Let’s take this statement at face value, for the sake of argument: Governments can use their taxpayer revenues to somehow subsidize affordable housing in a rural community, and such subsidies can benefit both the low-paid worker and the employer who pays the low wages.
Making it feasible for employers to continue paying low wages, in other words.
Analyzing that assumption from a certain perspective, we might wonder if government subsidies of affordable housing is actually a beneficial thing. The government-subsidized housing will most likely, of necessity, be cheaply built (compared to other conventional housing.) In a sense, government support of affordable housing could be viewed as a way to keep the working class in poverty.
But we don’t usually view it that way, in government meetings and discussions. Usually, the subject of affordable housing is approached as something that will provide significant benefits to families living in poverty — perhaps paying
As was mentioned yesterday in Part Four, the 2008 Archuleta County Housing Needs Assessment (now outdated, but the best we have at the moment) offered the following calculation:
In total, the income groups up to 120 percent of AMI comprise 58 percent of all households. To match new housing construction with these income levels to meet future housing needs, 58 percent of all new construction would need to be affordable to these households…
— 2008 Archuleta County Housing Needs Assessment
We (you and I and our governments who should be taking care of us) have not been tracking that figure very carefully since 2008, so we have no idea at this point if 58 percent of all new construction since 2008 has been affordable for working class families. Most of us might guess that this was not the case.
But at any rate, relatively few new homes have been built since 2008, compared with the furious construction rate during the two decades prior to 2008. I would guess that most of those recent new homes were built to accommodate second-home owners or retirees. Just guessing.
Low-wage workers are not ideal candidates for single family home ownership, due to the difficulty qualifying them for mortgages. During the housing bubble, bank loans were being made rather freely to people with no credit check required, but that didn’t work out so well in Archuleta County, which a few years ago had one of the highest foreclosure rates in Colorado.
One alternative is for local governments to help subsidize rental units instead of single family homes.
If indeed government involvement in the housing market is a good and helpful thing, and if indeed the most effective way to provide affordable housing is through the construction of multi-family units that are compact, energy efficient and available for rent rather than for sale, then our leaders have a great deal of work ahead of them. They’ve not been paying attention to this problem since 2007. And now we are seeing this type of advertised desperation on the part of the Pagosa business community:
So what options do our local governments have, if they want to help solve the affordable housing problem? (Assuming we actually have one. The apparent lack of employees could be primarily due to a different problem, like maybe low wages?)
First off, it seems to me, someone in the community has to step forward and volunteer to lead the charge. This could be a single person; it could be a small group. But without a passionate leadership driving this issue, it could easily go nowhere. It could easily be the same dusty issue, sitting on a shelf, that it’s been for the past nine years.
I didn’t hear, at the April 28 joint Town-County meeting, anyone from the Town Council or the Board of County Commissioners express the type of passion to which I am referring — even though the two boards agreed to place affordable housing on some kind of “priorities” list.
I did not sense, in the room, a champion for this cause.
So I presume the necessary champion, if one exists, will be found outside our local government board rooms. Just a presumption.
Meanwhile, the Archuleta County government has a couple of prime assets that could be utilized in support of an affordable housing effort. I’m referring to two nice pieces of vacant property — a 96-acre parcel south of the Fairgrounds on Highway 84, and a five-acre parcel across the street from Town Hall on Hot Springs Boulevard. Since overpriced raw land is one of the key barriers to the creation of affordable housing, the provision of one or more dedicated parcels to an affordable housing project could be an important step in the right direction.
Does Archuleta County have a champion for this cause? Someone who can take a vague “joint priority” statement formulated at a recent government meeting, and run with it? If so, the first step would be to find out if, indeed, affordable housing is a major problem in Pagosa Springs.
We really don’t know, at this point.
If it is a key problem, the next step would be to determine if the private sector can solve the problem on its own, without government subsidies.