I shared, yesterday, a few comments by Pagosa resident Sarah Troxtell, explaining why she and her husband Travis have purchased a long-abandoned mobile home park about 2 miles south of downtown Pagosa Springs, on Highway 84, with a dream of creating a tiny home village.
The Archuleta County Land Use Regulations define two types of tiny homes. A “Tiny Home” … and a “Tiny House”.
Tiny Home: A Single-Family Dwelling that is permanently constructed on a vehicle chassis; is designed for long-term residency, includes electrical, mechanical, or plumbing services that are fabricated, formed, or assembled at a location other than the site of the completed home; is not self-propelled; has a square footage of not more than four hundred (400) square feet and a length [not more than] than forty (40) feet; and with all appropriate Colorado Division of Housing insignia affixed. A Recreational Vehicle is not considered a Tiny Home.
Tiny House: Single-Family Dwelling smaller than four hundred (400) square feet, constructed on a permanent foundation, designed for long-term residency, and built in compliance with the Adopted Building Codes.
Over the past few decades in America, communities — and the planners who are authorized to design limits on what types of land uses are allowed in those communities — have tended to prohibit small homes, and especially, small dwellings that might threaten the “property values” of other homes in the surrounding neighborhood. This same planning logic has tended to discourage the creation of apartments and mobile home parks, leaving communities with the legal ability to build only the most unaffordable types of housing.
Because houses were seen, not as necessary shelter, but as “investments”… planners and community leaders have tended to prioritize “property values” over “functional economies” when designing local land use codes.
Thus, the 2024 Region 9 Economic Development District analysis of “Livable Wage” calculations in our region, reports that Archuleta County is now the least affordable community in southwest Colorado, with an estimated household income of $105,919 a year needed in order to support a typical family of four.
Travis and Sarah Troxtell have a family of five.
But they’ve decided to try and address the problem of workforce housing — not for themselves, but rather for other working individuals and families in the community.
Their approach, which has thus far been endorsed and encouraged by Archuleta County staff, is to create a “Tiny Home Village”.
Which is slightly different from a “Tiny Home Subdivision.”
From the County Land Use Regulations:
Tiny Home Subdivision: A Common Interest Community where individual Tiny Home Lots are owned by separate owners, also containing Limited and General Common Elements.
Tiny Home Village: An area or site containing two or more Tiny Home spaces for Long-Term Rental, on which Tiny Homes or Park Model/Park Trailers may be parked and used for residential habitation.
As I see the situation…
…as illustrated by skyrocketing prices for single family homes…
… a community like Pagosa Springs, that wants to preserve its diverse community, has a few options, in terms of addressing the housing crisis. Some of the options will be more popular than others.
- Promote tiny home villages in appropriate locations.
- Aggressively encourage affordable housing projects with local and state tax incentives and subsidies — for example, the Timberline Apartments project currently under construction near Walmart, and the 35 homes proposed by the Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation in the Pagosa Trails/Chris Mountain subdivisions.
- Radically change our zoning laws to allow anyone to build anything they want, and live in any type of dwelling.
- Improve the way housing is financed, by creating community-led financing options outside the limitations of conventional banks and lenders.
- Teach people how to build their own homes, and modify regulations to accommodate owner-built houses.
- Create a Community Land Trust to provide vacant land for lower-cost homes.
I understand that some Pagosa Springs residents might not be concerned about the cost of housing for our local workforce. Perhaps some folks would be perfectly content, if Pagosa Springs became another Aspen or Telluride, where only millionaires can afford to live.
Evidently, Sarah and Travis Troxtell are not those folks.
Sarah explained that a strip of land near the Vista mobile home park was being advertised as “the perfect site for a tiny home village”, and that sparked Sarah’s idea that maybe she and Travis could do something similar.
“So I started researching, and Durango has a tiny home village, and another one out by Bayfield. And I thought, ‘This could actually work!’…”
Escalante Village is a 15-minute bike ride to downtown Durango. A shopping center and plenty of amenities are all within easy walking distance, and across the street is access to the Big Canyon/Sale Barn trailheads, which feed into the Horse Gulch trail network.
Hermosa Orchards Village is “a vibrant community located on 7 acres in the beautiful Animas River Valley of Durango, Colorado. We have 22 leased home spaces for tiny homes and park models under 400 sq’…”
One of the newer villages is MarLin Tiny Home Village, located in Bayfield.
Sarah mentioned the potential difficulties in creating a tiny home village within the Pagosa Lakes area, because of the existing PLPOA covenants and restrictions. Working with the Archuleta County Planning Department, however, she and Travis were told that the land use requirements could be adjusted to allow for a tiny home village elsewhere in the county.
“Originally, we thought we would purchase the tiny homes, and rent them out… but because of financing, that model wouldn’t work for us, right away…
“We sold our short-term rental property, because we wanted to fund some of this…”
Travis:
“We’re not going to be able to do all of this at once. It’s doing to be done in phases. When supply meets demand…”
Read Part Three, on Monday…