Boulder County housing officials are selling potentially more than 30 below-market-rate apartments following a budget gap last year in the county’s affordable housing program.
This decision will further reduce the already-limited supply of affordable housing, forcing families to find new homes in a region grappling with a housing shortage and rising living costs. County officials said they are helping displaced residents transition to new homes.
The Boulder County Housing Authority, an agency that manages more than 900 affordable housing units across the county, is working to close a budget gap driven by rising maintenance costs and administrative salaries, according to its latest financial report.
To address the overspending, the agency has adopted a corrective action plan that calls for increasing rents and cutting costs associated with managing properties, among other measures.
Meanwhile, the county is investing in large-scale, multi-family apartment complexes, such as the 400-unit Willoughby Corner development in Lafayette. The project is still under construction. But the county is planning to lease about 200 apartments as soon as this year, according to officials.
“It’s bittersweet,” Susana Lopez-Baker, the executive director of the Boulder County Housing Authority, told Boulder Reporting Lab about selling off properties. “I don’t want to lose any units ever. But we are adding quite a bit of units as well.”
The county has identified 32 properties in Lafayette and Longmont for potential sale. The county is already in the process of selling seven properties by the end of year, affecting about 15 residents, according to county officials. These properties, though not deed-restricted, provide below-market rents. The county has yet to determine a buyer for many of the properties. Officials said a state law prohibits them from permitting people to stay during the sale.
“We wouldn’t be able to do that because we can’t guarantee a new buyer keeping them,” Lopez-Baker said. “We just didn’t want to go down that road.”
The decision to sell these properties was prompted by the expensive upkeep to maintain them, with some needing new roofs or sewer work, according to the county.
“Sometimes the quotes are coming back upwards of $100,000 or more” for maintenance, Lopez-Baker said. “We have to decide, ‘Is it worth investing quite a bit of money into these scattered site properties, or does it make sense to kind of shrink down the portfolio?’”
She added that the sale of the properties will ultimately help increase the county’s overall supply of affordable housing by creating additional resources and capacity through efficiencies. She said the plan to sell properties was not initiated as part of the 2023 budget discussions, but instead as part of the housing authority’s approach to running efficiently.
Lopez-Baker said residents have been given a 90-day notice to move out. She said the housing authority is providing residents with up to $5,000 for moving expenses and offering to help relocate them to another apartment managed by the Boulder County Housing Authority.
However, it’s unclear whether these commitments have been communicated to all displaced residents.
Amanda Crowe, 44, said she has lived in a four-plex at the end of a road in Lafayette for seven years. She received notice on June 28 to move out by the end of September. She said the county has not provided her with another place to live or a stipend to cover moving expenses.
Crowe said her landlord, who works on behalf of the housing authority, told her she would have to get on a waiting list for another apartment. But her chances of getting a home through that process are slim.
According to a county official, more than 2,000 applicants are currently on the waiting list for a subsidized apartment managed by the Boulder County Housing Authority. In 2023, when the agency last opened the lottery, it received more than 1,900 applications. A county spokesman said federal fair housing laws generally prohibit giving preference to tenants already renting from the housing authority. That said, the spokesman said some units have less strict rules and waiting lists.
Crowe lives primarily on Social Security disability insurance and works part time as a caregiver. She pays about $1,200 in rent for a two-bedroom apartment she shares with her son. She said the past year has been hell with the rising costs of food and other necessities.
“I was holding on with both fists, white-knuckling it,” Crowe told Boulder Reporting Lab about paying rent. “You expect me to try and go out there and do it on the free market?”
Even if she does find a place, Crowe said she is coming to terms with downsizing. She said she doesn’t want to give up the dryer she saved up so long for. And she is unsure what to do with her great grandmother’s and grandmother’s furniture. She could get a storage unit, but she questions the point if she can’t get an apartment.
Crowe said she is grateful to have 90 days to prepare for the move. But she’s still waiting for calls back from the county and family services providers, such as Sister Carmen. In the meantime, she is considering living in her car if she can’t find another place to live.
“I’m sitting on my bed with a plethora of papers,” Crowe said. “It’s just like I can’t do this. I don’t know what to do next.”
Update and correction: This story was updated on July 19 to correct the number of applicants on the Boulder County Housing Authority’s waiting list. The story previously stated it was 3,000 based on an email from the county. The county later said this figure was incorrect because it included duplications in which the same person was on waiting lists for separate vouchers. The correct number is about 2,000, it said. Also, the story was updated to include an additional comment from Susana Lopez-Baker on the reason for selling certain properties.
Never enough “affordable” housing. Let the developer pay.
Lynn, the developer does pay. The current City of Boulder inclusionary housing cash-in-lieu fee is about $47.00 per square foot. That simply becomes a cost to build housing and is passed on to the consumer. The fees just make housing more expensive and only much higher incomes can afford the rent or for-sale price.
The point JC, is that they don’t pay the costs of their impact. $47/sf. is nothing. I have trouble finding empathy for developers IN A SATURATED MARKET, deferred maintenance of course needs included in the impact itemization. This might make then build to a higher standard. And don’t build if you can’t pay! But the city needs to say this and they aren’t with 25% inclusionary housing, (the $47/sf.) and parking reductions and height amendments.
In this case, Boulder County and City of Lafayette are paying for a lot of it since it’s permanently affordable housing for those at or under 60% AMI, not market rate. It’s also using a nonprofit developer.
Well, the way I see it is as long as CU continues to grow there is no way for the City of Boulder to conquer the affordable housing shortage. When I moved here in 1978 we had 14,000 roughly undergrads, now 34,000? on it’s way to what 55,000? as I have read. That student has way more money (out of state money which CU loves) and takes up all the supply that is out there. Pretty simple. Control CU numbers and you have affordable housing.
Paul, how about forcing CU to supply most (if not all) of the housing that is required by its annual enrollment. This would “free up” a lot of market-rate housing within the city limits for owner-occupied use. The students would thus be required to live on CU owned properties. The students are a drain on City resources and don’t contribute much to sales tax revenue other than pizza and alcohol sales (it’s humor, folks). This could hopefully eliminate the neglectful landlords who rent to students in nice parts of town and let the property go to rot.
And how’s that going JC? 950 units of rent-by-the-bedroom at the Millennium, CU South, the new Quantum Silicon Valley lab, CU conference center with 15,000 sf. ballroom, football, etc. Master of stating the obvious, like I always do!
Tax money from Boulder County Issue 1B (voter-adopted in 2023) couldn’t have been used to prevent this, or some of this? Selling below-market rate properties seems really disruptive to the affordable housing mission and to the residents.
Not surprising that an unintended consequence of an affordable housing portfolio is that it will be subject to deferred maintenance issues.
Regardless, it seems incredibly cruel that those in affordable housing and are bumped out of housing because the program can’t manage its finances and that they would not be moved to the top of the list for replacement housing.
As a former longtime resident who left for greener pastures in 2009, it seems to me that the housing problem you guys have is entirely self inflicted. I benefitted greatly from housing price inflation when I sold my house and left. Maybe, as an outsider now, I can offer a more objective perspective.
When I lived there I called the combined effect of the height limit and the limited growth plan “The existing Homeowner Enrichment Ordinance”. It worked for me! It continues to work for the well capitalized.
Under the guise of preservation, the people of Boulder, perhaps unwittingly, voted to enrich property owners and exclude the median American citizen from their town. If iron control of construction were relaxed, expanding use by right options and if small groups of concerned neighbors weren’t allowed to effectively veto construction, you guys would have a city where the median American citizen could live comfortably.
It would change the “character” of Boulder. There’s no doubt about that, but on my last visit, a few months ago, I felt a big character change that made me glad I’d left. Many more people and cars, from a much bigger surrounding population base want to use physical infrastructure that hasn’t changed much since I left. That’s an undesirable character change.
Resistance to change is a natural thing but, allowed to run free, it’s ugly. Boulder could be an attractive city, dynamic and creative if it could relax control over the built environment. Control isn’t the answer. Sometimes letting go is what’s needed. Any athlete can attest to that.
When I left Boulder, it was to move my export company to a better positioned place: Miami, FL. I lived high up in a big tower, surrounded by big towers, with 300 families in my building. It was phenomenal! In terms of commercial and social dynamism, cultural diversity, and raw creativity, Boulder is a backwater by comparison. It’s overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly monolingual, and big majority technical. Why? IMHO, the entirely human desire to control the built environment. Fear of losing the familiar. Inadequate housing isn’t just a Boulder problem. It’s everywhere, and mostly for the same reasons. Ordinances should work positively for most human needs and against some human wants. Should the only zoning be either residential or commercial/industrial? Should small bodegas, duplexes and triplexes be use by right in residential? Should downtown be allowed to become highrise residential/retail? Should small groups have an effective veto? Control isn’t the answer IMHO, but the people of Boulder will have to debate and decide on what kind of place they want. I’m just a guy looking in from the outside. I’m nostalgic sometimes and I have the means, but not the desire, to go back.
Yep, Boulder is an elite enclave and a cultural backwater. Everything must be tightly controlled in Boulder. As the artists say, this is where creativity comes to die.
Edwards nails it. Boulder must change, we must adopt the diversity of people, culture, modes of transport, types of housing, etc. We have the opportunity to build one of the most amazing cities in the country, but we are squandering the chance.
So the county bit off more than it could chew with Willoughby, and now dozens of other tenants must pay with their housing. This is unacceptable. What next, they sell those units to a private equity corporation who can swoop in and scoop them all at the highest price, and make sure no lower income person ever lives there again? And the county is not even offering relocation assistance. How about they instead cut back on some of the staff who are doing little in their many departments. I can think of a few.
How about they start cutting back on market housing with a fair impact fee? They won’t build? All the better.
It doesn’t sound like they built ANY market rate housing in this Willoughby project. Generally they do build a bunch, though, because that’s how they can subsidize the 30-60% AMI units. I’d like to see how much money these developers (the for profit ones) are making in these deals, though. All that huge Boulder Junction Phase 2 build out? Zero affordable housing. It was all included in Phase 1.
How embarassing- our county Commissioners proactively increasing homelessness knowing thr wait for family housing is three to five years.
I urge readers to check out a couple of books: Strong Towns and Confessions of a Recovering Engineer. In them, Charles Marohn explains how towns like ours bankrupt themselves by not allowing the natural evolution that cities should experience – small improvements, following the things that work and dropping the things that don’t. I hope for Boulder’s – and its residents’ futures – that we reconsider what makes Boulder great (it’s the people!).
The Democrats have been passing legislation that increase the cost of providing housing. Private landlords, who don’t receive tax dollars to help fund themselves, will have to increase rents also. I feel sorry for those folks losing their housing and having to try and get back in the lottery to be subsidized by others.
Seems to me private landlords are a big part of the problem. Remember how many started jacking rents up 30% right after the Marshall fire, and then kept going with that strategy? Yeah, poor landlords. We need rent control to reign the greed heads in before all renters are looking at potential homelessness.
I am interested in the following housing please send me an application
I am looking for affordable purchase
Good thing people keep voting blue.
Is Parkside Apartments Longmont one of the complexes?
Ya that would work if they hadn’t given the developers a way out by paying a fine instead. It’s way more profitable to pay the fine. How does this make sense? It does for greedy corporate American. Greed will be the downfall of democracy. The worst thing is it doesn’t matter. We can’t take any thing to death, we are all poor. Wealth is in your imagination.
It would make more sense to get the current residents rehoused before trying to sell the properties. It’s unnecessarilly cruel to cause the extra stress of trying to find another affordable home whilst under the gun of the 90-day deadline and an already present shortage of available options.
I would like to know how the incredible numbers of high-rise, high-density, “transit-oriented” apartment complexes being built across all our cities and across the country are figuring into this equation? I keep hearing that they are the answer to affordable housing but they are beyond my affordable means and, frankly, I don’t see many people living in them at all? Legislation to encourage more “transit-oriented communities” was just passed this session??? I would like to see a real story with real journalism digging deep into this country-wide–or shall we say world-wide–phenomena.
That would be great but very hard to do. So much of the escalating housing costs are due to private equity corporations buying everything they can and then raising rents and slashing their costs. They work at all levels, buying individual homes, buying newly built homes and apartment building straight from developers, buying large exiting apartment buildings, even here in Boulder. It’s constant upward pressure on the housing and rental market. This is the fallout from deregulation after the 2008 housing bubble burst. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Sherod Brown have just introduced a bill in the senate to scrutinize larger residential purchases by private equity firms because they are not required to report them to the FTC now so it can result in monopolies.
I know they are very beautiful and I would like to see if I am l able to rent one of the apartments for handicap people I have a mental handicap, but nevertheless, I would like to see if I qualify for a cheap price apartment. Thank you very much. They’re beautiful I think.