If we don't take risks... if ambition deflates like a balloon popping off the helium tank and giving a loud flatulent bloop as it falls to your feet ... where does that lead? We are trapped between the virtues of low cost subsidized housing and the unintended consequences of Corporate Welfare.

 Replying to Roger Marolt's derailing of Aspen with opinions on the third rail of Aspen politics which is APCHA, the government subsidized housing where the majority of registered Aspen voters live.

There is no question that housing in Aspen is not affordable. There is no question high priced housing flows stronger than the Roaring Fork in thaw under Slaughter House Bridge all the way down to Glenwood.

One particularly thorny question is how much has affordable housing contributed to the housing/wealth divide?

The cost to maintain a free market rental is 3 to 5 times as much as APCHA charges for rent.

What is the personal price of APCHA price fixing?

If you live in APCHA housing how does that change you?  Would you pursue a pay raise if it meant exceeding APCHA income caps and losing your home? Could you pay fair wages to a plumber, electrician, or painter to maintain your home under APCHA income caps? Would you invest in capital improvements if your kids couldn't inherit? Would that deed-restricted sale cover the cost of assisted living?

If you live in APCHA housing do you feel secure? What happens if the RETT dips and those APCHA rentals start to approach the actual price of maintaining a property? Close the airport for a year, watch as we play Jenga with the bond market,  defund CDOT, defund RAFTA, defund firefighters, the list of economic threats is legion.

Don't believe APCHA will ever be defunded? Take a close look at the 2021 vote on the Wheeler WRETT.

The cold hard truth is that APCHA is not sustainable. Something has to give.

Choose the Arts, letter to the editor

Want a job and housing in Aspen?

We have 300+ employees of the City of Aspen (bennies! housing!)  but we aren’t teaching our kids to be bureaucrats we’re teaching them to be chefs and wait staff (no bennies! no housing!). The alternative to a  City job or winning the APCHA lottery is to be a real estate broker and sell as many 50,000’ mausoleums as possible. Who needs open space.. we don’t need no open space… we just need that one view from that one window.. and a plastic elk.

I can feel what’s trickling down… and it ain’t quality of life.

Want free market and a meritocracy?
I say, "Choose the Arts".

“The Arts don’t pay.” you say… I say… "Bull****".

Sit through all those credits at the end of a Marvel movie that’s the “below the line” credits the “little people” without the mansion or the stretch. Every one of those people has a job which pays enough for their home and for their kids to go to college. Every. Single. One. (that’s what collective bargaining can do folks) Do you think Food & Wine or X Games would happen without the air time? The Arts are not just paint.

We certainly have our share of artists who were born and raised here- successful professionals in their fields - they can afford to live here but they don’t work here - they don’t bring their business back home.  What would it take to fix that?

JMO

Marsha Marsha Marsha, letter to the editor

APCHA APCHA APCHA, Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.

Yep, it’s human nature, find yourself in a deep dark hole… dig in deeper.

Why would government discourage real estate development when government is funded by taxes on real estate sales? Endless growth… that’s our economic model…that’s our vicious circle.  APCHA’s circa 1970’s rules are not carved in stone… time to smash them.

Solution 1: Stop being a real estate economy… foster other economic drivers.
Solution 2: Pay the servants more.
Solution 3: Tax the masters more.

We complain that APCHA should sustain itself and limit free market potential in the same breath. APCHA puts a cap on earnings for residents and a limit on tenure. APCHA restricts rentals and resale.  APCHA also cedes maintenance and responsibility for maintenance to those same residents. So, live below the Aspen poverty line if you want to keep your home, move or die at the end of your term, and don’t repair anything because you don’t have the money to do it much less the opportunity to recoup the cost on resale.  Local government gives lip service to lower priced lodging and slaps fines on APCHA residents who rent out a couch during Xgames which in turn facilitates the  highway 82 bumper car fun when our 100,000 new best friends rent homes below Basalt. The entire system is perched on the head of the very wobbly pin of the real estate transfer tax… so if we actually stop selling off paradise and leave room for trees, elk and a lion or two…. we lose the cash for “affordable housing”.

Solution 1: An Arts economy. 
Solution 2: Link wages to a percentage of profit. (or…ducking... muttering under my breath …. make what we pay City staff in cash and benefits the minimum required for all workers in Aspen….at very least give any company with an Aspen Business License the opportunity to buy into City health care)
Solution 3: A billionaire income tax… for those who claim Aspen or Pitkin County as their primary residence. It will still be cheaper than NYC or LA. This links our tax base to our wealth index instead of  build, buy, or die base.

Bonus initiatives? Want to slow development? Require net zero for every new building… including government buildings… including the lift 1A corridor. Want to reduce traffic? Restrict traffic to EV vehicles and subsidize EV purchases…(at very least stop subsidizing non-EV vehicles - like the Downtowner vans). Want to subsidize housing? The City could co-sign existing free market housing for residents and be a guarantor for the first, last and damage required for every long term lease  (It will be a long long time before that expense reaches the cost of one Burlingame bedroom).

Oh yeah, rumor has it we have an election coming up. Vote for the candidate who can stop digging a deeper hole and think themselves out of the damned box.

Think the Green New Deal  is radical? There is an alternative "little ice age" genocide.

Affordable Schmordable.... letter to the editor

If you have rules which are unenforceable maybe you need to take a close look at the rules.

I won’t argue about how much city sponsored (affordable, employee) housing is being sublet and rented. I have a pretty good idea since I’m ubering quite a few visitors to those units in high season- but that’s only anecdotal data.


Here's the "housing hustle" link.

How enforceable is the “no rentals rule”? Unless you want to go “full United Airlines” not a lot. Dumping residents out of affordable housing on the street is a photo op no local wants to see and the tabloids/social media would lap up like whipped cream on strudel.

Here’s the modest proposal- allow rentals with a cap- $100 per person per night. Rent through Airbnb. Airbnb already collects lodging tax off the top and it goes direct to the City/County/State. This increases our “low cost rental” base and gives our affordably housed a way to raise money to pay for maintenance and repair in the City built housing.

Don’t want to rent at “affordable" rates through Airbnb? You want to act like free market - fine- buy out the your “affordable” house at full market value.  We could call that the Appraisers Christmas bonus special.

Affordable Housing, letter to the editor 2014

I'm posting some old letters to the editor. This is so I can remember what I wrote, and to keep myself honest.  I'm posting them in the order I wrote them so this goes back a couple of years.

The more things change….

This is from the Spring of 2014

In response to the Times article on Housing Mitigation and the following quote:

'“Every day that goes by, we’re taking in substantially less than we should be,” Community Development Director Chris Bendon said.'

Really? Is the sole purpose of Housing Mitigation to raise more money to pay for the $100 *million* +++ Burlingame Employee Housing Development?  Judging from the work session last night (open to the public but not to public comment) those were the marching orders as Staff understood them- "find us more money"and the options Staff presented were certainly creative money makers.

Is  that really the intent of Employee Housing?  Is it supposed to squeeze those who can create jobs to the point they downsize?

But, if making more money is what we need to do…  I understand there are a few unsold units in Burlingame and in my limited experience if something isn't selling it's because there is something missing with what you're trying to sell.  Maybe if all that imagination and resourcefulness could be used to rethink the residential requirements of Employee Housing those units might sell and raise a little cash.

In last night's work session Council asked what progress had been made since the last public meetings on Housing Mitigation  and the response was "We were asked to take a step back". Wonderful, I'd love it if we would all take a step back *and* think.

The question still hangs in the smoke what would $100,000,000.00  have done for Social programs for Aspen? For Seniors? For Schools? For Homeless? For all those "soft" programs which don't involve Construction Contracts and only target Community Welfare?  Has this strategy controlled growth? Reduced free market costs? Reduced commuter traffic? Reduced down valley construction? Has it benefitted local free market Employee Rentals? Has Employee Housing kept our "cat may look at a King" demographic?

How can this system be working when SkiCo builds their Employee Housing in El Jebel and we have  (according to the Monday work session)  over 175 Accessory Dwelling Units unrented inside the City Limits of Aspen?

If we keep throwing money down the trench which is Burlingame is it really benefitting the Community or is it just supporting a Bureaucracy supporting itself?

Community Housing, letter to the editor 2013

I'm posting some old letters to the editor. This is so I can remember what I wrote, and to keep myself honest.  I'm posting them in the order I wrote them so this goes back a couple of years.

The more things change….

This is from the Winter of 2013

An opinion in response to "rental housing market deserves more attention" : Break the mold

Let's not forget that the Employee Housing program was originally supposed to house seasonal employees. The real estate market t.ook off and the City tried to grab a piece of it losing sight of the original goal. (This also had the opposite of the intended effect by making free market housing *more* $ exclusive.)

I'm in favor of Community housing, not Employee housing. By transforming the definition of seasonal employee (renter)  to full time employee (home owner) without creating a year round industry to employ them  we now have Burlingame, unsold units, aging unkept properties and retirees being asked to vacate to let seasonal employees rent.

We can continue to try and bend the system to shallow ideas or we can take a long cold hard look at the present reality and adapt (one of those Darwinian words "adapt" which is different than the verb "react")

1. Aspen is a town with a Seasonal Industry. As long as the Seasonal Industry lasts there will be a need for temporary housing (rentals). The City of Aspen has decided to help Seasonal Businesses by providing low cost housing to temporary employees. This was first attempted by Companies for their employees in the 19th century and was considered a huge innovation it was called "Social Capitalism". It is my opinion by separating Employee Housing from the fortunes of the Company we've broken that model.

2. The young, the "employable" are the least vulnerable amongst us.  It is my opinion that a Community is judged by how it treats the *most* vulnerable.

3. The more diverse a Community is the stronger it is (old, young, rich, poor, multi racial, multi cultural). It is my opinion until rich and poor rub elbows the bickering will continue and the Community will suffer. That was the Aspen which we "old farts" miss, where no one gave a hoot who you were, just if you could ski. You could be forgiven even that if you threw a good party (damn we used to have more fun).

You want to use housing quotas? Then you should include ethnicity, age and education- or just abandon the quota system.

A development without a green area or a place for kids to play shall not pass. Better yet, a development without a coffee house shall not pass. 

Bring essential services (schools and hospitals) back into the core.  As you increase the density you lower the footprint. Throw out the "zoning" rules, let pop up businesses thrive- anywhere. "Messy vitality" doesn't come from Government it comes from necessity and invention. 

Full disclosure, I have one of those "small rentals" in Aspen and it is a chunk of change to move in. The City could bring down some of my costs (taxes) and/or grant housing subsidies to Seasonal Employees.  The City *cannot* keep "playing landlord" renting/selling below cost and render the Community Services which should be it's primary responsibility.