Colorado

NEWS: HOUSING
Should Steamboat build 2,264 homes for 6,000 workers? Voters get a say on Tuesday.

The Brown Ranch project began with an anonymous donation of $24 million and plans to create housing affordable to working locals. Neighbors aren’t sure they want their town to grow that much.

Jason Blevins
3:50 AM MDT on Mar 25, 2024



Yampa Valley Housing Authority Executive Director Jason Peasley is interviewed by NBC News senior policy reporter Shannon Pettypiece on Wednesday, March 20, 2024, on land designated for affordable housing west of Steamboat Springs. Steamboat voters on Tuesday will decide whether to annex the Brown Ranch property and begin building 2,264 units of workforce housing for the resort community by 2040. (Matt Stensland, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Voters in Steamboat Springs on Tuesday will decide on the city’s plan to annex 420 acres to build a community of affordable housing for more than 6,000 workers. ... The Brown Ranch plan illustrates the challenges with building affordable housing in Colorado’s high country as communities grapple with the scope and cost of building homes for workers who cannot afford living in mountain towns. The vote in Steamboat Springs will decide if the city of 13,000 can move forward on a plan to spend hundreds of millions on a new community that could grow the city’s population by nearly half.

The size of the Brown Ranch plan “reflects the magnitude of the problem we are trying to solve,” said Jason Peasley, the head of the Yampa Valley Housing Authority. “Lots and lots of communities are dealing with a problem of this scope or larger. However almost none have opportunities and resources to address this housing problem in the way we can.”

The Yampa Valley Housing Authority acquired the 534-acre parcel west of the city in 2021 using $24 million from an anonymous donor. After a steering committee spent two years gathering public input from 4,000 Routt County residents, the authority sketched a plan for 2,264 new homes for local workers in the next 20 years. The parcel, a portion of which the city council voted to annex last year, is inside the city’s urban growth boundary and has been identified for expansion in the long-term plans of both the city and county.

Since its inception in 2003, and the passage of an affordable housing mill levy in 2017, the Yampa Valley Housing Authority has built 210 affordable units for locals with low and moderate incomes. The authority is building an additional 275 units. But that’s not enough.

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