ISSUE #255: Subsidized Housing Ownership - A Mess of Our Own Making (7/31/23)

"Never be afraid to speak your mind on relevant issues; good leaders stand for relevance and they are never afraid to face the facts head on. Bad leaders see the problems, close their eyes and do something else."

-- Israelmore Ayivor

You are all very interested in the inner workings of our subsidized housing program and APCHA's policies that always seem to conclude with a desperate need for "more." The unwavering refusal to audit what we already have makes one wonder what it is they're so afraid of. 

This installment illustrates how our elected leadership on city council and the BOCC enables our failed housing policies and program through obliviousness, excuses, ignorance and personal vitriol toward the free market, including a desire to punish it at every turn.

Read my column in yesterday's Aspen Times HERE.

On another note, it would appear that our county commissioners just may have listened to public feedback about the appetite for a tax increase for subsidized housing on this November's ballot. Thanks to each of you who took the time to take the survey I distributed earlier this summer. Your participation most certainly mattered.

It's not official, but it will be soon. If you're so inclined, HERE is a link to submit public comments to the BOCC to let them know that a ballot measure this November to raise taxes for subsidized housing is an outrageous idea given the state of APCHA, the lack of a proper audit of what we already have, who's in it, where they work and how our 6000 bedrooms are being utilized, and their lack of explicit plans to maintain our existing inventory.

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The myth is as old as the program itself. In Aspen, we sell our deed restricted subsidized housing instead of renting it in order to provide a sense of housing security, foster pride of ownership and create more engaged community members. In reality, the sales of “ownership” units have ensured the physical destruction of our housing stock while setting owners up for failure.

From the beginning, sales have never been subject to the 1.5% real estate transfer tax (RETT). On a $200K purchase, this amounts to just $3000, but no, housing, despite being funded by the RETT, would not be subject to it. No skin in the game for subsidized housing owners.

Furthermore, collecting dues and reserves for ongoing and preventative maintenance has never been a priority. And there are no repercussions for not paying; no liens upon sale, just “minimal livability standards” that enable a downward spiral.

Yet there is guaranteed simple appreciation: 3% a year or CPI, whichever is less. Intended to reimburse owners for the costs of maintenance over the term of their ownership, this has instead become ill-gotten bonuses since little to no maintenance is ever performed. There is always someone willing to buy whatever becomes available, in whatever sorry state it’s in. Performing maintenance or making improvements has become an irrational act; owners who actually do pay are the suckers. How’s that for pride of ownership?

Last week there were two “housing” meetings – a joint session of city council and the BOCC, as well as an APCHA board retreat. The APCHA board still has no intention of performing a program census to ascertain who lives in our housing, where they work and the utilization of our 6,000 bedrooms, and their pathetic “seller’s standards” and “right-sizing” experiments are going nowhere fast. They do say they will begin randomly auditing five ownership units a year for compliance. We’ll see.

The joint leadership meeting acknowledged the state of HOA capital reserves is far worse than imagined. Just 29 of 80 HOAs even bothered to participate in the last study in 2011. At the time, only two were properly funded and the deficit was estimated to be over $15 million. That was 12 years ago and not a single thing has been done. They’ll be posting an RFP for a new study sometime in 2024. 

Then came the excuses. Those in ownership units are “housing burdened,” a term recognizing that maintenance comes at free market prices, so that’s why no one does any. Without challenging this critical program failure, the group spent a lot of time discussing how the government (with public dollars) ought to subsidize the fixes. “Personal responsibility” never came up.

County commissioner and APCHA board member Francie Jacober then advocated for “building wealth” through subsidized housing ownership, suggesting appreciation should be higher. While APCHA does have the noble goal of providing affordable housing rental and ownership opportunities, it is not a social welfare organization nor a retirement planner. This preposterous notion of wealth creation reveals that subsidized housing is less about actual housing and far more about wealth redistribution. She just said the quiet part out loud.

Another tell illustrating how far from solving the real housing issues our elected leaders are came from county commissioner Steve Child who invoked the old class warfare dog whistle, “If we could make some of these big private homeowners house more employees, we could make a dent in the problem.” 

Ranting that SkiCo needs to be doing more was also a popular theme. Nice try. The valley’s largest employer has built hundreds of rental units in recent years up and down the valley for its employees, and they know exactly who is in each one and which jobs they perform. (We ought to be emulating SkiCo, not tarring it in this toxic conversation.)

A cursory discussion about the growth implications of housing was completely off the mark, focused on water usage and consumption, as if year-round population increases, traffic and added impacts to existing infrastructure don’t exist. If you ignore the big picture, apparently it goes away.

With no acknowledgment that the system is broken, and without imaginative or results-driven solutions to consider, there wasn’t even a hypothetical discussion of whether an all-rental program would address or eliminate our long list of problems. (It would. Every last one of them.) 

Despite what Mick and Rachel have long espoused, ownership is not required to be an engaged community member. The system they built and the myths around it have trapped good people and stressed their finances to where they make the rational decision to neglect their units, which is both accepted and rewarded. It has also proven detrimental to the long term physical sustainability of our housing stock.

Housing security is a two-way street, and today ours is riddled with potholes. It’s not about being set for life while neglecting the often costly responsibilities of home ownership. Qualified residents who remain in compliance will always be secure, even more so in well-maintained and managed rental units. With rentals, we’d have housing that lasts for many future generations. But not until we dispel the myth.

It doesn’t make financial sense to maintain an ownership unit, so most simply do not. Contact TheRedAntEM@comcast.net