Mental health services, food insecurity and the community's stark wage gap all worked their way into discussion between local elected officials and U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper during his recent visit, but none got as much airtime as housing.
The issue continues to glare on officials' radars as more teachers, first responders and nurses report a lack of affordable housing and competing costs of living forcing them to leave the community. When speaking with Hickenlooper during his April 15 visit to Breckenridge, officials described having to roll with the punches and make pivots over the past couple years to address the local housing problem.
Hickenlooper said people should gear up for federal funding available for housing initiatives to be "tied up" and, in some cases, outright eliminated.
Local officials said they haven't been able to rely on federal funding for housing in recent years for a handful of reasons. They said this among other challenging factors caused them to morph their housing goals to be more reality-based.
"For a long time, we had a vision that maybe we could get 47% of our workforce living in the community. And really, since COVID, we have realized that that is going to be a real challenge, and so we have been looking at a little bit higher density workforce housing," Breckenridge Mayor Kelly Owens said.
She pointed to the Vista Verde condominium complex off of Colorado Highway 9 near the entrance of town as an example. She said Low Income Housing Tax Credits were used for some units and while there was benefit, it was an experience that showed federal funding can be tricky to use when building in resort communities.
Low Income Housing Tax Credits are a decades-old affordability tool, and units built with their funds are often for those making 60% or less of an area's median income. Officials have long said the federally determined area median income for Summit County doesn't truly match the wages people are making locally, but it's the only metric that's out there for income testing to determine who can afford what.
Owens said the high cost of living locally makes for higher wages in comparison the state or federal average, and that's something which isn't really accounted for when the federal government sets area median income yearly. Officials say area median income has stringent guidelines.
"We have had to shy away from some of the federal funding because of the regulations on citizenship or other strings that are attached," she said, noting the strong presence of the immigrant community in the workforce.
The area median income scale has made for problems when people who make overtime or tips, which many restaurant industry workers in the community do, don't all fit into the area median income category that best suits them when it comes to workforce housing with rent tied to income. This happened with the second phase of the Vista Verde development, where some locals were initially approved for certain units, but the offer was later rescinded after they were income tested again.
"Some of the AMI testing that's tied to some of the federal assistance, it makes it super challenging with the seasonality of our markets," Breckenridge Town Council member Dick Carleton said.
Commissioner Nina Waters said because of this, most workforce housing projects are supported by local municipalities and tax dollars from revenue streams approved by voters for these types of projects. She said that the financial burden is getting heavy as construction prices rise.
"With all of the unpredictability, the county had to indefinitely pause our U.S. Forest Service project because the cost of construction by the second is just exponentially growing," she said. "And who's to say with current tariffs, etc, (what that will) look like for the future."
Officials also shared with Hickenlooper how they try not to use the word affordable housing with their housing projects because they aren't genuinely affordable by most people's standards. Instead, they try to describe the housing as "workforce housing."
The senator wanted an example of how much the town is investing in these projects. Breckenridge staff members said the town put $6.2 million in loans into phase 1 of Vista Verde, yielding around 80 units, and $9.2 in loan million for phase 2 of Vista Verde, yielding 172 units. Ultimately phase 1 costs $38 million at-large and the second phase costs $82 million overall, both of which were paid by the project’s developer, Gorman and Co.
When talking about workforce housing, the senator touched on struggles with a lack of incentive to keep up with necessary renovations.
"Who's going to pay for that renovation in 30 years when it's needed?" he said. "That's something everyone (building workforce housing) is dealing with.
Sen. Hickenlooper wanted to know how many workforce housing units Breckenridge had. Town staff members said the town has around 1,300 units, which they added is second only to Aspen in the High Country.
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