Snowmass Town Council approves local’s lottery preference

The Snowmass Village Town Council unanimously approved an ordinance that will give locals an advantage in the town’s lottery system for deed-restricted housing during its Monday, May 6 council meeting.

The ordinance, which council members have discussed at length for months, will give locals a leg up in the lottery for the town’s stock of about 200 ownership units. It defines locals as people who have lived in Snowmass for at least eight years prior to graduating high school with an absence of no more than six years post-graduation. 

The Town Council originally proposed allowing only graduates of Aspen High School to be considered under the local lottery preference. But after receiving input from residents who said children may go to other high schools for specific reasons like certain special education programs, council members agreed to add Basalt High School, Roaring Fork High School and the day program at Colorado Rocky Mountain School in Carbondale to the ordinance.

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“If you have a need that sends you anywhere where you’re commuting a distance to attend the school but you’re coming home to Snowmass Village every day, I think that’s going to be such an unusual circumstance that we can easily accommodate the language that needs to address any commute level to a school and back home to Snowmass Village,” said Councilmember Britta Gustafson.

Councilmember Tom Fridstein argued people who graduated from high schools outside of Aspen High School but didn’t grow up in Snowmass may try to “game the system” and take advantage of the lottery preference.

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Some council members suggested adding language to allow for “extenuating circumstances” that require someone attend school outside of the Aspen School District, but town staff recommended against it because it would require the housing department to determine what exactly counts as an extenuating circumstance.

Snowmass Housing Director Betsy Crum, who has staunchly opposed the implementation of such an ordinance since talks on the preference first began, argued it will be difficult to determine who grew up in Snowmass regardless of what high school they attended.

“Of all the things we’ve talked about, this will be a nightmare to try to document. It will be a nightmare to show that they lived here for those eight years,” Crum said. “This will be one of the harder things to document in our applications, so I think the more specific it is, the less interpretation we need to make, and the more people apply for it they’ll know exactly what they have to get us.” 

“I don’t really have any good idea about how they’re going to prove where they lived … I mean, a kid doesn’t usually have a bill in his name or a mortgage in his name,” she added.

The housing department is still determining what documentation will be required for someone to apply for the local’s lottery preference when entering the lottery to purchase a home. The Town Council suggested using similar documentation to prove residence when applying to a school district, like a utility bill.

Under the current lottery system for buying an employee housing unit in Snowmass, those who have worked in the village for more than 15 years get eight lottery chances, those who have worked in the village for 7-11 years get four lottery chances, and those who have worked in the village for three-seven years get two lottery chances.

Those who are considered locals will be given five years of employment credit and will automatically be in the three-seven year tier for lottery chances without having to work that many years in Snowmass. It would require them to work only two years to get into the next employment tier and have more chances in the housing lottery. It is the Town Council’s way of incentivizing locals to remain in Snowmass and to provide those who want to live where they grew up but where they can’t afford a free-market unit a potentially easier path to doing so.

Approval of the local’s lottery preference also meant final approval of several changes to the housing regulations, including changing employee qualifications, restricting ownership of other property, and changing housing inspection requirements. Under the approved changes, an employee eligible for housing includes someone who worked 1,600 hours and earned 70% of their income in Snowmass for the minimum of one year. The ownership restriction prevents people who own a second home from vying for employee housing.

The Town Council also approved an ordinance that would allow original owners in the Crossings neighborhood, the first deed-restricted single family home subdivision built in Snowmass, to give their homes to their children as an inheritance if they die. The original deed for homes in the Crossings included an inheritance provision, but was removed by a Town Council in 2002, owners said unbeknownst to them. The current Town Council voted to honor the inheritance provision for the original owners at the Crossings.