The Thingamajig Theater Company, in residence at the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts, has sunk its foundations deeper into the community. Already recognized locally and nationally for its highly professional stage productions, children’s theater programs, and free concerts, the Theater is in the process of completing its own house to accommodate its actors and staff…
— from the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts website, May 4, 2017.
During various community conversations around the worsening housing crisis in Archuleta County, numerous people have argued that our local governments have neither the means nor the electoral mandate to address the crisis.
Over the past decade, some of these same folks have contended that the ‘free market’ will solve the housing problem for us, without any need for government intervention. We just need to be patient.
Still others have argued that Pagosa Springs business owners ought to step up and help resolve the crisis, by creating housing for their own employees. And indeed, that very thing has taken place, on occasion. Back in 2015, for example, Thingamajig Theatre Company — one of the more ambitious non-profits in Archuleta County — was already finding it impossible to find housing from their summer repertory cast and crew, so they bought a 0.6 acre parcel on Aspenglow Boulevard and built a dormitory-style ‘artists house’ with the help of volunteers from the community.
As they say on Broadway, the show must go on… and a place to live makes that possible. So Thingamajig Theatre sunk its roots deeper into the community. Much deeper.
In 2020, Olympus SRH LLC purchased an (under-utilized?) office building on Lewis Street and converted it — with financial help from the Town and County governments — into small apartments for Springs Resort employees.
I think we can all applaud these types of effort, by private industry — creating housing options where none existed before, even if the aim is to accommodate the company’s own employees.
Something rather different took place in January, when Olympus SRH Eaton LLC bought an existing apartment complex at 158 Eaton Drive, and gave 16 families eviction notices, demanding that the families vacate their homes by February 19 — knowing full well that affordable housing is incredibly difficult to find in Archuleta County.
This was not a case of private industry creating new workforce housing. This was a case of driving working people from their existing dwellings, to accommodate the desires of a wealthy developer.
The eviction of 16 working families in the middle of winter has struck many community leaders as a rather harsh move, and several activists have stepped up to offer help to the affected families.
But this same thing has been going on — on a much smaller scale, one family at a time — ever since Airbnb and VRBO and other vacation rental platforms made it possible to buy up residential homes all over Archuleta County — even overpriced residential homes — and convert them into commercial motel operations that are exempt from commercial-rate property taxes.
I have heard numerous stories about full-time residents evicted from their homes, because the house was being converted into a vacation rental. An STR. A Short-Term Rental.
Although the scale has seemed small… taking place here and there… one house at a time… in fact, the overall effect has been to allow more than 1,200 residential homes in Archuleta County to be converted to commercial motels.
That would be, 1,000 residential homes that, theoretically, could still be providing shelter for full-time residents. Looked at from that perspective, David Dronet’s decision to evict 16 families is a mere drop in the bucket.
What a disturbing bucket it is, however.
This type of bewildering community disaster did not strike all Colorado resort communities equally. According to an August 2021 regional housing study by Root Policy Research:
Almost half (44%) of all the STRs listed in the [Southwest Colorado] region are located around Pagosa Springs (1,290 active rentals), another 38 percent are in and around Durango (1,113 active rentals).
Durango/La Plata County has four times the population of Pagosa Springs/Archuleta County, but Durango stepped up to control the vacation rental disaster two years before our own community leaders even started acknowledging to the economic damage.
Pagosa now has an STR crisis that is, essentially, four times as serious as the one in Durango, compared to population. But the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners continues to allow unlimited approvals of new vacation rentals. The Town government finally established a cap last year — but only in residential-zoned districts. So the Town is also continuing to welcome unlimited new vacation rental applications in mixed-use commercial districts.
How is the ‘free market’ doing, at resolving Pagosa’s housing crisis? Well, by all reasonable measures, we are seeing more tourists than ever, who are spending more money than ever and living more comfortably than ever — while the housing crisis has only grown worse for local families over the past five years, even though everyone is fully aware of the crisis.
And I do mean, everyone.
In my opinion, the ‘free market” plays an important role in our society, but it doesn’t seem to care if working families are paying half their income for housing and the other half on child care and student loans, with a few dollars left over for an occasional meal at McDonalds.
The ‘free market’ apparently doesn’t care if 16 families are kicked out of their homes in the middle of winter. Or if 1,290 residential homes have been converted into commercial motels. The ‘free market’ cares primarily about one thing. Maximum extraction of profits, from whatever enterprise.
The ‘free market’ does certain things well, and makes a huge mess out of other things.
The housing crisis is one of the things, here in Archuleta County, that the ‘free market’ has utterly failed to resolve. Quite the contrary; the ‘free market’ continues to make the situation worse, here in Pagosa Springs.
“Company housing” is a solution of sorts, in a “company town”. But it’s a double-edged sword.
Imagine, for example, that you have a job working at, say, the Springs Resort… and you are living in an apartment owned by the Springs Resort. And you decide, for whatever reason, to take a job with a different employer.
What are the chances you will be evicted from your apartment? Maybe even, in the middle of winter?
Read Part Four…