According to Nicole Holt, the executive director at Archuleta Housing Corporation, the corporation spends in excess of $500,000 per year on utilities and at local businesses including:
…Ponderosa Lumber, Terry’s Ace Hardware, Village Interiors, Peak to Peak Electric, Doors & More, A-1 Services, Advance Auto Parts, American Family Insurance, Archuleta County Solid Waste, At Your Disposal, Blue Mountain Accounting, DC Construction, George T. Sanders, Graphic Assassin, Guardian Pest Control, James Garrett Attorney at Law, Just Click Printing, Lucero Tire, Pagosa Glass, Pagosa Rooter, PBS Heating, Peak Performance Fire & Safety Solutions, Perfect Computing, Put Hill Customs, Raymond Rent a Nerd, Sears, and Tractor Supply, among others…
This list of local expenditures was included in an April 16 letter addressed to the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners, and was discussed briefly at the BOCC’s May 11 work session, when Ms. Holt and AHC interim board president Guiseppe Margiotta told the commissioners about plans to perform major upgrades at the corporation’s three 50-year-old affordable housing complexes in downtown Pagosa. The upgrades will include new furnaces, new water heaters, new building insulation, and new backflow prevention devices.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Ms. Holt earlier this month, to discuss this ambitious plan, which she had priced out at the BOCC work session at $565,000.
If that dollar amount sounds significant, we might note that many of the single-family homes purchased on the real estate market during 2020 were sold at a similar price point — while the 64 affordable apartment units maintained by AHC continue to accommodate nearly 180 residents. That’s almost 10% of the entire population of the Town of Pagosa Springs, and more than 1% of the entire population of Archuleta County.
From the BOCC letter:
Archuleta Housing Corporation provides affordable housing to families living under 50% AMI. Through the use of federally funded and subsidized HUD/Section 8 project vouchers, we provide subsidized rents at 30% of our residents’ income, which includes all utilities paid for by Archuleta Housing, which helps our residents keep their bills low, and their heat and lights on…
…it is crucial that we continue to provide housing to the workforce and address capital needs issues that are affecting the health and safety of our residents. In addition to reaching out for financial support from Archuleta Country, we are reaching out to the Town of Pagosa Springs and will be applying for rebates from Energy Outreach Colorado, and grants from LPEA…
Ms. Holt was able to share some positive news about her quest to upgrade her apartment units.
For one thing, the non-profit corporation had — for nearly 50 years — been improperly paying property taxes to Archuleta County, when in fact the corporation was tax-exempt all along. Ms. Holt and her board have managed to clear up that little (but rather expensive) mistake.
For another thing, AHC has connected successfully with Energy Outreach Colorado and the Energy Resource Center, two Colorado non-profits dedicated to reducing our state’s carbon footprint. More about that in a moment.
Here’s Ms. Holt during our interview earlier this month. She started off talking about a planned ’50th Anniversary’ party, commemorating the establishment of Archuleta Housing Corporation in 1971. Some good news: AHC had been selected as one of the four Pagosa non-profits to benefit from the annual ’19th Hole Concert Series’ sponsored by The Community Foundation serving Southwest Colorado. The AHC concert will take place on Thursday, July 29, and will feature the music of Jack Ellis & Out on Work Release
“The board was been talking about doing a celebration at the [Catholic Church] — some kind of a church picnic. But I’ve wanted to do something with music and fun, where the families can come — like, where kids can have fun. So it’s possible we can have the party at the 19th Hole concert…
“…but you know how the 19th Hole thing is; you have to try and sell tickets. Promote it, and sell it. But I want to make sure our tenants can come, so we might look for a way to subsidize the ticket price. Maybe get a donor to match AHC’s donation? So our tenants can attend?
“Kids are free, ten and under, so that’s a plus.”
We then chatted about the generous assistance that AHC has received from Energy Outreach Colorado (EOC) and the Energy Resource Center (ERC). Funding sources like EOC and ERC specialize in helping homeowners and apartment managers replace outdated energy and water infrastructure with new, high efficiency devices.
EOC subsidized about 90% of a recent boiler replacement project at Archuleta Housing for the Elderly, a separate apartment managed by AHC. ERC has offered a 50%-75% rebate on the the purchase of high efficiency furnaces and water heaters for the 50-year-old apartments at Site A, B, and C.
The energy upgrades are, however, just part of the challenge of keeping the AHC apartments affordable. Back in the mid-1980s, when the last major upgrades were made, executive director Ross Aragon had borrowed about $780,000 from HUD/Section 8 — but payments on the loan had been deferred until 2015, to allow AHC to finish repaying the original construction loan. When Nicole Holt took over as executive director in 2019, she found that no payments had yet been made on the loan, and that AHC owed HUD nearly $1 million when the interest balance was included.
Ms. Holt:
“So it just kind of got left on my plate, to figure it out. I’m the only [director] who’s ever paid anything on that loan. I started making payments because HUD wouldn’t response to me. I said, ‘Tell me how to make payments.’ I wasn’t going to be running an organization that owes $1 million and is not making payments on it.
“And at the time, we were still paying taxes [like a for-profit corporation]… and people asked, ‘Why are you not a non-profit?’ and I explained that I was working on that. But back then, I was paying taxes on any surplus cash I had, or I could start paying out the excess, on the $1 million loan. So it was all this ‘back-and-forth’ thing with HUD…”
Now that the corporation has been qualified as a non-profit, it will no longer be paying ‘for-profit’ taxes.
“But I’m still in negotiations with HUD about this pay-back…”