Photo: Pagosa Springs CDC Executive Director Emily Lashbrooke, center, and Archuleta Public Works Director Mike Torres, discussing housing issues with the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners, May 6, 2025.
I appreciated the comment from Emily Lashbrooke — Executive Director of the Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation — that she’s tired of being a test dummy for the Colorado Division of Housing. She made that comment at the May 6 work session of the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners, as she informed the commissioners that the County’s deed restriction template, developed through an arduous process over the past year and approved by the BOCC, now needed yet another amendment to accommodate the banks.
This would be the banks who are underwriting the mortgages for ‘workforce’ homes built by PSCDC and BWD Construction in the Trails and Chris Mountain subdivisions.
I’ve been paying attention to the ‘ups and downs’ of the CDC’s housing efforts, and I believe the word “arduous” can well be applied to that process.
Meanwhile, my hat is off to Ms. Lashbrooke and her team for taking this effort on. Few local non-profits would have the tenacity, I suspect, to continue the same journey through bureaucratic hell.
Ms. Lashbrooke let the commissioners know that the deed restriction amendments will now require the future homeowners of the CDC homes to inform the County government if their homes were going into foreclosure. This notice would allow the County to take steps to prevent the subsidized home from becoming a bank asset. Exactly what those steps would be is not immediately clear.
The commissioners wanted to be assured that the County’s interim attorney had reviewed the changes. Apparently he had done so.
Ms. Lashbrooke, speaking the the BOCC at the morning work session:
“I didn’t know that he had reviewed it! I had hoped that that would happen…
“This will be on your consent agenda this afternoon, and we will just need your signature on that copy, so that we can go ahead and close on the next two homes.”
Those closings are scheduled for May 12 and 15.
Commissioner Warren Brown expressed his sympathy.
“Good job. These endless surprises…”
Ms. Lashbrooke:
“I am so over it. I am just so over it. I so tired of being the test dummy.”
She noted that two of the ten BWD homes built last year have been sold, two more sales are expected to close this month, and one more home is under contract awaiting “AMI verification”. Due to the grant funding used to subsidize these homes, the purchasers must have a household income at 100 percent of the Area Median Income or below. They must also be willing — along with their lending institution — to accept the deed restrictions.
Will the CDC be able to sell the remaining five homes this year, to waiting applicants? Maybe? Maybe not?
Ms. Lashbrooke:
“Our applicants are frustrated with the process. Also, there are a couple of other things that have come into play. We have a Forest Service worker who is no longer employed with the Forest Service. We are finding that our applicants are becoming more and more cost burdened, both with the interest rate that is proposed at this time. Most of our applicants are in the 35 percent of their income that they are paying for a rental property, so they’re having a difficult time.
“Also, that 100 percent AMI level… that’s right at the threshold for people, that it’s the affordable time in their lifetime to be able to buy a house. They’re still dealing with student debt, or debt-to-income qualifications, or family size, or many other factors.
“So our plan, for the next six to eight weeks — we believe that our veterans could qualify for these houses. So I’m going to get in front of the Vets for Vets and do a presentation. This could be a great solution. All of our homes, you can get a wheel chair into them.
“We will be doing a campaign in the newspaper to move these houses, and we’ll be sending out a letter to all major employers — so, the school district, the hospital, the Sheriff’s office — all the major employers.
“We’ve had a couple of people come and ask more questions about the deed restrictions, about how that would look for an employer…”
Here we have an interesting issue. Could the CDC solve its lack of successful sales by selling the new homes to employers, who could then rent the homes to their employees?
Does the current deed restrictions template allow for that approach?
More about that later.
Ms. Lashbrooke:
“We also are looking for grants. We currently are finding ourselves still about $500 a month [above what 100 percent AMI households can afford.]”
In January 2024, the nine Board members for the PSCDC spent about two hours listening to presentations from BWD Construction and Fading West Development — the two finalists in a effort to create some “attainable” housing in Pagosa Springs.
Fading West was, at that time, turning out about 200 modular homes per year in their Buena Vista factory. According to the three Fading West presenters, the company would like to deliver and install 10 two- and three-bedroom homes to Pagosa Springs within the next 12 months, at prices ranging from about $290,000 to $360,000.
Pagosa-based BWD Construction proposed stick-built homes priced at $360,000 to $415,000.
The CDC Board picked BWD, and was later able to negotiate the prices of the homes down to a range from $320,000 to $395,000. Ten homes are now built, and ten more were schedule to break ground in 2025. Like, soon.
But the CDC is now discovering that last year’s BWD homes are priced about $500 a month higher than the target workforce families can afford.
We have to wonder why the CDC didn’t know, a year ago, that they would have trouble finding qualified buyers for the BWD homes, when their own request for proposals had specified homes priced at between $280,000 to $340,000.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the homes are… too expensive?
Dealing with bureaucracy can be hell. But we sometimes create our own hell.