In 2018, the Pagosa Springs Town Council hired a fledgling non-profit — Pagosa Housing Partners (PHP) — to survey workers and employers in the community to better define the local housing situation, and also to create a written plan for short-term actions: “Roadmap to Affordable Housing, 2019-2025.” The following year, PHP was hired to help move some of the numerous “Roadmap” projects forward. PHP’s executive director, Lynne Vickerstaff, and their administrative assistant Joanne Whitney, presented a report to the Town Council on January 30 at a Council work session focused entirely on the housing issue.
The meeting room was fairly well packed with housing advocates and interested citizens. I didn’t notice anyone in the room representing the Archuleta County government, but that’s perhaps understandable, knowing that the BOCC is currently busily engaged in building a $15 million jail to house criminals. That’s certainly one type of housing.
The other housing groups and agencies who spoke up at the Town Council work session included Homesfund, Habitat for Humanity, Archuleta County Housing Authority, Archuleta Housing Corporation, and Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD).
Ms. Vickerstaff had provided an 8-page print-out to the Council, highlighting PHP’s achievements for 2019. Here’s a bit of Ms. Vickerstaff’s presentation:
“Our primary focus has been to provide information to the public, and advocacy for housing options and opportunities. We’ve heard discussion with Town Council; met with the County Planning Commission; I was a guest speaker for the BOCC advocating for tiny homes legislation… The conferences that we attended were the Homelessness Conference in Durango; a Division of Housing and CHFA (Colorado Housing and Finance Authority) conference, also in Durango — the Fair Housing class; we attended the 2019 ‘Housing Now’ conference in October — there were over 900 state participants…”
One of the ideas that came from the Housing Now conference has been implemented here in Archuleta County: the ‘RoomConnect’ program, which attempts to connect homeowners with vacant bedrooms with compatible roommates, as one way to address the shortage of workforce housing in the community. You can learn more about RoomConnect here.
Ms. Vickerstaff continued:
“One of the things we heard about at the 2019 conference, and that we’re investigating and trying to learn more about, are Community Land Trusts — and what that could possibly mean for housing… (More about Community Land Trusts in this Daily Post article.) We are also publishing news articles. We’ve had 13 article published in the Pagosa Springs SUN and 16 articles in the Daily Post, all about various aspects of the housing issue.”
Ms. Vickerstaff mentioned that PHP helped with writing the community’s ‘Opportunity Zone Prospectus’ which got a mention in the Forbes magazine ‘OZ 20: Top Opportunity Zone Catalysts’.
“Another thing we did was start the Housing Coalition, many of whom are here tonight…” This comprehensive group includes PHP, Archuleta Housing Corporation, Habitat for Humanity, Axis Health, San Juan Basin Health, Aspen House, Rise Above Violence, Salvation Army, HomesFund, Hickory Ridge, Town Planning Staff, and Archuleta County Housing Authority.
“At our second meeting, we had a guest speaker from CHFA, talking about the [state] money that’s coming down the pike in the next 2-5 years — it’s substantial — and how we can work as a group to identify some ways that we can channel that money…”
Ah, yes. Money.
When I looked up the song, “Money Money” on YouTube this morning — performed by actors Joel Grey and Liza Minnelli in the 1972 film, Cabaret — the fine folks at YouTube introduced the 3-minute clip (below) by first offering me an advertisement for VRBO.com. (Vacation Rentals By Owner.) The ad suggested that my family and I can book temporary housing most anywhere in the US, or most anywhere in the world for that matter, where we can lull on a nearby beach or ski down a nearby slope.
Following the advertisement, Joel Grey and Lisa Minnelli started singing “Money Makes the World Go ‘Round…”
The website Global Finance published an interesting list last spring, and introduced their list with this question: “Would you rather be rich in a poor country, or poor in a rich one?”
The list was constructed rather simplistically. The list looked at the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of each country, adjusted it by “purchasing power parity” — the actual price of certain goods and services in that particular country — housing? health care? energy? — and divided that number by the country’s population. Pretty simple.
The United States ended up at Number 12, tucked in between Switzerland and San Marino, with an annual per-person wealth of $64,767. So theoretically, a family of three persons would be valued at $194,301 — if our nation were to distribute its wealth equitably. For comparison, the poorest nation — adjusted for purchasing power — was Burundi, with a per-person wealth of $727, or $2,181 for a household of three persons. The numbers were derived from International Monetary Fund data.
The US Census Bureau currently calculates the household income in Archuleta County at about $50,753. But many households in Archuleta County survive on much less.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average wage for all employees in Archuleta County was about $697 per week in December 2018. (You can view that chart here.) This comes to about $36,000 a year before taxes. But this average includes doctors, nurses, teachers and other professionals who work here in Pagosa Springs. An experienced school teacher working for the Archuleta School District, for example, earns around $50,000 per year, plus benefits. School administrators earn considerably higher salaries. We find similarly generous salaries in our local government offices.
According to BLS, some of Pagosa’s most common jobs pay considerably less than the average wage. Hotel maids earn about about $26,640…restaurant employees, about $24,290… and retail cashiers, about $25,860.
We mentioned, yesterday in Part Two, that the Trump administration has recently proposed cuts to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development budget. The administration’s proposed budget for 2020 called for an 18% reduction in overall HUD funding. Congress instead increased the 2020 HUD budget by 5%, allocating $56.5 billion. The two biggest programs in the HUD budget are Project-Based Rental Assistance ($12.6 billion) and Tenant-Based Rental Assistance ($23.9 billion).
Federal rental assistance programs help 10.4 million people afford a roof over their heads, and about 68% are elderly, children, or people with disabilities, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. But another 23 million Americans are either homeless or paying in excess of 50% of their monthly income for housing — and getting no housing assistance from the feds.
Meanwhile, an estimated 14 million taxpayers will likely be able to use the Mortgage Interest Deduction (MID) this year, and most of them will have annual incomes of over $100,000. While HUD is spending $56.5 billion helping low-income families afford housing, the federal government will be granting an estimated $30 billion for 2019 housing tax rebates to our wealthiest families.
Does Archuleta County have enough money to help those most in need? Knowing that the feds are unlikely to do it for us?