Photo: Ground-breaking ceremony for ten new ‘workforce’ housing units in the Trails/Chris Mountain subdivisions, March 2024. Courtesy Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation and BWD Construction.
Bureaucracies have been problematic dating back to biblical times, and the problems may have gotten worse. But our governments can’t function, it seems, without them.
We’re discussing, in this editorial series, the specifics of the bureaucratic hell experienced by the staff of the non-profit Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation (PSCDC), and in particular, by its executive director, Emily Lashbrooke and her staff.
As mentioned previously in these pages, the voters of Colorado approved Proposition 123, which created the State Affordable Housing Fund and dedicated 40% of those revenues to the Affordable Housing Support Fund administered by the Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) and 60% to the Affordable Housing Financing Fund overseen by the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) to fund housing programs.
OEDIT selected Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHFA) as the third-party administrator in a public process.
So there we have three bureaucracies already, at the state level, before we even get to the level of town and county bureaucracies. And as we might note, “support” has been separated from “financing” at the state level.
This made sense to someone, apparently. Why have only one bureaucracy involved in awarding housing subsidies, when you can have three?
I’ve also shared — more than once, I believe — Ms. Lashbrooke’s opinion that, in terms of promoting housing projects, the state is “building the plane while they are flying it.”
Not an airline I would buy a ticket for, if I had any choice.
To the CDC’s credit, they didn’t wait around for the bugs to get worked out, but rather climbed aboard just as soon as the airplane door opened — the door to the flying plane the state was still building.
Of course, it didn’t have to be this way. There was no need for a procedural hell involving three bureaucracies, and seemingly endless development and revision of regulations that inevitably accompanies bureaucratic government.
The state could have simply allocated the Prop 123 funding to Colorado cities, towns, and counties directly, based on population. This is how our school districts are funded, for example. How many students do you have? Okay, then you get this amount of state funding; spend it the best way you know how. This is how Highway User Tax Funds (HUTF) are allocated. How many miles of roads do you maintain? Okay, then you get this amount of state funding; spend it the best way you know how.
But alas, the bureaucrats are currently in control, and the housing crisis gets worse by the day.
Here’s Ms. Lashbrooke, speaking at the May 6 Board of County Commissioners work session, discussing the fact that the homes created with the help of the CDC and Prop 123 funding must be purchased (or rented?) by households than earn less than the ‘median’ income in Pagosa Springs. But the ‘median’ is subject to change, as more retirees move into the community and as wages increase.
“Our AMI [Area Median Income] was increased for 2025. It went up by $11,000 for a single household income…So the new number will be $77,000 [per year], which will help us with that affordability piece. It won’t help the participants, necessarily, but it will help us.”
Unfortunately, the Pagosa households struggling the most with housing costs don’t come close to making $77,000 a year. This discrepancy means that housing might get subsidized and built for the folks who are not, in general, seriously struggling.
Ms. Lashbrooke:
“We’re hoping the interest rates will shake out and come down a little bit. That would help us a lot, to move these houses that we currently have.”
“Move them” as in: “sell them”.
The current rates on 30-year mortgages in Colorado are above 7%, if your credit rating is between 680 and 740.
As noted previously, the CDC and BWD Construction built ten subsidized ‘workforce’ houses last year, and have been able to sell only two of them so far. As built, the mortgages are priced about $500 a month higher than the households, that fit the income limits. can qualify for.
Commissioner Veronica Medina asked if local employers could theoretically provide the $500 a month, to help their employees. If CDC put out an appeal to employers, is that something that could be allowed under the state grant program?
Ms. Lashbrooke believed it would be allowed. “Any kind of funding that can come to the table — I was just showing you the simple math of how we are still $500 a month too high.”
Commissioner Medina related some input she has received, that potential purchasers of these Trails/Chris Mountain homes “simply do not want to be in the PLPOA… Which was different from what we’d heard…”
The Pagosa Lakes Property Owners Association has a mixed reputation among community members, and the CDC/BWD homes are within the Association boundaries.
Commissioner Medina had also heard complaints about the design of the homes.
“So I asked a few people — because they had mentioned that they wanted to be able to help with our problem of affordable housing. One of the questions was, ‘Why do they all look like that?’ Because they don’t look like ‘Pagosa’. It’s more like Denver, Front Range style buildings…”
“I’m just happy we have affordable housing,” Commissioner Medina said, with a laugh.
“But these are things that people are looking at. They want something that is… more like Pagosa. That’s what I’m hearing.”
“Another thing a constituent said. They would like to buy one and then rent it out. But they are concerned about all the new rules that just came down from the Governor, for renters.
“Renters now have more protections than the landlord…”
Read Part Four, tomorrow…