sale, “It’s a weird one.”
A public records request revealed the great lengths APCHA went to in facilitating this unusual transaction: formally involved when convenient so as to exempt Torre from paying the RETT (ironically the tax that funds subsidized housing) and uninvolved so as to avoid its own rules. Only the appraiser inquired, “Was this sold through a lottery process?”
No, it wasn’t. When APCHA acquires a property either by purchase or in the chain of title, it is then sold to a qualified buyer via an often very competitive housing lottery. I recently asked the APCHA board and staff if there was ever a reason that APCHA would not conduct a lottery when selling a unit. I was reminded that Resident Occupied (RO) category sales are not conducted by lottery, but there are no other exceptions. Yet A301 was sold directly to Torre.
This sketchy transaction was also omitted from APCHA’s Sales Activity Report, an online summary of annual transactions updated monthly, which notably lists other APCHA sales that occurred between August 14 and August 25.
With residential property values in the downtown core currently far exceeding $2500/sf, the value of A301 even with the deed restriction was rapidly increasing because the original deed restriction was set to sunset on June 29, 2032, less than nine years from now. At that time, the unit would have reverted to the free market and would likely have been worth over a million dollars. Yet the seller received just $106,363, exactly what Torre paid for it.
The one bit of good news is that the deed restriction for A301 was extended in perpetuity so Mayor Torre won’t get rich. But this only begs a bigger question. What motivated the seller, his longtime landlord?
It’s actually quite sad. The seller is infirm and her daughter is liquidating assets. “I have been so emotional… I am watching everything go and it’s tough,” she wrote to the title company amid the heartbreaking process. The complex transaction tested APCHA as well. “I would definitely not have brought things to this point if I had known,” wrote an APCHA representative. But despite paperwork that “doesn’t look real official,” the shady deal eventually got done.
At no time, however, does it appear that anyone involved informed the seller’s daughter of the gold mine she was sitting on. Apparently the end justified the means. According to APCHA’s deputy director Cindy Christensen, “We are getting an updated deed restriction and it will now be an ownership unit.” The rules enforcer herself signed the deed transferring the title of A301 from APCHA to Torre. Rest assured, however. “In the future, it will be lotteried through APCHA,” the housing authority claims.
For those who dream of winning an APCHA lottery one day, those who believe Torre is the housing advocate he claims to be, or those who quietly and desperately play the subsidized housing game by the rules, you’ve just been had.
It’s an insiders game with special rules for special people and a corrupt system that enables them. This under-the-radar sale of a housing unit to the sitting mayor without a proper lottery and an exemption from the RETT was squirrelly at best.
APCHA can justify this however it wants. It just looks really, really bad.
I am happy to share all related documentation of this brazen abuse of power and discretion. Contact TheRedAntEM@comcast.net