3 days Ago By Lucy Peterson, Aspen Daily News Staff Writer
The Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority board discussed regulation changes during its Wednesday, April 17 meeting. The Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority is considering eliminating extra lottery chances based on work history in Pitkin County in an attempt to lower the average homebuyer age and promote longevity in the workforce housing system. The regulation change would give everyone who has worked in Pitkin County for at least four years a single chance in an ownership lottery.
Under the current regulations, the number of chances an applicant has in a lottery increases the longer they’ve worked in Pitkin County. Those who have worked for four to eight years in Pitkin County are entered five times in a lottery. Eight to 12 years of work history in the county garners six chances.
Those who have worked 12 to 16 years are entered seven times and those who have worked 16-20 years are entered eight times. The maximum number of chances an applicant can receive for a lottery is nine, which is awarded to those who have worked for more than 20 years in Pitkin County. Evening out the number of chances each applicant has in a lottery would lower the average age of lottery winners and hypothetically allow longer stints of ownership before reaching retirement age, Deputy Director of Housing Compliance Bethany Spitz told the APCHA board Wednesday.
“We all know that we’re not looking at forcing retirees out or doing any changes like that, but hypothetically by younger individuals winning, there’s a potential that those units would stay full longer,” Pittz said. Lottery winners from the last five years averaged 16 years of work history in Pitkin County, Spitz said. When lotteries were modeled with one chance for every bidder who has four or more years of work history in the county, the average years of work experience decreased to 11.
The average age also decreased by five years, from 42 to 37 years old. It aligns with the national average age for first-time homebuyers, APCHA Housing Policy Analyst Emily Maynard said. APCHA board members were torn on whether to make the change.
Board member Kelly McNicholas Kury, who represents the Pitkin Board of County Commissioners on APCHA, said at first she was concerned with the proposal, but recognized the value in it after seeing the distribution of ages in APCHA’s system. “After seeing the distribution of ages in the housing system right now, I think we really need to spread that out,” McNicholas Kury said. “Otherwise, we are going to have a system of retirees without a solution.
” It’s one of APCHA’s proposed efforts to optimize the use of its affordable housing inventory. The board moved forward with the change in a first reading, but agreed to revisit and potentially amend or abandon the change during its May 7 board meeting. It was one of several proposed updates to the housing authority’s regulations.
The regulation updates included removing category requirements for APCHA’s rightsizing pilot program. It would allow housing swaps to downsize their units regardless of category, and open up the program that has only been used a handful of times. The voluntary pilot program was launched in 2023 and allows for the purchase and sale of deed-restricted properties between two owners to increase the number of bedrooms available to a qualified owner of a smaller property and decrease the number of bedrooms available to the owner of a larger property.
An owner may qualify for a new unit that is the same category as their current unit or one category above or below such unit. But since 2023, APCHA has only facilitated three swaps, Spitz said. Eight people have expressed interest in upsizing, but homeowners who are considering downsizing don’t like the units from which individuals have expressed interest in upsizing, she said.
A majority of the board said applicants who are downsizing should be able to do so regardless of category, but the homeowners interested in upsizing should still have to qualify for the unit into which they are moving. “We want to incentivize the downsizer, is really where this [program] came from,” board member Carson Schmitz said. The board also discussed removing the $5 fee to bid in a lottery.
Board members approved of the change, but proposed increasing the $50 application fee to make up for the approximately $6,000 APCHA would lose annually by removing the bid fee. APCHA staff will present an updated application fee amount during the second reading of the regulation changes on May 7. Board members also approved removing retirement assets from an applicant’s asset calculation to encourage retirement savings.
Currently, 60% of a person’s retirement savings is calculated in their net assets. Any withdrawals from retirement accounts would be counted toward a person’s net assets. The board updated work requirements for Aspen Country Inn to allow for individuals who are 55-64 years old to work a minimum 1,000 per year instead of the 1,500 that is required for individuals younger than 65.
Nine units are vacant at Aspen Country Inn, some of which have been vacant for more than 18 months because it is difficult to fill the units with the work hour requirements and the strict low-income tax credit requirements. The board made other changes to the regulations, including allowing homeowners a 10% increase on their capital improvement caps every five years, removing the six month leave of absence allowance for retirees and more. APCHA Executive Director Matthew Gillen said the housing authority has made a handful of changes to its regulations since he started in 2021, but these changes were an attempt to consolidate everything the board has talked about in the past year and do it in one sweep.
In addition to the policy changes, APCHA updated the regulations to make them easier and clearer to read. It will review the regulations for a second reading during the May 7 APCHA board meeting in the BOCC chambers, and discuss further the changes to the lottery..
