FRISCO, Colo. — Earlier this month, Denver7 spoke with Summit County leadership about strategies to address the decades-old lack of affordable housing in mountain communities like Frisco.
Now, Denver7 | Your Voice is hearing from a member of the community who was able to find an elusive affordable option.
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"It's just like winning the lottery"
For Jason Davis, living in Colorado’s high country has had its highs and lows.
“It's a great place to live,” he told Denver7. “We're living in a little bubble… I love nature, and I love being out in the wild.”
Davis works for the Frisco Adventure Park, which provides space for recreation and events throughout the year. But because Summit County and the surrounding area are a popular place to live, Davis and many others providing the backbone for the tourism-dependent communities are forced to get creative when it comes to housing.
“I've been back and forth between Leadville and Frisco for about the 10 years that I've been here,” he said. “Lots of roommates, lots of different places to live... I just want to say: The struggle is real.”
Frisco and other Summit County communities are building more workforce housing.
A partnership between the Town of Frisco and the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) led to the Granite Park development near Main Street, which opened 22 workforce housing apartments this year. Half of them were reserved for CDOT employees, while the rest were open to those in the local workforce making less than the area median income. One-bedroom rents are set at roughly $1,700 per month, which the town says is 75% of AMI.
Davis won the rental lottery earlier this year, nabbing one of the rare rentals.
“I would say, it's just like winning the lottery,” he said. “It's a great blessing in your life when you're able to have a chance to start new and fresh, close to where you work.”
Deed-restricted changes coming?
While a housing lottery can solve the housing problem for select families, it can’t fix what Frisco Town Manager Tom Fisher calls “the main issue for the community.”
“The housing values, or the land values here in Summit County and Frisco specifically, have gotten so high in support of the market around tourism, that it essentially prices out anybody that supports that tourism, and supports the other economic drivers here in Frisco,” Fisher told Denver7. “If you're trying to work in a restaurant or a retail center or anything like that, even for our own local government, you don't make enough money to live here.”
Fisher says the town is running out of room to build more affordable housing, so local leadership is actively discussing other solutions, like streamlining the rules around the town’s deed-restricted units. Those are units that are cheaper to rent or buy, but each comes with its own restrictions, such as an annual appreciation cap to keep prices low.
“There was a period of time in the last five years where appreciation was happening at sometimes 30% a year on market rate housing,” Fisher explained. “Whereas, we really restrict the appreciation on affordable housing to the point where people were feeling like they weren't keeping up in some way with being able to build some equity out of those properties.”
Fisher says among the issues being discussed by Frisco Town Council is the question: Should workforce housing owners be allowed to own other properties, and should longtime residents get priority in housing lotteries?
He says the “crux” of the issue is balancing housing that meets “community need” with housing for “those that have been really supporting the community for a long time, but haven't had found that housing yet.”
Fisher says the town is taking its time and has not yet unveiled possible changes for the community to consider, but “we’ll finish up something this year. We’re pretty close.”
And while a permanent solution to the housing issue still feels far away, some like Davis have had their patience pay off.
“It’s hard to get your own place [here],” he said. “The opportunity for me to have my own place and be able to thrive up here is a great thing.”
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