Housing is where jobs go to sleep at night, and affordable housing is where essential jobs in Eagle County go to sleep at night; this rings true today in Eagle County (credit to Allan Kingston for the paraphrased line).
Much like other rural resort communities in the Rocky Mountain region, our primary problem in Eagle County is affordable workforce housing. Apartment vacancy rates are near zero and the affordability gap on free-market homes exceeds $234,000 for a standard family at 100% of the area median income.
As housing prices increase far faster than area wages, our resort brands create an international demand for limited housing stock, and high land prices make free-market development of affordable units financially unviable to developers.
Vote “YES” on 1A. Simply put, a “YES” vote on ballot issue 1A is a vote to address affordable workforce housing in a meaningful way. Failure to act is not an option.
We need an “all of the above” solution to the workforce housing problem in Eagle County. The model could be similar to those developed by other mountain resort communities around the country. In our case, a 3/10 cent sales tax (three cents on every ten dollars spent, exempting grocery sales) is forecast to cost the average Eagle County resident $42-50 annually and would raise $5.4M annually. This is a small price to pay for community sustainability.
Now is our opportunity to keep our locals local, to invest in the future of our businesses, and to insure jobs have somewhere to sleep at night. It is our responsibility to our current first responders, our teachers, nurses, hospitality workers, entrepreneurs, business owners, prospective business owners, and anyone else who hopes to call this place home. Make no mistake, whatever side wins or loses this issue, it is won or lost in perpetuity.
I’m typically not in favor of doing things because those around you are doing things. We all learned from our mothers that following others can be a recipe for disaster. That said, we can certainly learn from our neighbors in Pitkin, Summit County, and Teton County (Jackson Hole), all of who have developed affordable workforce housing programs to address this community need.
The Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority was founded in 1975, charged with creating a program to provide affordable housing for year-round residents and seasonal workers who were unable to afford to buy at market rates in their resort community. The Aspen/Pitkin employee housing program exists to help people who work within Pitkin County, who would not otherwise have the opportunity to be a part of their community.
Summit County, just over the pass, has a sales tax and in short time have created 337 new workforce housing units through new construction, 13 housing units through other mechanisms, and have acquired 140 acres of land to develop future workforce housing communities.
Teton County has a similar housing program, for similar reasons: median home prices are approaching the $1 million mark. Enter the Teton County Housing Authority, which exists to manage local market and deed-restricted housing occupied by people working locally who would otherwise commute from outside the community. Impressively, the community has set a goal to ensure a variety of workforce housing opportunities exist so that at least 65% of those employed locally also live locally.
Eagle County has no such funding program in place to support our business community and our local workforce. However, much like Pitkin, Summit, and Teton Counties, we have reached the point that our housing market has gotten so difficult for the workforce that our businesses suffer, as evidenced by 95% recognition of housing as a problem in a recent phone survey, and 69% of businesses identifying housing as a major issue in the annual VVP workforce study.
What others have recognized is that affordable workforce housing is not a handout and it is not entitlement. It is win-win for business and community, and our jobs need somewhere to sleep at night. Without workers, business can’t provide the services people are wanting, and without successful businesses our local municipalities and special districts can’t survive and communities can’t thrive.
Unlike our neighbors, we have not addressed the issue in a meaningful and scalable manner. A “yes” vote on issue 1A begins to address affordable workforce housing in a similar manner as our competitors.
Keeping locals local is an essential step to maintaining a sense of community, and a YES vote on issue 1A is a good first step to achieving this goal. Learn more at VoteYeson1A.com.
Chris Romer is president & CEO of Vail Valley Partnership, recently named “Chamber of the Year” by the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives. Learn more at VailValleyPartnership.com and find additional information on Vail Valley Partnership’s public policy positions at https://www.vailvalleypartnership.com/advocacy/vvp-public-policy-positions/.