Aspen is famous for having housing prices as high as its picturesque snow capped mountains. With a median price of over $1 million, Aspen is quite deserving of that reputation. Like most resort towns, the higher cost of living in Aspen is extremely detrimental to those who help give the city its flavor and warmth, its workers. With the value of land at record highs, affordable housing is at a minimum, forcing those on the low end of the income scale into trailer parks or outside of the city limits entirely. In response to this, Aspen has set into motion an affordable housing initiative that will attempt to stem the tide.
This program has already helped launched numerous housing and rental housing projects to shelter the city’s workers, resulting in as many as 1,500 affordable housing units in and around Aspen, with the potential to provide living quarters for as many as 3,000 residents. With Aspen maintaining a permanent residence base of just over 5,000, this program has clearly taken a broad step in alleviating the problem.
At the heart of this program lies the Aspen Area Community Plan, the primary goal of which is to ensure that no less than 60% of Aspen’s work force has permanent residence in the Aspen area. Achieving this goal required a series of policy changes and programs to create a housing environment which was equally distributed among neighbourhoods, and most of all, affordable.
To combat the booming Aspen real estate market, a housing program has long been in place which set a limit on the amount of new residential units that could be bid for each year. This new housing program further ensures that of those limited new units being built, at least 60% of them will fall within the affordable housing standard.
Furthermore, Aspen’s Housing Replacement Program ensures that the currently existing amount of affordable housing will be maintained. As often happens in areas of high land value, old homes get replaced with towering skyscrapers or expensive condominiums, further exacerbating already existing problems. This program is meant to ensure that the quota for new affordable housing units being built will not be counteracted by existing units giving way to high priced housing.
Individual home owners are also given incentive to built small attached or detached units on their lots and rent those new units out to local workers as affordable housing. These units must be approved through a public hearing process, but are otherwise exempt from other housing controls and fees.
In fact all affordable housing is exempt from the growth management process, and developments that qualify 100% as affordable housing can receive building permit and tap fee waivers. Partial affordable housing projects may receive a tap fee discount.