I had a somewhat unusual experience back in 1974, when I was 22 years old. I spent a summer helping two friends build their house in Wasilla, Alaska.
When I say “an unusual experience”, I mean that in two senses of the word. First of all, it was unusual for me, personally, because I had not, up to that point in my life, helped anyone build a house. Nor have I had the opportunity to build a house — from the foundation to the roof — since then.
It was also unusual because most Americans never build a house from the foundation to the roof. Houses in America are almost always built by professional contractors, professional carpenters, professional plumbers, professional roofers, and are inspected by professional building inspectors. This was the case even back in 1974, of course, but Jim and Nancy, who were 24 years old at the time, had a slightly different idea. Jim had just finished his stint in the Coast Guard, and Nancy had been working for the state government, and they’d managed to save enough money to buy the materials for a one-bedroom A-frame house. The materials came in the form of a “kit” — exactly the right amount of wood and shingles and nails and insulation for this particular home. And it came with a big sheet of assembly instructions.
It was a Do-It-Yourself house, and the three of us started the construction process by learning how to mix mortar and lay concrete blocks for the foundation. None of us had masonry experience… or carpentry experience… or plumbing experience… or knew anything about electrical wiring. None of us had a college degree, or a union card; we were three kids, basically, doing something none of us had ever done before, using a printed sheet of instructions. And together — with occasional help from Nancy’s brothers (who had also built their own houses) — we assembled a one-bedroom house with a full basement.
There were, of course, some parts of the process the three of us couldn’t manage. Installation of the septic system, for example, was handled by one of Nancy’s brothers, who happened to own a backhoe. We didn’t pour the concrete footers or the basement floor. But pretty much everything else was done by three inexperienced young adults with high school educations.
I can’t say I know much about the financial arrangements involved. I have the sense that Jim and Nancy ended up with a completed house, without any debt or mortgage to pay off, but I can’t say for sure. I went back to Juneau and soon started raising a family of my own, and I pretty much lost track of Jim and Nancy after that summer; maybe a few Christmas cards were exchanged, but after their divorce, I lost track of them.
I will say, however, that I’ve felt pretty fearless about wielding a hammer ever since. Or wiring an outlet. Or installing a toilet.
I’m writing about this experience because Pagosa Springs — like many places in America — currently has a shortage of workforce housing, and we don’t know what to do, as concerned community members, about the problem. We don’t have a big sheet of instructions. And we’ve come to believe, generally, that our problems ought to be fixed by someone else. By professionals who really know what they’re doing. The same way we expect our houses to be built by professionals, who are in turn following a book of rules adopted by our local government leaders.
At some point, within the past 50 years, the folks who were acting as leaders in the Pagosa Springs community made a determination that — if we adopted more and more rules — we could slowly change Pagosa from a funky, working class town into a first-class tourist resort. In order to bring about that kind of transformation, we needed plans, and regulations, that would prevent people from building funky, working class houses. As everyone knows, the arrival of “affordable” housing in a residential neighborhood — an apartment building, say, or God forbid a mobile home park — will negatively affect your “property values”.
And property value is the name of the game. Over the past half century, a “house” has become, for the typical American family, much more than “the structure you live in”. A house has become “real estate” — an investment that was most certainly going to increase in value, year after year, without any real effort on your own part. A house, even with a big mortgage, is going to turn you a profit in the end.
My house is my own personal opportunity to be a Capitalist, and make a profit without working. And heaven knows we all want to be Capitalists. Even if in a small way.
To help us on this path to prosperity, our local governments have developed policies and regulations to enhance “property values”. Okay, yes, some of the regulations are aimed at public safety, but many are aimed at forcing neighborhoods to “upgrade” as each new home was constructed on each ever-more-expensive parcel. One of the key goals of local government became “to make the community more expensive to live in.” Our government leaders would never describe their policies with those particular words, but that’s essentially what’s taken place in formerly-worker-friendly towns like Pagosa Springs.
We can continue down that road, if we wish. The probable outcome can be observed already in many Colorado resort communities. Aspen, Vail, Breckenridge, Telluride are the most extreme examples. No one can afford to live in these towns if they work at a normal job. Especially, few young families, starting out on their search for the American Dream, can find a home in those places.
Durango and Salida are generally headed the same direction. So is Pagosa Springs.
Is that where we want to end up?
Because if that’s not where we want to end up, we will have to start changing the way we think about what type of house a young couple might build next door.
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.