The city of Steamboat Springs, Colorado purchased a 534-acre ranch that the city’s housing authority purchased with a $24 million anonymous donation. The housing authority could use state and federal grants and proceeds from a recently passed tax on short-term rentals to build more than 2,200 housing units in phases. The Brown Ranch proposal would restrict sale and rental of those homes to residents who meet a certain income threshold, work locally, and plan to live in the homes full-time.
Local residents who had concerns about the project’s financing and the impact on traffic and local infrastructure along with what it would mean for the character of the community spoke against the project, but in October of 2023 a divided city council voted to approve the Brown Ranch plan. Opponents then proceeded to collect more than 1,000 signatures to get the development on the ballot scheduled for March 26, 2024 leaving the final decision up to voters.
Steamboat Springs has a population of around 13,000. Since 2020, single-family home prices have increased about 80 percent to about $1.8 million on average, and all real estate sales including condos increased 64 percent to $1.1 million. Those increased prices have caused the average tax assessment to increase by 86 percent. Now increased prices combined with low inventory of homes has made it hard to fill high-paying positions in the community including at the UCHealth Yampa Valley Medical Center, the main hospital for the region. To address the problem, the hospital has gone into the residential real estate business and is building 42 apartments with rent that will be capped at around 30 percent of the employee’s income. This sounds a lot like the solution offered in “A Solution to Affordable Housing”.
On March 27, 2024 the headline in the Steamboat PILOT & TODAY was “Voters reject Brown Ranch annexation in preliminary results” The preliminary results showed Steamboat voters rejecting the ballot question 2,903 to 2,074 – a margin of 829 votes – with 400 ballots still to be tallied.
In a 2023 NBC news article, former Steamboat Springs city council member Jim Engelken was credited with helping to organize the opposition urging the city to downsize the development or slow the pace. He suggested that affordable housing needs to have the ability to generate its own way and its own money. He was also concerned that the expected infrastructure needed to service the expected 6,000 people who would ultimately live in Brown Ranch would be beyond the financial capability of the existing community and might result in a second-class neighborhood. Although Mr. Engelken was happy with the outcome of the March 26 election, he acknowledged that the affordable housing problems were not going away. He requested that the housing authority re-evaluate their goals and their perception of what the existing citizenry of Steamboat Springs want the future to be. Both sides of the recent controversy might benefit from what is happening in similar communities and starting to happen in their own community, The 42 unit apartment being built by the UCHealth Yampa Valley Medical Center to provide affordable housing for their employees is the small step Mr. Engelken wished for – a step that can generate it own way, its own money, and serve as an example for other employers in Steamboat Springs. New ideas about employer/employee partnerships as explored in “a Solution to Affordable Housing” combined with ongoing experiences taking place in other communities facing similar problems are being covered on this website and may be helpful to those who are interested in solving this problem vs. studying it to death. Comments by those people would be most welcome.