Photo: A PSCDC tour of 10 new workforce housing units in Trails subdivision, September 5, 2024.
I had the pleasure, earlier this month, to tour an unusual housing project in the Trails subdivision. Leading the tour was Emily Lashbrook, Executive Director of the Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation, along with PSCDC Administrative Manager, Kathleen McFadden. Along for the tour was Shirley Diaz, with the Colorado Division of Housing… Archuleta County Commissioner Veronica Medina… Town Community Development Director James Dickhoff… and newly-hired Jeff Sams, PSCDC’s Multi-Jurisdictional Housing Coordinator. The homes are being built by BWD, a local construction company.
We’ll be discussing that PSCDC tour tomorrow. I think it fits well with the theme of “Keeping Pagosa Weird”, as I will attempt to explain.
Just to be perfectly clear: ‘Weird” is sometimes a good thing.
When university students in Austin, Texas, started wearing “Keep Austin Weird” t-shirts, they were endorsing a certain type of community character which was reportedly disappearing, much to the dismay of many Austin residents. Presumably, they didn’t want Austin to become a replica of Silicon Valley, which seemed to be the general direction things were headed.
Maybe Silicon Valley is also weird, but not in a good way?
Yesterday in Part Two, I briefly discussed the new Pagosa Area Recreation Coalition, which has been encouraged by Colorado Parks & Wildlife through a Colorado Outdoor Regional Partnerships grant. The idea of this program is to get recreation advocates working together, driving future recreation developments in a shared direction.
Pagosa has been developing an active ‘recreation culture’ since at least 1970, when Ralph Eaton and his company began buying up ranch properties in what is now called the ‘Pagosa Lakes’ area, with the goal of establishing a community based on outdoor recreation. The development included a 27-hole golf course, several lakes, stretches of greenbelt, a community recreation center and close proximity to thousands of acres of accessible National Forest.
Also during the 1970s, the Wolf Creek Ski Area — started by investors from Monte Vista in the 1950s — was purchased by Kingsbury Pitcher, which led to increased marketing and expansion of the ski hill atop Wolf Creek Pass, a 25-minute drive from Pagosa.
The presence of big game hunters and anglers in the San Juan Mountains dates back to a much earlier time, but other recreational activities like snowmobiling, nordic skiing, hot air ballooning, rafting, tubing, mountain biking, pickleball, four-wheeling, horseback riding, and hiking have continued to grow in popularity, along with team sports for a range of ages.
And I suppose we could include, in the list of recreational options, the visual and performing arts.
None of these recreational activities are ‘weird’ per se. What might be weird, is the popular belief that “recreation” can form the core of a community’s economy, and its social life. But that seems to be the general direction things are headed,
Maybe writing about local politics is also a recreational activity?
Back in 1943, American psychologist Abraham Maslow published a paper entitled “A Theory of Human Motivation” in the journal Psychology Review.. He proposed that humans prioritize their activities and efforts based on a hierarchy of needs and wants. His theory, when discussed by other writers, is often illustrated with a “pyramid” of theoretical motivations, although Dr. Maslow didn’t use a pyramid in his own writings. At the foundation we find physical needs, without which continued human life is impractical, or even impossible.
Some illustrations include ‘sex’ as an essential physiological need, but that seems like a reach, to me. It probably fits better in Level Three.
Once we meet our physiological needs, at the second level we find the desire for ‘safety’.
At the third level, we want to fulfill social needs like friendship and a sense of belonging. If we meet those needs, then we next seek self-esteem, confidence, respect and so forth. Finally, at the fifth level, we can try and fulfill intellectual needs and desires.
The illustration above does not indicate “housing” as a need, but homeostasis — in particular, the avoidance of heat stroke or freezing to death — suggests “housing” belongs in Level One, next to food, water, and sleep. A physiological need.
Nowhere in this chart do we find “recreation” per se. I suppose it might belong at the fourth level, as a form of ‘achievement’ or ‘self-esteem’? Dr. Maslow wrote his paper in 1943, in the midst of World War II, at a time when “recreation” was the last thing on people’s minds.
To meet these needs and wants, humans typically seek to live in communities, where the basics are available — food, water, warmth, a place to sleep — but also where ‘higher’ needs can be met — security for ourselves and our families, friendships, romance — and then, if all those needs are met, we can seek achievements that can be appreciated by others, inside and outside our families. Self-actualization, within a supportive community.
In these communities, we find cooperative efforts to meet a range of needs and desires. We call these cooperative community efforts by a variety of names: business, government, school, nonprofit, club, church, association, etc.
I spend much of my time thinking about, and writing about, governments, because unlike businesses and churches and nonprofits, governments are imposed upon us by a larger community agreement, and by the same community agreement, governments extract taxes to fund their operations and projects.
When people in a community cannot meet their physiological needs — food, water, sleep, housing — we sometimes expect our community organizations to step up and help. In particular, we might expect our governments and non-profits to step up.
Which is exactly what has started to occur here in Archuleta County, around housing.