In 2000 and 2001, a major effort was undertaken with extensive public involvement that resulted in the ‘Archuleta County Community Plan of 2001’, which set out a vision for what the community was and could be…
— from the Archuleta County Community Plan, revised 2017.
After listening to the May 6 conversation between the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) and Emily Lashbrooke, executive director for the non-profit Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation (CDC), I’m concerned that the CDC may be on the wrong track.
The state legislature and governor and housing bureaucrats in Denver want to help us create more housing, and especially, more housing that our workforce can afford without going broke. But no one really knows how to do that, when we have a housing industry traditionally controlled by private builders, private developers, and the private banking industry.
Colorado voters have supported the idea of using tax money to help address the problem… most recently, by approving Proposition 123.
But as Ms. Lashbrooke has explained, the state government has been “building the plane while they are flying it.” This makes the whole process feel, at times, like bureaucratic hell.
The BOCC donated three dozen tax lien properties to the CDC, hoping to see affordable single family homes built. The CDC seemed confident, last year, that they could build the first ten homes and easily sell them to working households, in alignment with the state grant funding they received.
The homes got built, but selling them has proved to be a difficult process, when you factor in the deed restrictions, the state regulations, the bank requirements, and the generally low wages paid in Pagosa Springs… and when you build the homes for $320,000 and higher.
At the end of Part Four, we heard Commissioner John Ranson ask who, exactly, is responsible for the loans on the five homes that currently have no prospective buyers waiting. Ms. Lashbrooke explained that the CDC will be responsible for making the monthly payments on the loans.
By my calculation, that’s at least $1.6 million worth of unsold housing, which might suggests bank payments of $11,000 a month, or about $130,000 a year at current interest rates, if those homes remain unsold. Add monthly utility fees and Pagosa Lakes Property Owners Association (PLPOA) fees, and we’re starting to talk real money. (The CDC is a non-profit, so they might be exempt from paying property taxes?)
There are other ways to encourage housing options during a housing crisis, besides putting ourselves through bureaucratic hell.
Just one little example:
Much of the privately-owned land in Archuleta County is zoned agricultural. The primary zoning types are AR (Agricultural Ranching) and AE (Agricultural Estate).
It’s been a stated goal of our local governments to preserve agricultural land as “agricultural”, and strict regulations have been put in place to achieve that goal. For as long as I’ve lived in Archuleta County, only two dwelling units were allowed on an AR parcel. Even if you owned a 4,000-acre parcel, you were allowed only two dwelling units. A recent revision now allows additional dwelling units for “active farming or ranching operations” with a Land Use Permit. AE zoning still allows only two dwelling units.
Within the Town of Pagosa Springs, lots as small as 1/6 acre sometimes accommodate two or three dwelling units. This implies that a single 40-acre parcel could theoretically accommodate at least 400 dwelling units comfortably.
But, apparently, that’s not allowed in AR or AE. We have our rules.
How much of the private land in Archuleta County is zoned “agricultural”? I reached out to the County government, and the GIS department provided the following pie chart.
According to this graphic, 88% of the private land in Archuleta County is zoned AR (blue). Another 4% is zoned AE (orange). Rural Residential is another 2%, and is also limited to two dwelling units per parcel.
A total of 287,000 acres; about 95% of the county’s private land. Theoretically, enough space for 3 million homes. But it’s zoned agricultural or rural, and to get it zoned otherwise, you have to go through bureaucratic hell. (See our editorials on a proposed tiny home village. Here. And here.)
But agricultural properties create food. And we need food.
How much food do our local agricultural properties produce? I’m glad you asked. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Archuleta County’s agricultural industry sold about $14 million worth of livestock in 2012, and brought in a little over $1 million in crop sales. Let’s be generous and call it $16 million.
About $58 per acre. That same acre could accommodate maybe 20 dwelling units.
In 2017, the USDA took another look at Archuleta County and concluded that the agricultural industry had a negative income. The industry as a whole had lost $2.1 million, meaning an average loss of more than $5,000 per farm or ranch.
But we want to protect our way of life, here in Archuleta County. We want bureaucratic regulations that prevent housing, so that local ranchers and farmers can continue to lose money, year after year.
Does that sound cynical? Probably so. And I will be the first to admit that building new subdivisions, for homes, is incredibly expensive and difficult, even without the bureaucratic hell that goes along with it. It’s generally much more affordable to build homes in existing subdivisions already supplied with roads, water, electric, sewer, internet… which is exactly what the CDC is trying to do in the Trails/Chris Mountain. But those subdivisions are within the Pagosa Lake Property Owners Association (PLPOA), and the PLPOA often provides its own version of bureaucratic hell.
The PLPOA encompasses most of the “Planned Unit Development” shown in light blue, below. About 4% of our total private land.
Not that anyone wants bureaucracies to be hellish. We just have different ideas about “what the community was and could be…”
Our state and local bureaucracies have tried their level best, with their rules and regulations, to create the community we want to live in… and for the wealthier half of our community, they have largely succeeded.
The less-wealthy half has been provided a basic choice. Continue to struggle, or move away.
Can regulations be changed? Of course they can. Can a community become more innovative when faced with an existential crisis? Presumably, yes.
Can Pagosa Springs and Archuleta County re-think land use regulations that have contributed to making our community unaffordable for half our population?
I’m glad you asked.
Our two key local governments, the Town and County, recently received a $56,000 grant to create a “Housing Action Plan”.
Will they get rid of the bureaucratic limitations on housing, so we can move toward a sustainable, functional community that provides housing our working families can afford?
I can’t wait to find out.