I intend to drop by the open house at the Ross Aragon Community Center today, Wednesday January 21, between 10am and 12 noon to learn more about the ‘Housing Action Plan’ that will be created over the next several months. According to a state law adopted in 2024 — SB24-174 — an ‘action plan’ is required to be written and adopted by January 1, 2028 by all jurisdictions with more than 5,000 residents.
Archuleta County, with about 14,500 residents, is one of the sponsors of this open house. The other main sponsor, the Town of Pagosa Springs, has less than 5,000 residents but still must adopt a plan due to being defined as a “rural resort community”.
The third sponsor of the event is the Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation (CDC), a local non-profit historically funded mainly by the Town and County governments.
A second ‘drop-in’ session will be held today from 5-7pm.
In a related development, PSCDC Executive Director Emily Lashbrooke appeared at yesterday’s Archuleta Board of County Commissioners meeting to discuss the problems the CDC is currently experiencing with their multi-year effort to build single-family homes affordable to working families in the Trails and Chris Mountain subdivisions.
The problems are also Archuleta County problems, apparently. The County obtained a $650,000 grant through the state’s Prop 123 grant program to help fund dozens of new workforce homes, and the County handed the grant over to the CDC, along with 35 vacant tax lien properties. Ms. Lashbrooke told the commissioners that the County risks losing the $650,000 grant if the CDC doesn’t build enough homes over the next couple of years.
One hurdle that the CDC needs to jump over in order to fulfill this plan: the $25,000-per-home Capital Investment Fee (CIF) charged by Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) for each new house. Without a waiver of those fees, Ms. Lashbrooke explained, the CDC cannot build stick-built homes affordable to the income levels specified by the $650,000 grant.
PAWSD waived the CIF fees for the CDC for Phase 1 in 2024, but declined to waive them for Phase 2 in 2025. As a result of that PAWSD decision and other issues, the CDC built zero new homes in 2025, which put them behind schedule for meeting the requirements of the $650,000 Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) grant.
Disclosure: I currently serve as a volunteer on the PAWSD Board, but this editorial reflects only my own opinions and not necessarily the opinions of the PAWSD Board and staff.
At the Tuesday work session, Ms. Lashbrooke suggested that — because the $650,000 DOLA grant was originally awarded to the County — it might be more appropriate for the BOCC to be the ones asking PAWSD for the CIF waivers for Phase 2. (Considering that the CDC has not had any luck obtaining those waivers so far.)
CDC is facing another financial issue. Eight of the ten waivers granted for Phase 1 specified that the homes would be sold to workforce households earning 80% AMI (Area Median Income) or below. When the Phase 1 homes were sold, however, only one of those eight homes met the required income threshold. PAWSD has asked Ms. Lashbrooke to appear before the PAWSD Board and renew her waivers request for Phase 1, now that we know that most of the income levels that were not met.
Based on the comments I heard at the Tuesday meeting, it sounds like the BOCC might be willing to attend the February 12 PAWSD Board meeting on the CDC’s behalf, and make another appeal for waivers for Phase 2.
But that’s not the only housing issue facing the BOCC this year. On Tuesday afternoon, the BOCC held their regular business meeting, and the first person to step up to the microphone during public comment was Eric Davidson, president of the Aspen Springs Metro District.
“I speak to you today [during public comment] because my request to speak to you in a more suitable venue — i.e. in a work session — was blocked by [County Manager] Mr. Gonzalez, ostensibly with your consent.
“However, the issue at hand is more important than an off-hand dismissal using the universal excuse: ‘We don’t have the money’…”
Clearly, Mr. Davidson was going to ask for something that cost money.
A bit of history. The Aspen Springs subdivision, west of Pagosa Springs, was created in 1968, just before the state of Colorado started requiring residential subdivisions to provide well-designed roads, centralized water and wastewater services, and other accepted featured of civilized society. As a result, the roads were — at first — impassable at certain times of the year, until the residents formed a metro district and agreed to pay higher taxes to fund road improvements and maintenance. Today, Aspen Springs has some of the best-maintained gravel roads in Archuleta County.
But most residents still truck in their water — unless they own a private well — and still deal with their own wastewater.
One of the Aspen Springs neighborhoods — Unit 6 — is especially remote, and accessible by two dirt roads; Indian Land Road and Cat Creek Road. (Unit 6 is indeed located on Southern Ute Indian land.)
I’ve driven Indian Land Road, just once, and hope to never drive it again. I’ve also driven Cat Creek Road, which happens to be a County road, ostensibly maintained by County Road and Bridge.
This conversation at the Tuesday BOCC meeting ties in with the subject of this editorial series because many of the 300 or so Aspen Springs households living year-round in RVs happen to live in Unit 6…