I’m writing this editorial from a window seat on Alaska Airlines Flight 209, headed for Juneau, Alaska, where the ‘Hudson Family’ will be gathering for a week-long family reunion
My sister Cecilie — my only sibling — and her faithful husband Dave will be arriving with their three adult children and one granddaughter.
My daughter Lily lives in Juneau with her five kids, and she came up with the idea for a family reunion, after my younger daughter Ursala and her two daughters announced plans for a four-month stay in Juneau — for an extended cultural experience. Knowing as they do, that living in Alaska is bound to be a cultural experience.
My son Kahlil and his two kids are also scheduled to arrive, so I will have a chance to hang out with all nine of my grandchildren this week.
Lily and Kahlil were born in Juneau, and spent most of their childhoods there. Ursala, meanwhile, has spent nearly her entire life in Pagosa Springs, as have her two daughters.
The view out the airplane window features the green, rain-blessed coast of British Columbia, as it appears from 30,000 feet.
How will the Hudson Family amuse itself for the next week, in Southeast Alaska’s temperate rain forest? I have no idea.
But that’s a story for a future editorial.
Today, we will continue with a portion of the discussion that took place on Monday, August 24, at a joint meeting of the Pagosa Springs Town Council and the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners, around a draft Housing Action Plan (HAP) that may — or may not — be adopted by both boards in late September or early October. The Monday meeting was surprisingly well-attended for a joint work session; the County staff had to bring in extra chairs to seat the audience.
I assume some version of the HAP will be adopted, since the state of Colorado is now requiring local government to adopt a Housing Action Plan if they hope to be eligible for state-funded housing grants in the future.
At the conclusion of Part Two, we heard County Commissioner Veronica Medina object to what she felt was a crucial detail in the HAP — namely, a suggestion from the out-of-town consultants that our community ought to establish a “multi-jurisdictional housing authority.”
Commissioner Medina addressed the presenter, Mary Chase, :
“This document feels like it’s simply for [creating] a multi-jurisdictional housing authority. It doesn’t read like a sustainable plan as described by [Colorado law] SD24-174. I think it definitely misses the mark. And I say that because we currently have a housing authority… and everything you’ve mentioned up until this point, the current Housing Authority does. They do the land banking, they manage the deed restrictions, they develop projects, they do the property management…”
Commissioner Medina is talking here about the Archuleta County Housing Authority.
The Archuleta County Housing Authority (ACHA) was created back in the 1970s to build and operate a 19-unit subsidized housing project on South 8th Street, to serve elderly and disabled residents who could qualify for federal Section 8 housing vouchers.
Just as the COVID crisis was preparing to arrive, ACHA — under the direction of former County Commissioner Clifford Lucero and his daughter Anissa Griego — was in the midst of its first new housing project in 50 years: the 34-unit Rosa Mountain Townhomes on Hot Springs Boulevard. This was a federally-subsidized Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) project, funded mainly by a wealthy investor who benefited from the tax credits.
Around that same time, an out-of-town consulting group called Root Policy was studying the housing crisis in southwest Colorado, and determined that Pagosa Springs was lacking perhaps 800 units of housing. A more recent housing study, from last year, put the shortage at around 1,300 units.
While those studies were underway, the non-profit Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation (PSCDC) board of directors was coming to the conclusion that the shortage of workforce housing was negatively affecting economic growth in Pagosa, and they directed their staff to figure out how to get more housing built. With the help of state grants and BOCC donations of vacant parcels in the developmentally-challenged Chris Mountain-Pagosa Trails subdivision, ten PSCDC homes were completed in 2024; five more are under construction.
As I sat in the Monday meeting, listening to consultant Mary Chase give an overview of the draft Housing Action Plan, I was seated next to Clifford Lucero and Anissa Griego from ACHA.
Sitting in the next row was Emily Lashbrook, executive director at PSCDC, and the person largely responsible for obtaining grant funding for homes and infrastructure upgrades in the Chris Mountain-Pagosa Trals subdivision.
Although both of these organizations are involved in trying to address the housing shortage in Pagosa Springs, and although both have received donations of vacant land from the BOCC, they are not equally valued by our County Commissioners.
Commissioner Medina has consistently held up the Housing Authority as the key organization that ought to be leading the charge to fix our housing crisis, and has often been outspokenly critical of PSCDC.
Commissioner Warren Brown, meanwhile, serves on the PSCDC board of directors, and has consistently defended the PSCDC and its accomplishments.
Town Housing Coordinator Jeff Sams has his office in the same suite as Ms. Lashbrooke.
Both PSCDC and ACHA can claim accomplishments, and both have supporters on the BOCC and on Town Council. Both are largely government-supported.
But over the past half decade, they’ve added a total of 44 workforce housing units.
We need 1,300?
Perhaps you have read through the draft 43-page Housing Action Plan, and maybe you’re wondering — as I am — how this plan will generate 1.300 affordable housing units over the next decade.
Read Part Four… tomorrow…