Photo: Subsidized single-family housing under construction in the Pagosa Trails/Chris Mountain subdivision.
Colorado’s housing market is flashing red flag warnings. Declining market-rate housing starts, and a sharp reduction in construction job openings nationally signal storm clouds on the horizon…
Constituent resistance to zoning reforms and a slow pace of local governments opting into the Prop 123 90-day fast-track approval process is stalling progress…
— from ‘Colorado’s Housing Crossroads: Prop 123, State Investments, Market Challenges and the Road Ahead’, by Peter Lifari, Cole Anderson and Erik Gamm, from the Common Sense Institute website, March 2025.
I got an email from a Daily Post reader yesterday.
“Hi Bill. Looking forward to hear more about the unaffordable CDC homes. Unrealistic pricing for working family. Not affordable homes.”
I mentioned, yesterday, that the Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation (PSCDC) has worked with the local builders at BWD Construction during 2024, to produce ten homes aimed at working families. The ten homes were in fact a collaboration between a number of agencies. The vacant parcels were donated to the PSCDC by the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners; the BOCC and the Pagosa Springs Town Council provided public funding to help support the construction loans and grants; Habitat for Humanity of Archuleta County had provided technical assistance; the Archuleta County Housing Authority agreed to ‘qualify’ the potential purchasers; Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation agreed to waive thousands of dollars in connection fees on the condition that the buyers would have ‘below average’ incomes; the Colorado Department of Local Affairs provided grant funding for the project on the understanding that PSCDC would ultimately produce 35 homes for working families.
The homes were priced at between $320,000 and $390,000. According to Zillow.com, a Pagosa family — earning a median income of $85,000, and with $400 in monthly car payments and other debts — cannot comfortably afford a $320,000 home.
That’s a median income. Half of our families earn less than $85,000. Often, much less.
All of this collaboration was driven by a couple of factors. For one, our local community leaders had finally come to the conclusion that Pagosa Springs is suffering from a serious housing crisis, with the result that local businesses, governments, medical services and schools struggle to find and retain qualified employees. And two: our local construction industry and real estate industry are demonstrating little desire to address the problem — or else, don’t know how to address the problem.
And there’s a third factor.
For the past 30 years, Pagosa Springs and Archuleta County have been trying to become more affluent, and our community leaders have focused their efforts and investments on attracting higher-income visitors and residents. Part of that effort entailed the adoption of ordinances and building codes and land use regulations that reward higher-end homes and discourage affordable housing.
That is to say, our community has been actively discouraging affordable housing for 30 years. For a while, that process seemed relatively harmless, but we’ve now arrived at a place where our economy has become borderline dysfunctional. Archuleta County has become the least affordable community in southwest Colorado, for individuals and families who need to earn a living. Workers are being expected to put in overtime at relatively low wages, while struggling to find an affordable dwelling.
Probably not a sustainable economy?
Enter, stage right, the PSCDC, a government-subsidized non-profit created to boost ‘economic development’ in Archuleta County. In 2023, the PSCDC board determined that one of the necessary features of a functional economy was housing, and they directed their new Executive Director, Emily Lashbrooke, to get some housing built. This dream was bolstered by the approval of Proposition 123 by Colorado voters in 2022, which infused about $174 million toward the development or preservation of over 8,000 housing units statewide in its first year, 2024.
But money is only one aspect of the problem.
From the Common Sense Institute report:
Local governments attempting to embrace zoning reform to increase their zoned capacity face fierce resistance from entrenched single-family homeowners…
Simply stated, Americans who can afford a single-family home tend to believe that one role of government is to prevent affordable housing from appearing in their neighborhoods.
But what about the PSCDC/BWD homes, that received so much financial support and technical assistance from our community leaders? Are they really priced unrealistically, as my reader suggested in yesterday’s email?
Apparently so. The PSCDC has been seeking qualified buyers for their ten new homes, and after six months of advertising the units, has sold only two of the homes, and might possibly have two more qualified buyers in the pipeline.
So six ‘affordable’ homes are sitting empty… and waiting.
In our current Pagosa economy, working families cannot easily qualify for government-subsidized $320,000 homes, due to credit problems, lack of down payment, existing household debts, student loans, medical bills, high interest rates…
The unaffordable pricing is not entirely the fault of PSCDC. But the PSCDC board did pick the highest-priced bidder when choosing the contractor for their first ten homes in the Pagosa Trails/Chris Mountain subdivision.
Another aspect of the unaffordable pricing: the Pagosa Trails/Chris Mountain subdivision is within the Pagosa Lakes Property Owners Association (PLPOA) and the subdivision covenants and restrictions were specifically designed to prevent affordable housing from being built there.
On top of those problems, the subdivision is plagued by solid Dakota sandstone just below the surface, which adds to building costs and utility installation.
I began this editorial series with a short summary of my coffee chat with Travis and Sarah Troxtell, who will be going before the Archuleta County Planning Commission on April 15, seeking to have their 26-acre parcel on Highway 84 re-zoned as a 40-pad mobile home park.
This project appears to be a ‘labor of love’ for the Troxtells. Based on my limited knowledge of real estate development, I can imagine the relatively immense cost of such a project, and the government and financial hurdles that it presents.
But if the PSCDC can’t easily meet the housing needs of our working families, even with sizable government grants and subsidies…
…can a young family of five manage it?
Read Part Eight, on Monday…