The City of Durango — one of many Colorado communities dealing with growing homelessness and spiraling housing costs — recently released its draft ‘Durango Housing Plan’ aimed at addressing its challenging housing market, according to an article by reporter Mary Shinn published this week in the Durango Herald.
“The city of Durango is aiming to increase affordable housing options for everyone, create market-friendly regulations, prioritize density, set up a housing trust fund, create a land bank program and establish 1,000 long-term affordable units by 2035.”
City residents are invited to review the plan and offer comments and suggestions. You can download the draft Durango Housing Plan here.
Writes Ms. Shinn:
In the short term, the city could allow secondary-housing units, like granny flats, in more areas of town and evaluate zoning to increase density and housing, according to the plan. To encourage more residential construction, the city could also reduce parking requirements and eliminate density caps in some areas, it states.
The city will need to generate revenue for some long-term goals, such as establishing a land bank program, but does not intend to increase the upfront costs of developers, said city Planner Mark Williams.
According to the draft plan, Durango has a housing affordability issue, and the plan purports to provide alternatives to help alleviate those issues.
“The central role of housing in shaping the character of a community makes housing as crucial to Durango as the road network or utility system, but many factors in Durango make affordable housing increasingly difficult to obtain. Housing affordability depends on land use regulation, housing supply, the cost of materials and labor, the availability of land, the cost of infrastructure, adequate densities for infill development, incomes commensurate with housing costs, and the strength of affordable housing programs,” the plan states.
“As the people who make Durango work — the teachers, waiters, first responders, Fort Lewis professors, young families — find it increasingly difficult to afford housing, Durango is in danger of losing its identity. Prices will continue to escalate, and are likely to continue to accelerate faster than income growth, with significant implications for Durango’s future social and economic health…”
A chart included in the plan shows Durango’s ‘Housing Cost to Income Ratio’ to be twice the rate of the U.S. in general. Some Colorado communities have an even more challenging ratio.
“The city has to accumulate some capital in order to make a bigger impact on affordable housing,” said City Planner Mark Williams in the Herald article.
The plan suggests possible revenue sources to fund affordable housing, with money aimed at a housing trust fund that then could be used as matching money for grants, financing for developers, and other purposes. The new revenue could be used to buy land… to either sell to developers at a discount, or provide for free… and thus reduce the cost of eventual development. To raise revenue for housing, the City might ask voters to approve a dedicated sales tax or excise tax.
Such new funding could help the city support its stated goal of 1,000 affordable units by 2035, according to the draft plan.
From the Herald article:
The City will hold a community housing forum next week to discuss the proposal. Those interested in attending should consider what specific housing problem they are interested in solving, because different policies will help solve different needs.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.