Photo: Construction of a detached garage for a Habitat for Humanity home in the Pagosa Trails subdivision, 2024. Pagosa Lakes Property Owners Association covenants and restrictions require new homes in most neighborhoods to have a garage.
However, wage growth has trailed the cost of living in Archuleta County in recent years. While the median household income was just $66,813 in 2022, the median home listing price in Archuleta County in 2023 was $785,000, making it increasingly difficult for local residents and the workforce to afford suitable housing…
— from the Archuleta County 2025-2028 Strategic Plan.
It’s been about 20 years since the local governments in Archuleta County began showing concern about a housing crisis here, but not much was done in the decade following the completion of a joint Town-County ‘Housing Needs Assessment’ in 2008.
Understandable. After about 15 years of explosive growth, Archuleta County’s construction and real estate industries began to see a slowdown in 2007… that hit harder in 2008, just as the ‘Housing Needs Assessment’ was published… and just as the Great Recession arrived.
By 2010, the housing industry was in free fall, and Archuleta County was near the top of the list for the Most Home Foreclosures in Colorado. Homes that might have sold for $280,000 in 2007 were going to about $160,000 in 2011.
It took several more years for home prices to recover.
But recover they did. With a vengeance, rising to the double the previous peak in 2007.
Wages have not doubled.
In 2019, the Town of Pagosa Springs invited the Board of County Commissioners to cooperate on the development of a community-wide plan for addressing the growing problem. The BOCC declined to participate in the planning effort, but took a different approach, by donating vacant County-owned land on Hot Springs Boulevard for what later became Rose Mountain Townhomes — 38 rental units managed by the Archuleta County Housing Authority.
At this time, not much else was happening in terms of addressing the housing crisis. The Town and County were both allowing unlimited conversions of residential homes and condos into vacation rentals — a trend which eventually removed perhaps 10% of the available housing stock.
One particular business — the Springs Resort — was creating ‘company housing’ by purchasing buildings to rent to their low-wage employees, thus killing two birds with one stone: retaining employees and collecting rent from the same employees.
In 2022, non-profit Habitat for Humanity of Archuleta County had been building one affordable home per year, for 28 years, but now made an ambitious plan to build 15 homes over the next 5 years. This effort was made somewhat more feasible when the organization switched from stick-built homes to modular homes trucked in from Albuquerque in two pieces and “stitched together” on concrete foundations.
The effort was partly facilitated by the donation of vacant tax-lien properties by the BOCC.
Not all the efforts to increase our stock of workforce housing have gone smoothly. In particular, perhaps, things have not gone smoothly for the Town of Pagosa Springs, in spite of what seemed like good intentions.
More about those missteps, in a future installment.
Now let’s return to the presentation to the County Commissioners — Veronica Medina, Warren Brown and John Ranson — by Habitat for Humanity Executive Director Leah Ballard on November 18. We introduced that presentation in Part One.
Ms. Ballard had come with a series of Powerpoint slides to illustrate the progress that Habitat has made since 2022, and to justify the financial request she was going to make of the BOCC. She noted that she had met, just the previous evening, with the families selected for the three Habitat homes completed this year, to make sure they understood the deed restrictions and obligations they were agreeing to.
“So that they know what they’re signing up for.”
Deed restrictions included in the deeds for these homes prevent the owners from flipping the homes for a profit, or from renting out the house as a long-term or short-term rental. The deeds also give Habitat “first right of refusal” to buy the homes back from the owners in case of a future sale. Those protections are in place partly to honor the contributions made by the community — by contractors, donors, volunteers and governments — to create these dwellings.
Ms. Ballard:
“Ultimately, our buyers are really making this possible, because they are taking on the responsibility of owning a home — a deed-restricted home. So not only is it a vehicle for generational wealth for the family, but it also adds to our affordable housing stock in Archuleta County. If they move away, it’s deed restricted for the next buyer. That’s a big piece of it.”
Habitat serves families earning between 40-80% of Area Median Income. At the top of that range, a family of four can earn up to $81,000 a year. Since most jobs in Archuleta County pay less than $40,000 a year, and since both parents are typically working in a family of four, this range applies to a large number of working families in Pagosa Springs.
But the family still needs to qualify based on credit history and debt burden, and must be willing to purchase a deed-restricted home. Those can be limiting factors.
As mentioned previously, Habitat made a commitment in 2022 to build “15 Homes in 5 years”.
“Really, the donation of 11 tax-lien lots in 2021 by the County Commissioners was the catalyst. We were stuck building one home per year, for 28 years. And when all of a sudden we had 15 parcels, we decided to build 15 homes in 5 years.
“We were already working towards doing modular construction. Our construction supervisor got licensed to stitch modulars…”
The modulars selected by Habitat arrive in two pieces and have to be “stitched” together by a licensed professional.
“That’s a piece that we heard, when we became a dealer [of modular homes]. If you don’t have a stitcher on staff…
“I guess there are crews that are traveling around the Southwest, stitching modulars together, but as far as the quality and getting it all totally finished, you kind of need a general contractor too. So we have all of that in-house…”