ARAPAHOE COUNTY, Colo. — Arapahoe County commissioners describe their community as being in a housing crisis. Many communities across the state are working on ways to bring in more affordable housing. Commissioners recently approved new regulations that they hope will accomplish that.
"We have a housing needs gap on every single income bracket, and specifically for our renters, we have a 14,000-unit deficit," said Arapahoe County Commissioner Jessica Campbell, citing data from the recent Housing Needs Assessment for the county.
Denver7 is taking a deeper dive into one of the changes commissioners approved- incentives for developers.
"A three-tiered system of incentives for developers when they are building affordable housing projects," said Campbell.
If developers set aside a specific percentage of units (10%, 25% or 50%) to be offered at affordable rents, they will get certain perks like waived fees and zoning exceptions. The larger the percentage of units that are affordable, the better the incentives.
"If they're throwing up 100 units and 10% of them are 80% AMI [Area Median Income] or lower, they get X number of incentives," explained Campbell, "Not that many, to be very honest, because we really want to see these 25% and 50% [affordable units]."
Josh Russell is a partner at Medici Development. As a for-profit affordable housing developer, he explains federal, state, and private funding make up a lot of what covers the cost of a project, but local community support is valuable.
"The City of Sheridan, they were able to provide us different fee waivers, tax incentives. They're not able to put money directly into the project, but through those incentives, it reduced our costs and helped us balance our budget. Arapahoe County was able to come into the project with direct funding. So those local resources ended up filling that final five or 10% of the gap needed for us to balance our budget and start construction," he said of the Bonsai Apartment Complex that opened last year.
The entire complex is affordable housing and offers rents between 30%-60% below a comparable market rate.
He said he's happy to hear Arapahoe County is now also offering incentives for developers.
"Those local incentives are tremendously valuable from an economic standpoint and from a political standpoint for developers like ourselves, as we try to assemble the support and the money to get these projects built," said Russell.
Denver7 asked Campbell if there was concern over other developers using the lowest-tier incentives to build luxury apartments without much of a contribution to affordable housing.
"It was absolutely a consideration. Our goal is to inspire affordable units going in. We, in Arapahoe County, need units that are affordable across income brackets, right? So having this mixed income, in different units, in different developments, is not necessarily a bad thing," she said.
It's too early to say just how many projects the incentives will attract, but Campbell said any additional housing will help.
"If we can get five units here, 10 units here, 50 units over here, whatever it is, we are excited about working with our developers to make sure that those units go in place," she said.
"Is there enough land in the county to have that dream come true?" asked Denver7's Danielle Kreutter.
"That's where the zoning comes in. There's a lot of areas in unincorporated Arapahoe. We have, I think, six or seven different areas around transit so that people can live, work and get to work easily. And we're inspiring that public transportation, which is also great for the environment, saves money. Livable, walkable, healthy neighborhoods. Yeah, there are plenty of areas in the county for that," Campbell responded.
