The Brown Ranch annexation special election is upon us. While the details of the annexation matter significantly, for me, this decision comes down to a more fundamental question: Do the residents of Steamboat Springs want our local workforce to have the option of living with us in the city? Or are we going to price them out, forcing them to live in satellite communities like other mountain communities?

Many of you share my view that what makes Steamboat special amongst other mountain towns is the local community. I do not want to see Steamboat become a community limited only to the financially well off.

To state the obvious, the lack of affordable housing is among our top issues in Steamboat, and the ramifications from this issue impact all of our lives every day, especially those who struggle to find housing. So how do we resolve this issue?

While uncomfortable for me to say, we simply cannot rely on free market dynamics to fix the affordability issue. Unfortunately, free market dynamics are instead a key cause of the problem. If left unchecked, these same dynamics will continue to aggravate this issue.

Solutions to the problem such as YVHA and Brown Ranch, which override the current market dynamics are critical to breaking this market momentum. However, these types of government-based approaches are not free or quick, and they are not perfect.

The importance of projects such as Brown Ranch is that in order to truly solve the affordability issue, there needs to be a significant amount of new housing units restricted to working residents put on the market as quickly as possible. In doing so, we are able to enlist the free market by closing the gap between the demand and supply of such housing. Without a significant new volume of restricted housing, the pricing of this housing (for purchase or rent) will not truly be affordable. We see this today in many of the YVHA projects.

Therefore, the question we need to answer is whether Brown Ranch is our best option at this time to create a significant increase in the number of affordable housing units. The answer to this question is yes. This project has been vetted through a process of open hearings and Steamboat Springs City Council sessions. Since the housing problem is so critical to Steamboat, we cannot wait to find the perfect answer with no unresolved issues.

David Karlin
Steamboat Springs