Steamboat Pilot & Today

The town of Telluride's work force housing ordinance will be among the topics of discussion Aug. 22, when the Community Alliance of the Yampa Valley hosts a forum at Olympian Hall.

Telluride town planner Lance McDonald is among four speakers scheduled to take part in the forum. His town has an ordinance that requires developers to provide worker housing based on detailed formulas. It also has a half-cent sales tax devoted to the creation of deed-restricted housing projects.

Forum organizer Maggie Berglund said the goal of the forum is to expose community leaders to a variety of tools that can be applied to ensure that Steamboat Springs can continue to offer attainable housing and maintain its sense of community.

"Our goal is to make sure people who work here can live here," Berglund said. "Second-home buyers choose us over other resorts because of the community. If we lose that sense of place, we lose one of our biggest assets."

Other speakers scheduled to take part include Rodger Hara of GMAC Commercial Mortgage, Bill Whaley of the Colorado Division of Housing, and Elizabeth Black, executive director of the Yampa Valley Housing Authority.

McDonald said his community adopted its affordable housing ordinance in 1994. It projects that, on average, for every 1,000 square feet of new resort development, 4.5 employees are needed. The formulas for commercial, hotel and multifamily developments are more complex.

The formula in the Telluride ordinance uses 40 percent of the employees needed because of a given development and multiplies that number by 350 square feet to arrive at the amount of affordable housing the developer must provide.

For example, a commercial development of 2,222 square feet would generate the need for 10 employees. Forty percent of that number, or four employees, would create a requirement that the developer provide 1,450 square feet of housing, either on site or elsewhere.

At the same time Telluride imposed the ordinance, the com--munity added a half-cent sales tax to fund deed-restricted housing projects being developed by its housing authority. McDonald said he is helping the authority design a pair of affordable housing projects valued at $4 million and $5 million.

Telluride officials have come to look at affordable housing requirements the same way they might view parking requirements, McDonald said. And the local real estate market has adapted and built the cost of linked affordable housing into market prices for resort development.

Berglund said the forum will begin at 5:30 p.m. with introductory remarks by all four speakers, followed by a casual conversation during dinner. A more formal question-and-answer ses--sion will take place from 7 to 8 p.m.