Politics or Religion

It's been said many times, two topics not to discuss with your clients is religion and politics. I'm going to stay out of religion but here I go in politics. The topic has to do with the issue of affordable housing in the city of Durango and La Plata County. I've lived here since the mid-70s so I've gotten to see a lot of changes and certainly a fair amount of growth. What has been happening in Durango over the years is that we keep building subdivisions and projects geared towards the higher end market and luxury budgets. I've had the opportunity to talk with many developers and watched the process through the newspaper and even on our community sponsored local television. My observation has been that the city and the county make it so difficult, so time consuming, and so expensive for development, that the developer is forced to build a project in the higher end market. He simply cannot get a normal return... and believe me, not every developer makes a profit... with all of the expensive hoops that they must jump through in order to get a lower priced project approved.

Let's put this burden of fault squarely where it belongs: government rules and regulations and fees make homes here cost considerably more than in other areas. Either the city and county don't get it, or they are purposely trying to not have affordable housing. They give lip service to the public about affordable housing, but their solution is to go to a developer and tell them that 16% of all the homes built in a project must meet the affordable or attainable housing level. Who in the world decided that it was a developer's problem that there is no affordable housing? Again I contend that the problem has been caused by the government, and they should fix it. If Durango becomes another Vail, or another Aspen where there is no worker housing we will have lost a great asset to this community. The clerks, the waiters, the teachers, the firemen and policemen all have the right to be able to live in this community and it is a community wide problem that needs to get solved, and not by just the real estate developer who didn't create the problem in the first place. If this is a concerted effort by our government officials to keep out the “working class”, then we should all be ashamed and we should throw them all out of office. There is an elitism that I'm beginning to sense that I have never sensed before in Durango. I am definitely seeing more of the attitude “Not in my backyard”, and “ I'm here now, so close the door behind me, don't let anybody else in.”

I'm certainly not proposing wild and crazy growth like I see up in Denver and Phoenix and other large cities. But I am very worried about losing our working-class in this town. If the city truly wants to step up to the plate and say let's do affordable housing is one they need to be willing to work on reducing fees and reducing the time it takes to go through the process. By reducing the fees the entire community is helping to support affordable housing, not just one developer. We have the money. Why in the world is the city Council buying up land for open space when over half our county is already national forest service or Bureau of Land Management lands? They have their priorities mixed up. They need to be stronger and take a stance and say “Affordable housing is a community problem and together we will get it fixed”.

Thank you for listening, but I really felt I needed to vent. Since this is politics, I need to insert the caveat that this is my own personal opinion and not necessarily that of the Wells Group Real Estate Brokerage.