Housing effects everyone; it touches us in ways we may not realize. Without sufficient housing, our children can’t learn from great teachers, and our seniors won’t have excellent medical care…
— From an August 2018 press release distributed by Pagosa Housing Partners
As mentioned last week in Part One of this editorial series, the Pagosa Springs Town Council had a couple of key items on its agenda on October 2. One was the presentation of survey data from the Pagosa Housing Partners (PHP), the new housing non-profit that the Town Council funded this past summer with a $50,000 grant.
PHP hopes to develop a county-wide plan by the end of the year, to help address the housing crisis in Archuleta County. Last summer, they distributed a 16-question Housing Needs survey to get a better handle on which segments of the community are struggling most with housing issues. We might (easily?) guess that people living below the Poverty Line are having the most difficult time, and also might lack the resources — financial and informational — to address their own problems successfully. But that’s only a guess, and we have only limited data to help us define exactly where the problems are most severe.
The 2018 survey by PHP was meant to provide some of the missing data, and analysis. We will get back to the October 2 PHP presentation in a moment, but I first want to mention that the Town Council had another key item on their agenda.
The Town’s 2019 Budget.
Here in Colorado, most local government agencies (of which we have a fair number) are legally required to approve their “draft budget” by October 15. Once the draft budget is approved, it must be made available for public review, so that the taxpayers can discover how and where the agency plans to spent its revenues during the coming year. The agency’s governing board must then schedule a public hearing, to allow the taxpayers to make suggestions and recommendations, prior to the approval of a final budget.
Once the final budget is approved, the agency must align its spending with the approved document, throughout the coming year. Generally speaking.
There are exceptions to that rule, especially if the agency happens to be a “Home Rule” town such as Pagosa Springs, in which case the Town Council might seem to be making up new spending rules whenever it seems convenient.
Town Manager Andrea Phillips presented a draft Town of Pagosa Springs budget on October 2, and it was approved by the Council that evening. We’ll be talking more about the draft budget, in reference to affordable housing… but first, let’s finish listening to the PHP Housing Needs Survey analysis, as presented by PHP data analyst Joanne Whitney.
Ms. Whitney had just finished explaining that, according to the new survey, a significant portion — more than 75 percent — of the lowest-paid workers in Archuleta County were paying more than the recommended 30 precent of family income on their housing. In many cases, these families and individuals are paying more than 50 precent of their monthly income on housing — defining them as exceptionally ‘cost burdened.’
Many of the lowest-paid respondents had no housing costs at all, however, because they had no permanent housing. They were instead living in tents, vehicles, RVs or crashing on friends’ couches.
PHP asked survey respondents to define their preferred housing type, by ranking choices as most satisfying (5) to least satisfying (1). The survey did not reference the cost of the various options, however. Would a respondent prefer a single family home, if the cost were three times the cost of a rented condo, for example? PHP didn’t get that level of information from the survey.
“Single Family Home” was by far the most preferred option, as shown by the light blue color coding… with “Condo/Townhome” as the second most popular option, overall:
They say, “All housing is local.” Every community has its own, somewhat unique housing market, based on its own somewhat unique history and economy. The American Dream, however, has long been focused on “The Single Family Home with a 30-Year Mortgage” as the ideal housing situation. That was the Dream when I was a child, growing up in the 1950s, and it still seems the predominant choice for most Americans — and especially, for the government leaders and bureaucrats who define our nation’s housing policies.
Which is not say that “The Single Family Home With a 30-Year Mortgage” is in any way attainable for most working class folks, in Archuleta County in 2018. But it remains the Dream… as we note, once again, in this graphic analysis of the PHP survey responses:
Yes, many respondents picked “Single Family Home” as their most preferred choice. But that’s not the full story… because 30 percent of the respondents did not choose “Single Family Home” as their Number One Choice. That’s nearly one-in-three households.
Also worth noting: 21 percent of respondents picked “Place to Park my RV/Tiny Home” as their first or second choice — and 25 percent picked “Condo/Townhome” as their first or second choice.
PHP has not yet correlated these preferences with ‘cost burdened’ households. For example, did most of the folks, who are currently paying over 50 percent of their income for housing, say they prefer a “Place to Park My RV/Tiny Home”? We don’t yet know.
At the end of the survey document, PHP asked whether the respondent was considering leaving Archuleta County, and if so, why.
Contemporary American society is mobile. We expect people to move into and out of our communities, as suits their mood. (Keeps the real estate industry thriving, for one thing.) Over the past decade, some American cities have lost population, for whatever reasons — while many cities have gained population. The town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, for example, lost about 9 percent of its population between 2010 and 2017. According to an article in USA Today, that was the largest population loss (percentage-wise) of any American town or city. (You can read that article here.) That’s a population loss of about 1 percent per year.
On the other side of the balance sheet, a Florida city called ‘The Villages’ grew its population by nearly 33 percent between 2010 and 2017. That’s more than 4 percent growth per year.
How’s Archuleta County doing? Our population grew by about 9 percent between 2010 and 2017 — from about 12,084 to about 13,315. About 1 percent per year. Some people left, but more people arrived.
Quite a few of the PHP survey respondents said they were thinking about leaving.
In fact, about 30 percent of the survey respondents were thinking about leaving Archuleta County, as shown by the green color. Another 8 percent weren’t sure.
That rough percentage applied to every segment of the economy: teachers, nurses, firefighters, police, clerks, sanitation workers, restaurant workers, maids, landscape gardeners. Workers in pretty much every industry… as shown by the orange bars in this PHP graphic:
Why would you want to leave this beautiful little town?