SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. — Summit County residents love living in the middle of the mountains, but finding a place that’s affordable can be a real challenge. Denver7 | Your Voice took those questions and concerns to Summit County leadership to find out what solutions they’re considering to remedy a decades-long issue.
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Just outside the town limits of Frisco, Nellie’s Neighborhood is a newly completed workforce housing development funded by county taxpayers. It features 14 units, all accessory dwelling units built as single-family homes. Each is two stories tall and has a garage.
All of the properties have been closed on, each costing between $300,000 and $500,000.
“These were some of the more affordable for-sale units we've been able to build,” Summit County Commissioner Tamara Pogue told Denver7. “Many will tell you, and I would be among them, that they are not really ‘affordable,’ but they are attainable for a lot of our community.
“I think we had something like 400 families apply to live here, and obviously only 14 units, which I think speaks loudly to the scale of the problem that we have here in Summit County.”
The most recent Housing Needs Assessment, commissioned by the county in 2023, found that it needs to add more than 800 combined rental and ownership units every year to meet demand.
Locals who spoke with Denver 7|Your Voice know that problem well.
“There's definitely a lot of griping amongst the residents and finding an affordable place to live,” said Frisco resident Roberto Santos. “It takes a lot of networking.”
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Dr. Max Smolkin sees the impact at his job as a physician.
“We see that in the medical field, where we're trying to bring technicians and bring more specialists to serve the community, and it's hard to move from other places in the country to this county, where things are more expensive,” he said.
James Hayes, a former Frisco resident who is back living in the town this summer, also has seen the impact of the area’s workforce being forced to commute long distances instead of living in the community.
“Living 45 minutes away and commuting on a bus to come work a job — a full-time job, or possibly two — and then commute back kind of sucks, and it's like really hard and it just zaps the energy from the people,” said Hayes.
One of the factors contributing to the housing issue: many homes in the area sit empty at some point.
“Seventy percent of our units are owned by people who have a second home somewhere else,” Pogue explained.
Building more housing can be more difficult than it sounds. Long winters mean a short construction season, and protected open spaces mean less room to grow.
“In a community like ours, 80% of the available land is owned by the federal government,” said Pogue. “That does not leave us a lot of real estate to develop on.”
Summit County has to get creative when it comes to building. Last year, Denver7 covered modular workforce housing being built in Breckenridge, just one of the solutions leaders are leaning on.
“We've done as much as we can to change our zoning,” said Pogue. “We have converted three hotels to workforce housing… Housing Helps is where we help folks find equity for their down payment. Buy-Downs is where we buy a home on the market and then sell it at a lower price to our locals, so that also makes housing more affordable.
Summit County says it has more than 2,500 deed-restricted housing units, each with certain rules.
“The income that you make and whether or not you qualify for certain unit, the number of hours you work in Summit County, whether or not your business is based on in Summit County, what kind of a job you have in Summit County, all of these things can be incorporated into a unit's deed restriction," Pogue said.
Those deed restrictions cap how much the property can appreciate each year, keeping prices low.
“But the downside of that is this historical sort of ‘American Dream’ of growing your equity and growing your appreciation, that doesn't exist,” Pogue explained.
According to Pogue, local leaders are discussing whether the rules around deed-restricted housing need to be simplified.
No matter what solution is being considered, trying to solve the housing issue in Colorado's high country can feel like trying to move a mountain.
“Sometimes, you know, everyone looks for the big development as the sign that we're making progress, but often it's these smaller strategies, like our ADU program, that actually help us make continuous progress,” said Pogue. “While it will never be enough to solve this problem, we are continuing to move the needle for folks.”
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