ISSUE #217: Aspen vs The Worker (3/27/22)

"Though we may not desire to detect fraud, we must not, on that account, endeavor to be insensible of it, for, as cunning is a crime, so is duplicity a fault, and if men dread knaves, they also despise fools."

-- Norm MacDonald

The obscene push to build up our subsidized housing inventory at any cost continues to reveal itself as more than just an idealistic yet misguided notion, therefore it warrants repeating: our housing "crisis" is not a shortage, rather the result of inefficient management of a very robust portfolio. 

Furthermore, the entire premise of the purported need for "more" is based on a severely flawed consultant's report - the consultant himself admitted recently that to arrive at the "3000 unit shortfall" figure, "there is no formula." Yet this is at the heart of Aspen's strategic housing plan.

With the current plans in place, we can build and build and build, and add hundreds or thousands of units to our housing stock, but until any new units are designed as "worker housing," we will only make our current labor and workforce housing shortage worse. And that is exactly what we are on track to do.

Read my column in today's Aspen Times HERE.

* * * * *

All the talk of drastic changes to Aspen’s Land Use Code that will directly benefit the local subsidized housing coffers and result in tangibly addressing a purported 3,000 unit shortfall is very exciting, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, when you pull back the curtain and focus the binoculars, it’s all a charade, smoke and mirrors, lip service. It is distinctly not about housing the workforce. It’s about growth. In fact, if even a tenth of the preposterous 3,000 unit target is actually created (at the Lumberyard, for example), none of those units will be for community and resort service workers. None. Our future “Lumberjacks” will be families and middle class folks who live in for-sale 1-, 2- and 3-bedroom units. The workers who are essential to the resort, the ones we have been desperate to hire all season who keep the kitchens staffed, the stores open and the lifts running, won’t be moving in. These folks are looking for seasonal rentals. But the rental units planned for the Lumberyard will be leased through APCHA, which gives priority to people who have lived longest in the county. 

This is all by design. Despite all the hype, the city’s strategic housing plan is anything but pro-worker. And in typical fashion, the city’s defensive way of circumventing accountability is to vilify those asking the hard questions and deem them “anti-housing,” a pejorative right up there with “racist.” And to question why the Lumberjacks get 1.4 parking spaces per household is grounds for public denigration. Don’t I know it. The mere suggestion of a contemporary, car-free, climate-conscious and green subdivision in line with our stated community values makes me a heretic at best and Leona “only the poor pay taxes” Helmsley at worst. Wouldn’t a better metaphor have been Marie Antoinette, as in “let them ride the bus”? I digress.

City council has demonstrated that they are not at all serious about addressing our current housing crisis, which, as I’ve written many times before, is not a shortage. We have plenty of inventory. We are just not managing it efficiently and there is no will to correct the many problems. Nor is the city looking at our housing needs, and that’s for workforce housing. They prefer to focus on the unlimited demand for affordable housing in Aspen because asking people what they want is far less “triggering” than enforcing rules or, heaven forbid, conducting a housing program audit or independent housing needs assessment. Mandatory right-sizing is out, and the impending “silver tsunami” of retirees is simply a datapoint in the argument for building more. Besides, people are threatened by transparency, enforcement, and change, and we wouldn’t want that, now would we?

In a letter to a constituent, councilwoman Rachel Richards asserts that subsidized housing is in fact not for the workforce, rather it’s for people with “jobs and professions that ‘regular’ towns have.” Another indication of council’s lack of concern for our worker housing needs is confirmation from the assistant city manager that a new, fledgling regional housing coalition “is not limiting the target audiences exclusively to the workforce.”

In the meantime, we have a real labor crisis, and no one in a position to do anything about it is looking at this critical issue in tandem with our housing needs. A 2017 regional housing study is the source of the “3,000 unit shortage” assertion that has become a de facto goal, despite no one at the city understanding the methodology used to get there.

Nor does the Basalt attorney who spearheaded the study; he refers all queries to the consultant who conducted it, who reveals that the employee who led the effort has left the firm, and admits that alas, “there is no formula.” The 165-page document contains one sentence on one page that states, “In 2017, the area had a 3,000-unit shortfall, which is projected to increase to 3,400 units by 2027.” And this is what we’re working from and treating as doctrine. Phooey. We don’t need a bunch of consultants to tell us that the region generates more demand for housing than it has. That’s obvious. But it’s time to stop building for unlimited demand and instead address the community’s needs.

How can the city acknowledge that “employment growth is among lower incomes, yet household growth is among higher incomes” while justifying what they’re planning at the Lumberyard unless they don’t give a rip about solving our workforce housing issue? 

City council firmly intends for worker housing to be solved by employers, while the government subsidizes a middle class.  Employers, are you hearing this? Fellow citizens? Visitors? We pay into the RETT and make contributions through the sales tax with an expectation that the government will be building, providing and managing sufficient housing for a workforce that is essential to the machinations of our resort community.

Sadly, city decision-makers do not see the housing crisis the same way. In their eyes, it’s not about housing workers to keep businesses open and the resort running. It’s about providing housing for people who want to live affordably in Aspen, which they call “community housing.”

So don’t be fooled. Whether it’s the addition of 300 or 3,000 subsidized housing units, without addressing the underlying needs of the community, all we will get is growth, and our labor and worker housing issues will be worse than ever. 

Raise your hand if you are a worker who would eschew your car to live your best climate-conscious life in a brand new, taxpayer-subsidized, car-free rental unit? Contact TheRedAntEM@comcast.net

ISSUE #216: Flouting Aspen's Climate Goals at the Lumberyard (3/20/22)

"Your hypocrisy insults my intelligence."

-- Toba Beta

As city council works to finalize its plans for the ill-conceived subsidized housing project at the Lumberyard (plans are coming together at warp speed) despite no independent housing needs assessment, no specifics on the project's cost or how they plan on paying for it, nor any answers for the community (the WHOLE community, not just the APCHA community and APCHA-aspiring community) how the housing fund and all the planned taxes and fees necessary will benefit all of us, it is important to recognize that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about this development will even begin to address the provision of much-needed housing for the workforce.

Furthermore, the impacts of this enormous 10.5-acre development on the environment will be horrific - beginning with sprawl and continuing with the traffic, and that's just to start. The plan for 432 parking spaces (1.4 per unit) illustrates just how hypocritical Aspen is when it comes to its virtue-signaling climate agenda.

Read my column in today's Aspen Times HERE.

******

Aspen has long had a working lumberyard at its entrance, which is strangely incongruous with its environmental proclamations. The 10.5-acre edifice to trees that are no longer alive and are soon headed to construction projects in the area belies both the community’s aspirational legacy of climate leadership and palpable disdain for growth and development. It has been an ironic welcome from the vantage point of Highway 82, notably for drivers stalled in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

The site was targeted in 2008 for “land banking,” where the city paid an absurd $18 million with no appraisal at the top of the 2008 real estate market to acquire a property that would someday address the community’s future subsidized housing needs. Here we are, 14 years later, and that someday is today. 

Despite community outcry for a formal housing needs assessment before proceeding, plans for 310 subsidized housing units, comprised of 1-, 2- and 3-bedrooms, moved one step closer last week. The Lumberyard is slated to become more of the same, but this time with individual mudrooms and storage units, balconies, high quality interior finishes and multi-story townhouse-style floorplans. For whom? It’s anyone’s guess.

Most alarming, however, is the pathological focus on parking. Cost be damned, the plan includes 432 parking spaces, both underground and surface, the equivalent of 1.4 cars per unit. Scheduled for groundbreaking in 2024 with initial phase move-in in 2027, we are officially building a massive new subsidized housing project at Aspen’s traffic choke-point, replete with parking for a fleet of vehicles necessitating a new traffic light and poised to bring our traffic problem to its literal breaking point. Does the city really believe that hundreds more cars entering Highway 82 at that juncture won’t have an impact? And what about air quality? What ever happened to our bold Climate Action Plan, formerly known as The Canary Initiative? Have we forgotten our lauded goals to promote environmental stewardship and lead climate action efforts throughout the Roaring Fork Valley in partnership with leaders across the state and around the world? How quickly we subvert our community values when building more subsidized housing.

Aspen’s efforts toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions and goals of a low-carbon future are laughingly incompatible with the current plans for The Lumberyard, regardless of employing sustainable materials and electrified buildings. Why wouldn’t we attempt to live our community values, not just virtue signal them? We could actually have something physical to show the world, since we always assume everyone is looking to us as the great example. Isn’t it finally time for Aspen to create a modern, dense, green, sustainable, car-less community, along the transit route, that addresses the community’s needs (workforce housing) and exemplifies its values (climate action)?  

Strangely, councilwoman Rachel Richards recently spoke out to extol the virtue of cars, and defended residents of The Lumberyard’s need for (at least) one per household, despite Aspen’s robust, existing regional transportation system, our vast network of trails, and the potential for innovative and contemporary intermodal solutions.

But perhaps most hypocritical was an exchange with councilman Ward Hauenstein. When asked why such an avowed environmentalist had not even asked city staff about a car-free option, if for no other reason than consideration and contrast, he pointed to public outreach. Yes, feedback from subsidized housing aspirants who expressed their desires for what they want for themselves on the public dime. It is his belief that, and I quote, “not listening to what people want is authoritarian.” Oh, I see. Not only will the inmates run the asylum, they will design it and we will build whatever it is they want. But it gets better. In a petty attempt to ridicule my political leanings, Hauenstein continued, “Forcing government’s desires on people is not Libertarian. Government injection into real estate transactions is not Libertarian.” Oh, okay, Ward. How quickly he forgets that we are talking about a publicly subsidized housing project in 21^st Century Aspen. And the environment. And a suggestion to simultaneously do the right thing for the community, the planet and local workers who will have an opportunity, not a requirement, to live there. 

It’s 2022, and of all places, Aspen ought to be noting world-wide trends in post-pandemic community planning, where predictions of reassessments of zoning and development regulations are expected, with an eye toward vibrancy, flexibility and inventiveness. We’re lucky, our community is located within a national forest, so we have a natural advantage and jump start at strengthening our connections with nature, as much for aesthetic reasons as for mental health. Innovative transportation and alternate solutions will be designed for people and the planet, not cars. The largest disruption will be a focus on intermodal mobility: walking and cycling spaces with public transportation provided as a service. And the move away from cars will enable neighborhoods to expand their public, open spaces into high-performance and flexible uses. With less focus on driving, The Lumberyard has the potential to defy its unfortunate name and location, and instead become the embodiment of Aspen’s environmental aspirations.

Build it and they will come. And surely the canaries will too. How about we try leading by example?

What is Aspen’s reticence to do something truly bold, especially something that checks so many critical boxes? Could it be that climate-wise we are just a bunch of virtue-signaling hypocrites? Contact TheRedAntEM@comcast.net

ISSUE #215: 3,000 More Units is 12 Centennials (2/13/22)

"Unrealistic expectations are often the seeds of bitterly stuffed emotions."

-- Lysa TerKeurst

ASPEN TIMES COLUMN

As the housing debate continues, city council presses on with its far-fetched plans to build our way out of our housing crisis. The latest push stems from a flawed regional housing study that measures consumer demand for subsidized housing (a limitless pool) instead of community need. 

In addition to preposterous fees and tax increases, the buy-down of free market real estate for re-sale is also on the table. The collective brainpower on council does not recognize that an additional 3,000 units occupied 24-7-365 will double our population and collapse our small town infrastructure. Nor do they clearly state how they plan to pay for it all.

Read my column in today's Aspen Times HERE.

LEGAL EAGLES?

Thank you for your responses to my last column regarding 16 Ajax Avenue, the subsidized housing unit in terrible disrepair that neither Alpine Bank nor APCHA wants to address. HERE is that column.

The stalemate continues. Alpine is getting paid by the girlfriend of the bankrupt and out-of-compliance owner so they won't foreclose. APCHA won't do anything until the title is clear, despite the obvious non-compliance. The bankruptcy trustee can't move the bankruptcy forward because the owner won't pay court costs.

Can someone please explain to me how a property owner in bankruptcy can effectively halt bankruptcy proceedings? And can someone else explain why a bank (and a community bank at that) would hesitate foreclosing, when there are numerous other factors (property taxes in arrears, HOA dues in arrears, no homeowner's insurance) that make it possible. What is going on at Alpine Bank? We all know how APCHA operates - and surprisingly, no one on council cares, despite our housing crisis.

I would really like to help the contracted buyers. Is there a legal case here? Equally corrupt, Alpine and APCHA have decided to go dark and ignore the whole situation.

******

As city council plows forward in its unguided quest to deliver more subsidized housing, numerous formal and ad hoc groups have been meeting to discuss the flawed premise driving this alarming push. Bright minds and fact-based policy discussion are what this topic has long deserved.

How did we get here? After the resort opened in 1948, Pitkin County began to grow, and it really got cooking in the 1960s when the population increased over 10% and Cemetery Lane, Mountain Valley, Aspen Square, and the Smuggler and Aspen Village trailer parks were built. The population grew 5% during the 1970s, which ushered in the Airport Business Center, the high school campus, the hospital on Castle Creek, as well as Midland Park, Aspen’s first foray into subsidized housing. The 1980s delivered the massive Centennial and Hunter Creek housing projects to address the community’s growing workforce housing needs. 

In the 1990s, when the Ritz Carlton, the elementary school and new library were developed, population growth slowed to 1.6%, but subsidized housing was built in earnest, with Williams Ranch, Ute City Place, Common Ground and Twin Ridge among the largest. In the 2000s, while population growth remained low (1.5%), the Grand Hyatt, Obermeyer Place and the new hospital were developed, and the subsidized housing boom continued with North Forty, Highlands Village, Burlingame 1, among many others. In the 2010s, population growth was all but flat, yet the subsidized housing portfolio grew substantially: Burlingame 2, 488 Castle Creek and more. 

Today, with a population of 17,558 and 3,200 subsidized housing units in inventory, we await 79 new units at Burlingame 3 and anticipate 310 more at the Lumberyard. But it doesn’t end there. A flawed 2017 regional housing study concludes that Aspen is still 3,000 units short. In addition to being preposterous, the whole premise of the study is wrong. It is entirely focused on consumer demand for affordable housing in Aspen, and who doesn’t want that? Demand for any valuable public good provided at a price far lower than its free market equivalent is essentially unlimited. Consumer demand is a free market construct and the absolute wrong way to evaluate the community’s subsidized housing needs. We should be looking at services requiring workers, not households desiring housing.

But we’re not. The city’s strategic housing plan has been released and it is anything but strategic. With predictable, conveniently cherry-picked elements from the Aspen Area Community Plan (AACP) and the omission of critical considerations therein, the city boldly prioritizes the development of more housing and onerous new fees to pay for it before any straightforward solutions such as right-sizing, inventory maintenance and the lowest-hanging fruit of all, compliance enforcement. It is obviously politically unpopular for city officials to optimize our current housing inventory and far sexier to play developer, therefore, the conspicuous solutions are at the very bottom of the priorities list. In addition to increased fees and taxes, the plan calls for more “policy actions” and making Aspen a “safe and lived-in (subsidized) community of choice,” replete with “childcare, healthcare, housing, transit, parks, recreation and technological connectivity.” 

In an alarming revelation, the concept of “buying down” free market real estate and selling it on a deeply discounted basis to “locals” to deliver another 3,000 units of subsidized housing is actually a consideration. For scale, 3,000 units is best illustrated by 12 Centennials (the “blue roofs”). Building or obtaining that quantity of in-town real estate would be nothing short of astonishing, both in its earth-shattering cost and devastating infrastructure implications.

Historically, as our community grew, we saw the impacts of growth and sprawl, and addressed these with strategic tools such as building housing for the workforce, conservation efforts and the urban growth boundary. Today, however, the community has reached build-out. We are no longer physically growing, yet we still have troubling issues: traffic, a need for workers, re-development and the rise of short-term rentals. In this post-growth stage, these new impacts cannot be addressed the same way we addressed the earlier ones. We can’t build our way out of our problems. We need new tools.

We have been very successful with our community planning. (The 1966 AACP projected a local population of 38,000.) We have managed our growth, and while doing so, built a substantial subsidized housing portfolio of over 8,200 deed-restricted bedrooms, enough to house 68% of our entire workforce (not just those who work in the community and resort service industry) and 57% of our entire population. That we do not is because of deliberate policy decisions not to optimize our housing capacity.

Our electeds, who have blindly accepted the flawed housing study as well as city staff’s glossy housing plan, ignore the fact that 3,000 more housing units, wherever they are, will effectively double our population. That is real growth.

We were once the gold standard for subsidized housing. Today, we are an example of what not to do. But it’s not too late. We are leap years ahead of other mountain resorts who are currently scrambling to build housing for their workforces. We have the inventory, we have the capacity, we just need the will. We can address our housing issues without hammering a nail.

Another piece of low-hanging fruit? Enable businesses to participate in the APCHA housing lottery. This all but ensures that we are housing actual workers.  Contact TheRedAntEM@comcast.net

ISSUE #213: APCHA Apocalypse on Ajax Avenue (1/30/22)

"There's a sense that there is a culture of cronyism and corruption and incompetence."

-- Norman Ornstein

ASPEN TIMES COLUMN

I will not stop reporting on the abuses at APCHA, Aspen's subsidized housing program. 

My column in today's Aspen Times (HERE) updates on the pitiful saga of 16 Ajax Avenue that I wrote about last spring. That this continues to this day is a shameful example of APCHA's ineptitude and indifference, and when combined with cronyism at our local Alpine Bank, this has truly become a community embarrassment.

*******

The saga of 16 Ajax Avenue has become a metaphor for all that is corrupt, chaotic, lawless and in decline about APCHA, Aspen’s publicly subsidized housing program. 

I first wrote about the free-standing modular home that has been under contract since August 2020 nearly one year ago when I described the lengthy escrow and agonizing process the buyers have endured while trying to buy a subsidized housing unit in terrible disrepair. Unbelievably, it continues to this day. 

To recap, there are liens on the property exceeding twice its value, and the sale cannot occur until the title is clear. Currently seeking bankruptcy protection which won’t happen until his court fees are paid, the seller, Michael Goldman, neglected the property for a decade before abandoning it altogether. He now lives in Denver. In the fall of 2020, he ignored the contracted buyers’ requests to turn on the heat, directly resulting in burst pipes and detrimental water damage that December. Inspectors have since deemed the APCHA home uninhabitable. Professional recommendations are to scrape and replace it, but Aspen’s onerous permits, fees and regulations for new construction preclude this as a viable option for the buyers. Their original intended course of action was to gut and rebuild. Last year’s cost estimates were well north of $200K, and they’re far greater today. Added to the $304K purchase price when the APCHA-capped resale limit is $406K, this makes zero financial sense.

Recall that APCHA was fully aware of serious structural issues and the home’s condition prior to it being listed for sale. Once under contract, APCHA, serving as a transactional broker in the deal, effectively washed its hands of the issues, repeatedly directing the buyers to negotiate with the bankrupt seller on the long list of fixes. 

No one was particularly surprised three weeks ago when 16 Ajax Avenue experienced a massive water main break underneath the home, a full year after the previous incident. This time, torrential water ran for over 48 hours, damaging several neighboring homes as well as a structural retaining wall, while fingers were pointing in every direction. APCHA claimed “not our problem,” and the city water department deemed the issue the owner’s responsibility. When a plumber failed to stop the deluge, city crews eventually entered the home and turned the water off. Alpine Bank, which holds the mortgage, was made aware of the episode, yet remained silent. As the neighbors clean up, surely additional liens will be placed on the property.

In what appears to be some sketchy back-room dealings, the highest management levels of Alpine Bank have been slow-walking formal foreclosure proceedings on the property. For the longest time, no one could figure out why. It has recently been revealed that Goldman has a co-signer on his mortgage who, despite not being on the property deed, is making his payments. APCHA says its hands are tied until foreclosure ensues and the title is clear, yet Alpine, feeling no pressure from APCHA despite Goldman’s known non-compliance with the program’s rules, has no current plans to foreclose because of the detrimental - and increasing - financial burden it would place on the co-signer, obviously a special customer. Besides, they’re getting paid. Today the 980 sf “home” remains empty, despite our local housing crisis, in irreparable damage and deteriorating by the day - a blight on and danger to the surrounding neighborhood. All the while, APCHA and Alpine Bank remain in their conveniently irresponsible stalemate, ignoring the ticking time-bomb and disrespecting the contracted buyers with dismissive communications.

This comes as APCHA recently announced a pilot program (?? link to https://www.aspentimes.com/news/pilot-inspection-program-considered-for-aging-units-in-aspens-housing-program/) to address the sale of uninhabitable units in its housing inventory, a growing problem particularly in the mobile home category. It has been deemed financially and often structurally impossible to require sellers to meet minimum standards prior to listing these older units for sale. The plan is for the housing authority to purchase uninhabitable mobile homes in its inventory from sellers, replace these with new modular ones and then sell them. Newly adopted “seller standards” will ostensibly ensure ongoing maintenance by the new owners. The program is set to focus initially on the Woody Creek mobile home park, but given APCHA’s role in this ongoing saga, 16 Ajax Avenue should obviously become test case #1.

All the buyers want is a home of their own, which they legitimately won in the housing lottery. Having liquidated investments 18 months ago for the purchase, the buyers have not only been put through hell, but have incurred both real and opportunity costs: foregone investment appreciation, increased mortgage interest rates, payment of experts, time expended and painful uncertainty. 

It’s time for management at Alpine Bank and APCHA to sit down tomorrow, take whatever steps necessary to clear the title, expedite the sale and replace 16 Ajax Avenue.  These two parties are a community embarrassment for allowing a clear case of non-compliance and willful neglect to escalate to this extent, resulting in the destruction of a home intended for a local working family and now damaging its neighbors. Figure it out and fix it.

How is Goldman’s non-compliance any different than Mulcahy’s? And who is Alpine Bank really protecting, and why? Contact TheRedAntEM@comcast.net

ISSUE #212: The "L" Word, II (1/16/22)

"Excluding certain problems from the political debate by making it a crime to discuss them won't lead to the disappearance of these concerns, let alone contribute to a solution."

-- Geert Wilders

ASPEN TIMES COLUMN

The debate rages on. While I stick to the facts, not feelings, Aspen's entrenched Subsidized Housing Industrial Complex continues to lash out in defense of its failed policies.

The blowback has kept this topic in the newspapers for several weeks. And the most emotional arguments only serve to illustrate my point that APCHA has become a mismanaged and unsustainable entitlement program that, without wide-scale reforms, cannot survive.

Read my column in today's Aspen Times HERE.

* * * * * * * 

What is a “local”? I’ve been writing The Red Ant for many years and originally raised this vexing question in 2009. The answer wasn’t entirely clear then, and it’s even less so today. 

Long the source of small-town pride, being an Aspen “local” has always been brag-worthy and cool, replete with accompanying privileges: local’s discounts, local’s night, local’s passes. But just how is “local” status attained? Okay, so you have to live here. But where; what about Pitkin County or Snowmass? And for how long? Is there a threshold after which you’re officially in the club? What happens if you lived here but now you’re only part-time? How does one stay in “local” compliance? Do you have to own your home? What about renters, some of whom have rented for many years? Does a new lease with that address on a driver’s license count? Surely it can be a combination of things, but which ones? Do those in free market housing qualify? And are there special rules for them? Are residents of subsidized housing a special class because they work or used to work here? What about other workers? Mayor Torre frequently refers to “actual locals.” How this this group different? 

Most importantly, who decides?

The reason for my renewed interest in “what is a local” is, of course, local politics, no pun intended. The recent emergency ordinance freezing new short term rental as well as development permits purports to be because these economic activities are detrimental to the community, specifically because they “displace locals.” That’s a weighty accusation for sure, but without knowing who is a “local,” it’s next to impossible to corroborate the veracity of this claim. 

There was certainly a time in our none-too-distant past when Aspen was experiencing tremendous growth. “Scrape and replace” projects were rampant while the town, resort and community were evolving.  During this period of development and growth, there was indeed worker “displacement,” and the community boldly responded to these impacts with the real estate transfer tax (RETT), employee mitigation and a growth management quota system (GMQS) to create and develop subsidized housing. As a result of that foresight, today we have a subsidized housing portfolio with over 3,000 units, housing those who are undeniably “locals,” except of course for the scofflaws, but I digress.

Today, confirmed by the 2020 US Census, we are now in the post-growth stage. Our population has only grown 1.2% and new housing units grew just 2.3% in the past decade. We are not growing and are development-wise at what is called “build-out.” This does not mean there will be no more construction. The development pipeline is full, and beyond that, there will always be re-development, which is technically “economic activity,” not growth. It’s a great accomplishment to achieve a high level of economic activity without growth. And yes, economic activity has real impacts, but these are quite different from the impacts of growth. We absolutely need to look at STRs and re-development and how these impact the community. New impacts call for new tools. Where we once built our way out of the impacts of growth with more growth, we cannot continue to do that. We don’t want more growth, and besides, we’re out of space.

Aspen is generations ahead of other mountain resort communities who are scrambling to respond to the impacts of the Great Migration and the Great Resignation by developing and growing to accommodate their displaced workforces. We’re playing a different game. We too have a housing crisis, but it’s not a shortage. If we manage our existing inventory efficiently, we don’t need more. 

Back to the question of what is a “local” and why it matters. Simply put, it doesn’t. The recent blowback for challenging the assumptions of the emergency ordinance has been swift and heated. She who reveals the sordid underbelly of the subsidized housing “sacred cow” is immediately vilified. I’ve heard from “longtime locals,” “retired locals” and “local” politicians who fervidly ignore the facts. (Recall, these are the housing authority’s and census bureau’s facts, not mine.) Unless we want real growth via changes to our urban growth boundary and land use code, we need to completely overhaul our housing program to make it efficient. Ironically, to a one, the admonitions each acknowledge that our housing program is a disaster, but mere suggestions of ways to save it are apparently insulting, exclusionary and “reek of elitism.” 

I love the debate. These emotional outbursts and personal condemnations only serve to further illustrate my point. I remind, according to the AACP, our guiding document, subsidized housing in Aspen is a privilege, not a right. Yet some “locals” in subsidized housing and their outspoken counterparts insist that the current rules that permit keeping one’s empty bedrooms empty, passing one’s unit to a child, building new ownership units for anyone who wants to live affordably in Aspen and enabling everyone to retire in their units are sacrosanct; aspiring “local” workers and the critical worker housing needs of the community be damned.

 To which I say, “Pssssst, your entitlement is showing.” (Might want to tuck that back in.)

No one is suggesting anyone in compliance lose their housing. We do, however, need to make changes on a “moving forward” basis because the current housing program is unsustainable. Contact TheRedAntEM@comcast.net

ISSUE #210: The Housing Fix is In (1/2/22)

"When you don't take a stand against 

corruption, you tacitly support it."

-- Charles Caleb Colton

The truth hurts. And when APCHA's own data shows that the perceived "housing shortage" in Aspen isn't a shortage at all, but rather a terribly mismanaged taxpayer subsidized housing program, it's time to get real.

What at one point was the gold standard in the subsidized housing world, Aspen's corrupt and broken 3,000 unit program is now the poster-child of what not to do. Today, APCHA prioritizes housing middle-class families and retirees - none of whom work or even consider working in the service industry - over the actual workforce needed to run the resort.

The "workforce housing shortage" is a canard. There is plenty of housing but it is just not efficiently managed. And it will be full of retirees in a matter of years.

Short of IMMEDIATE AND DRASTIC changes, the status quo will sink us. We're already well on the way. And no matter what we build or where, we cannot build our way out of this mess.

Read my column in today's Aspen Times HERE.

And if you are a CITY OF ASPEN REGISTERED VOTER, please contact me to sign the petition to repeal the recent emergency ordinance. It is all a distraction from the local government's failure to properly manage its multi-billion dollar subsidized housing portfolio. They intend to blame and punish the free market for their own failures. Let's stop them in their tracks.

PS On a much lighter note, check out THIS letter to the editor that ran in today's Aspen Daily News, courtesy of local writer Jay Cowan. I was simply tickled. "Queen Elizabeth" does have a nice ring to it.

******

The subsidized housing industrial complex has been unmasked. Revealed through facts, not feelings, Aspen’s worker housing shortage is not due to a lack of inventory. With over 3,000 subsidized housing units of various bedroom sizes in the APCHA inventory, today’s shortage is due to a mismanaged housing program that enables empty bedrooms and prioritizes housing middle class families and retirees over the actual workforce. 

To deflect, the city of Aspen points its fingers at free market real estate, claiming the “great harm” it does to the community, when in fact, it is the free market that provides jobs, generates tax revenue and supports our local businesses. What is doing great harm is the lack of leadership and political will to address our housing problem with the same fervor that we attack the free market. Local bureaucrats refuse to quantify how much new housing will ever be enough. Are they ignorant, just thinking about this for the first time, or defiant, knowing but ignoring the facts because the answer must always be “more”?  The recent emergency ordinance sends one message to free market, “You have too much so we’re coming for you.”

Unsurprisingly, councilman Skippy Mesirow intends to add “thousands” of subsidized housing units by 2040, despite claiming to be anti-growth. In a predictably tone-deaf social media post, he espoused his Orwellian plans to quash development, buy-down private property for his friends who can’t afford to live here, and utilize new technologies to track the occupancy of private residences (and tax them when they’re empty). Empty bedrooms for me, but not for thee. The guy makes Mick Ireland look like a Reagan Republican.

It’s not the residents of Aspen’s subsidized housing who are the problem, they just live in a toxic culture within a broken system. Many have been programmed by guys like Mick to embrace this privilege as an entitlement. Marinate in that cesspool long enough and you too will begin to covet what others have, blame the free market and support steps to punish it. The three stages of subsidized housing vitriol are class-envy, resentment and retribution. We just reached the retribution stage. 

Despite the community’s original intent, instead of essential workers, we are currently subsidizing Aspen’s middle class in our housing inventory; people who don’t and won’t work in the service industry economy. They and their retired counterparts are sophisticated; they’ve reached the critical mass to demand preferential access to the municipal golf course.  

Sadly, the 10.5-acre Lumberyard stands to be developed into more of the same: housing for families and future retirees. The city asks what people want them to build there, not what the community needs. Of course our current subsidized housing owners and aspirants want newer, larger units with underground parking, for themselves. Where does that get us with housing for the service industry workforce? 

Within the city limits, today there are 1187 subsidized housing bedrooms owned by 50-69 year-olds. That’s 45% of our 2627 in-town bedroom inventory. APCHA’s retirement age is 62, so if just half of these house couples, nearly 1800 workers will be displaced when these bedrooms go off-line. If the Lumberyard is built with 300 units, half studio/1-bedrooms and half 2-bedrooms, that’s just 450 new bedrooms, less than 40% of what we will soon lose to retirement.  The trend line is horrifying. It is impossible to build our way out of this problem. 

We are in a housing crisis but it’s not a shortage. It’s time to worry less about hurting people’s feelings through effective management and oversight, and instead take these drastic steps to save our housing program: 

• ·      Stop selling deed-restricted housing. Each APCHA sale from this point forward, including Burlingame 3, must revert to rental. Right-sizing, compliance, financial qualification, work requirements and maintenance are easily addressed with yearly leases and annual requalification, and appreciation goes away. It will take a generation for full turnover, but it’s a monumental step in the right direction.

• ·      Build a campus of small, efficient, short-term rental units at the Lumberyard for the seasonal workforce, with six month leases, November – May. This is not where you bring your dog or raise a family, it’s where you live when you come to Aspen to work and ski. It’s on the bus route so you don’t need a car.

• ·      Alternatively, develop the Lumberyard as a retirement community. Seriously. We need turnover in our housing inventory when people retire. If the community chooses to house retirees, let’s do that, but efficiently.

• ·      Immediately require right-sizing and create retiree buy-out incentives to escalate the process. Start at the top with APCHA deputy director Cindy Christensen who lives alone in a 3-bedroom unit. Empty bedrooms can no longer be tolerated.

• ·      Subsidized housing is a community asset. End entitlement programs such as leaving your deed-restricted housing to a child. This is not private property.

The perversity of permitting glaring inefficiencies within our housing program while punitively sanctioning the private sector is appalling. Without immediate changes, our failed housing program will never house the essential service industry workforce we rely on. And no matter how much is built, we will never have enough.

It’s time for tough choices. Without them, the city has no grounds to bemoan a worker housing crisis because they’re at fault. Sign the petition to repeal the emergency ordinance. The moratorium is simply a distraction. 

ISSUE #209: This is War (12/19/21)

"Be selective in your battles. Don't make every problem a war." -- Anonymous

It's been a hectic couple of weeks around here. Two weeks ago, city council passed an emergency ordinance to stop issuing short term rental (STR) licenses as well as development permits in the city until June 2022. The county soon followed with plans to only allow STRs when the property is a primary residence.

This is all purported to be because of "growth" and local worker "displacement." Except it's not. We do not have a growth issue. (They're confusing growth with economic activity.) Nor do we have a displacement issue. But we do indeed have a crisis that could very well be considered an emergency.

We have a failed housing program that allows for empty bedrooms and enables people to retire in their units. The numbers are staggering, and with time, will only continue to grow - further worsening the crisis. It's one thing when people WANT to live in Aspen affordably, and another entirely when the community desperately needs worker housing. These are two very different things.

Our local electeds have deliberately started a war between the subsidized housing industrial complex and the free market, which incidentally includes many full-time local residents. It's despicable.

Read my column (the first in a series) in today's Aspen Times HERE.

We cannot continue to operate a failed housing program based on feelings when the facts bear a very harsh reality: we have plenty of subsidized housing but we are simply not utilizing it efficiently. These recent punitive actions are just mechanisms for two new revenue streams to fund more housing. The city thinks it can build its way out of this mess. It can't. Without wholesale change to the subsidized housing program, nothing will change. That is, nothing good. It will only get worse.

The facts will illustrate the mess we're in. Stay tuned.

*******

The opening salvo in Aspen’s class warfare has just been fired. And it’s weaponized. The fragile tinderbox of private property owners and those benefitting (or aspiring to) from publicly subsidized housing was deliberately ignited last week when city council enacted a emergency ordinance that immediately put new residential development and new short term rental (STR) licenses on ice until June 2022. 

Described as an effort to “pause” and ascertain what city officials characterize as an explosion of the free-market real estate market and its effects on the community and the environment, and “get a grip” on how to regulate the STR industry that generated $50 million in taxable revenue from January-September 2020, the ordinance reasons that with unprecedented increases in home prices and lack of supply over time, the residential real estate market no longer delivers meaningful or affordable housing for local residents. How conveniently they ignore the 1% RETT that continually fills the subsidized housing coffers to unprecedented levels; all the more to throw at a program fraught with under-utilization, non-compliance and fraud. This manufactured crisis has nothing to do with STRs or free market residential development. The entire issue is about two new funding sources for subsidized housing. The city of Aspen is projecting its failure to efficiently and effectively manage its 3000-unit housing portfolio onto the private real estate market.  

The entire premise of the ordinance is flawed. It states, “The city depends on a lived-in community of year-round locals to support community culture, provide labor and capital to support the local economy and ensure the long-term viability of Aspen and its tourism economy.” This upside-down logic is loaded with bitterness and class envy that attempts to shift the blame for any housing crisis away from the local government when it is absolutely at fault. For years, Aspen has been moving away from forward-thinking growth management policies, and instead inciting class warfare while amassing failed virtue-signaling initiatives (hydro plant, geothermal drilling, mobility lab).  With lack of diverse thought and a groupthink mentality, instead of looking at real trends (STRs, aging demographics, an urban exodus), Aspen’s answer is to regulate and tax to build more housing. 

With over 4000 subsidized housing bedrooms inside the city limits and a year-round population of 7294, we currently have the capacity to house 56% of the local population in their own bedrooms. However, there are nearly 400 empty bedrooms, and almost 1000 owners are retired or will be soon. This is the emergency. Furthermore, Aspen is nearly built out, and our population and jobs numbers aren’t increasing. Are we really going to build for the unlimited demand of people who simply want to live affordably in Aspen? Until there is the political will to completely overhaul APCHA, the city will continue to extort untold sums from the private sector and still never have the competency to fix this “problem” of their own making.

The propaganda that re-development is “growth” and therefore housing mitigation fees must dramatically increase to account for “displaced” workers is a canard: it’s actually just new square feet replacing old square feet. Paying mitigation for redevelopment is simply punitive. Such activity does not generate workers, it provides jobs. The great irony is that the development of subsidized housing with these ill-gotten gains is actual growth, as it increases the capacity of the community. The disdain for STRs also stems from “displacing locals,” but this is another distraction; none of these properties were ever going to be rented to local workers. 

Our electeds also confuse “economic activity” with “growth.” There is no data to even support a “growth” issue here. Pitkin County’s population has only grown by 207 people (1.2%) in 10 years according to the 2020 census. The number of housing units has only grown by 292 (2.3%) in the same time period. And the largest decrease in jobs over the last 5 years has been in construction employment. (Public administration is responsible for the largest job growth, but I digress.) There has certainly been tremendous “economic activity,” and that’s a nationwide trend, but to call this activity “growth” is disingenuous, alarmist and contrary to the facts.

“More subsidized housing” has great political expediency in Aspen. Last week’s assault was socially engineered to limit and regulate private property, and control how it can be used and by whom. The ordinance creates the perverse incentive to leave one’s private property vacant through the force of a punitive regulation that disallows STRs, yet sets the government up to further punish these same property owners with an occupancy tax when the property is inevitably empty. The local government sees no issue with collecting ongoing revenue streams from private property, while prohibiting property owners from deriving a cent that in many cases pays the mortgage and other bills. 

This attempt to control the free market through regulation is strictly intended to generate more subsidized housing ad infinitum, when the only thing currently displacing working locals is our failed housing program that permits empty bedrooms and enables non-workers to retire in units originally intended for the actual workforce.

To be continued.

Remember when they divided Dr. Zhivago’s house into tenements? Local Bolsheviks Skippy, Rachel, Ward, John and Torre are likely eyeing your home for their cabals of dissidents once you’ve been run out of town. 

ISSUE #208: Taj Mahal City Hall: really tall and already too small 11/30/21

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." 

-- Winston Churchill

After years of controversy, the big, ugly, ill-conceived headquarters for our dystopian local government is finally complete. We will likely never know what the true costs are, but for now they're sticking with $34.6 million with a debt payback of $50 million. It's absurd, especially when the monolithic building is already too small for all the departments that were ostensibly to fit under "one roof."

Read my column in today's Aspen Times HERE.

*****

With construction costs of nearly $34.6 million and debt payback totaling just under $50 million, the Taj Mahal city hall, Aspen’s new edifice to bureaucratic excess, formally opens with a celebration on December 8. The 37,500 square foot monolith entertains ongoing controversy over its size, design, cost, interior programming, lack of housing mitigation and even its necessity.

Referred to as the Taj Mahal due to its ridiculous largesse, our monument took on various looks and functions depending on who was on city council when key decisions were made. Originally imagined as “city offices,” the Taj grew dramatically to become today’s sole seat of city government. 

In 2015, city staff had fine-tuned its desires for a “one roof” solution for local government and asked the voters to decide an advisory question, “Which use for the Aspen Armory Site (city hall) do you prefer for a long-range, 50-year plan? Community Use or City Offices (choose one.)” When “Community Use” narrowly prevailed, despite the non-binding nature of the measure, the city took the outcome as a big win and a greenlight for its grandiose plans along Rio Grande Place.

However, in early 2017, the city was sued for abuse of power and had to contend with a referendum petition for the right to vote to overturn council’s land use approvals for the Taj. The suit stemmed from council’s conversion of open space without voter approval, which was required by the city charter. Then remarkably, in a 3-day period, 760 signatures were collected in opposition to council’s land use decision, forcing action. The city deemed the petition effort a failure due to “insufficient signatures” and a “missed deadline,” but when challenged in court, it was the city that had erred. The petitioners had prevailed. And when the city tried to have the abuse of power suit dismissed, it was deemed to have legal standing, leaving the city with three choices: put the issue to a vote, appeal the judge’s ruling or start over elsewhere.

Enter developer Mark Hunt and the building he owns at 517 E. Hopkins in 2018. Hunt proposed a turnkey $23 million sale of 22,000 sf of his building to the city that would have included a scrape-and-replace construction cost of $13.5 million on top of $9.5 million in assessed land value. In addition to the existing 22,000 sf in the Armory and potentially 11,500 sf beneath Connor Park, Hunt’s “annex” proposal would have contributed to over 54,000 total sf of office space. But the acquisition had to be approved by voters. Heavy anti-developer sentiment from city hall and clever “either-or” ballot language tilted the scales toward the Galena Plaza location, which promised a similar price tag for the one-roof solution.

Despite years of citizen lobbying and feedback, little public input was taken into account while the unsightly wall of a building grew, effectively closing off pedestrian access from town along the vital Galena Street corridor, aside from a steep, narrow staircase. Aspen’s town-to-river connection is now irreparably broken. There is no longer a visual sightline from Paradise Bakery straight down to Rio Grande Park. We had the opportunity to physically integrate “the riverfront district” with our commercial core in what had once been an 8-minute walk, but now the largest grade change in the descent is the exact location of our Taj.

Historically, Rio Grande Park and “riverfront district” had been a hub of activity, first as the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad yard, then as a lead and zinc concentrator, and later the city dump. By the mid-1970’s it was a parking lot that featured a farmer’s market. In the 1980’s when Clark’s Market and the Post Office were built, commerce had truly arrived in the area near where increasing numbers of residents were now living. By 1989, the community art park was the precursor to Aspen Theater in the Park, and Galena Plaza was developed into the parking garage. ACRA’s offices and the Pitkin County Library followed. By 2012, Obermeyer Place, the John Denver Sanctuary, the stormwater wetlands project, recycling center and skate park filled in, followed by a new police station and Pitkin County offices in 2018. Today, the Taj Mahal city hall has been built on the last remaining parcel. This hodge-podge of disjointed buildings provides little vitality and has succeeded in cutting the park and riverfront off from town. 

But, a grand staircase awaits. Touted by city manager Sara Ott as “the signature piece of the building,” this centerpiece now serves to connect the three floors of our 47-foot tall new city hall that is already 6,000 sf too small for our needs. Human resources and the parking department don’t fit; they’re now in the Rio Grande Building. ACRA is in the Old Powerhouse but will eventually move into the remodeled Armory. When remodeled, the Old Powerhouse will house the IT, capital assets, special events and transportation departments, as well as provide storage. Meanwhile, analysis paralysis plagues “the future of the Armory” discussions, “activation of Galena Plaza” plans, and whether or not a restaurant will go into the “white box” in the Rio Grande Building where Taster’s once was. 

Remind me, what exactly have we accomplished?

The critical commitments affecting today’s Taj were made in the spring of 2019. You can thank former mayor Steve Skadron, former councilmembers Adam Frisch and Ann Mullins, and councilmember Ward Hauenstein for their “hurry-up” decision-making during a lame duck session, and sitting councilmembers Rachel Richards and Skippy Mesirow, and Mayor Torre, for their unwillingness, despite the latter’s campaign promises, to re-evaluate them.