This is the third in a six-part series for The Colorado Dream: Housing Wanted. The stories in this series are part of the KUNC podcast The Colorado Dream, airing on Fridays beginning October 6. The podcast is available for download wherever you may listen to podcasts and on KUNC.org.
Steamboat Springs is similar to other popular mountain resort communities in Colorado. There’s a world-class ski resort, hot springs and a national forest to explore. That’s exactly why Sanaya Sturm, her husband, and their young son and daughter moved here.
“We are big campers,” Sturm said. “We will go out and we kind of get out into the national forest. And fishermen, big skiers—we do it all.”
But moving to an outdoor paradise like Steamboat comes with a price. When Sturm and her family relocated here from Denver in 2020, they had to downsize from the 3,600-square-foot house they owned to a rental that’s less than half that size. They pay over $3,300 each month for one side of a duplex, plus an additional $150 for a storage unit.
The three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath home feels small for their family of four. Sturm’s husband works from home and turned the living room into his office. If Sturm or the kids are at home during the week, they have to tiptoe around. If he’s on a call, they can’t watch TV. But Sturm found a silver lining.
“If it's the summer, I will take my fishing rod and pack a lunch and just head out for the woods and see what the next adventure is,” she said. “Which actually has been super fun.”
Sturm said she and her husband are fiscally responsible. They don’t have any debt and saved the money from the sale of their Denver home. The couple really wants to buy a single-family home in Steamboat, but between low inventory, high prices and buyer competition, it’s been hard.
“Even in the middle of the night, I wake up stressed out all the time. Check Zillow at 2 in the morning like something's going to magically pop up,” she said.
They’ve put in over a dozen offers on homes over the past two years, often over the asking price. But they inevitably get outbid by cash offers or the owners convert the home to a short-term rental.
“Steamboat has become home. But I would say I don't think I'm really kind of laying down roots yet,” she said. “Mentally, it starts to feel hopeless after a while.”
Sturm hasn’t been able to lay down roots because, like many of Colorado’s mountain resort communities, Steamboat has a workforce housing crisis. Last year, a Yampa Valley Housing Authority study found Routt County needed 1,400 housing units just to house the current full-time workforce.
But this city has something most others don’t: A lot of land to build on.
Housing an entire community
In 2021, Yampa Valley Housing Authority received a $24 million donation that was used to purchase Brown Ranch. The 534-acre parcel of undeveloped land is located just west of the Steamboat city limits. The goal is to build 2,264 housing units there by 2040.
“We can essentially develop all the housing that our community needs for the next couple of decades,” Jason Peasley, executive director of the Yampa Valley Housing Authority, said.
Brown will be developed into four compact, walkable neighborhoods with affordable single-family homes, townhomes, condos and apartments to rent or own. Each will have a commercial core, transit center and lots of green space.
“We're aligning with our local climate action plan to make sure that we're hitting those marks for energy efficiency, water conservation,” Peasley said. “A big tool that we can utilize there is concentrating open space and parks into sort of a larger integrated system.”
The units will be reserved for the local workforce who can’t compete in Steamboat’s expensive housing market. During the first half of 2023, the average single family home price was nearly $1.8 million, and the average condo or townhouse costs over $1 million.
“The whole project is going to be serving our local workforce, or people who've retired from our local workforce, at essentially every AMI (Area Median Income) level that needs support,” he said.
Area Median Income estimates the median family incomefor an area. The federal government uses it to define ranges, from very low to middle-income households. Under these guidelines, Brown Ranch will provide housing options for residents making 30% to 250% of the Steamboat Springs AMI. Rent and for-sale prices are expected to not exceed 30% of a person or family’s income.
A local employer’s plan to keep its workers
UCHealth Yampa Valley Medical Center is one of the largest employers in Steamboat, with over 600 staff members. Sturm is the nurse manager for the cancer center and breast care programs. She also hires people. Early in the process, she said, she lets interviewees know about Steamboat’s housing issues.
“Housing is just such a big thing that we always try to be very thoughtful and informative for people when we hire,” Sturm said. “The same was done for me.”
Workforce housing has been a priority for Yampa Valley Medical Center (YVMC) for several years. They use two different strategies to recruit and retain employees. The first is employer-backed short-term housing, which is seen as an incentive for new hires.
For nearly 20 years, YMVC has leased apartments and then rented them to staff to provide short-term housing for a maximum of 12 months. It currently has plans to create short-term employee housing with bigger units to accommodate families on a lot next to the hospital, but that project is on hold due to limited high bids and a lack of interest from contractors.
The second strategy is permanent housing that aims to keep staff in the community. YVMC recently announced the development of its first long-term rental units.
In May, YVMC was approached by local developers Scott Marr and Curt Weiss to buy apartments that are part of a 42-unit complex they are building. YVMC decided to buy the entire project, which is about a mile from the medical center.
“We were like, ‘Wow,'’’ said Soniya Fidler, president of UCHealth Yampa Valley Medical Center. “This is kind of almost exactly what we've been trying to accomplish with our long-term lease strategy.”
The Creek's End complex is scheduled to open by the end of 2024. Full-time staff are eligible to apply for the units and will be chosen via a lottery. Rent amounts will be based on a person’s salary and won’t exceed 30% of their monthly pay. YVMC doesn’t plan to charge market rate for these units.
“We are subsidizing the housing on behalf of our staff to make it affordable, and ideally hope that they can then save in order to find some type of ownership,” Fidler said.
With the Brown Ranch development on the horizon, Fidler hopes staff will then be in a good financial position to buy a place there in the future.
Despite these efforts, YVMC’s housing initiatives won’t work for all employees, especially those who want to buy a home now, like nurse manager Sturm. She said Brown Ranch probably won’t work for her since the first units won’t be completed for years. Sturm also thinks her family’s household income might be too high for an income-restricted housing development.
“We probably are the people who are stuck in the middle where we may not qualify. And so we will still probably be in this boat,” she said.
Building with community input
The Yampa Valley Housing Authority is committed to working with the community while designing Brown Ranch. Housing authority staff connected with residents, community and government groups, nonprofits and businesses. This included talking with the city’s sizable Hispanic and Latino population to ensure their voices were heard.
“It was really important to reach out to them in a way that was very comfortable, because traditionally, the barrier for them participating has been pretty high,” Peasley said.
The housing authority enlisted LatinX Alliance, a local volunteer-led nonprofit group, to facilitate meetings with the Spanish-speaking community. Cecilia Escobar Ceballos is a member of LatinX Alliance and also one of two Latinos serving on the Brown Ranch Steering Committee. Ceballos, a medical interpreter and admissions staff member at UCHealth Yampa Valley Medical Center, is also a part of the committee’s health equity team. She led meetings with the Latino community to learn more about their needs.
“Most of the needs have to do with health equity, which is having green spaces, you know, transportation, access to health services, shopping for food and all of that,” she said.
Health equity is one of the roots of the Brown Ranch project and informs how the housing complex is designed.
Last year’s housing study also found that more than 20% of Routt County homes have multiple families living together. Experts say this can have detrimental effects, like lack of sleep, bad hygiene practices, and an increased risk of infectious diseases that can lead to poor physical and mental health. People of color experience the highest rates of overcrowding which, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, mirrors deep racial disparities among people experiencing housing instability and homelessness.
LatinX Alliance sent out a survey and hosted seven meetings that reached over 300 people. Many voiced similar concerns and ideas. They wanted a recreation center where kids can play year-round, especially during the long winter months, and an underpass so people living in the mobile home park across Highway 40 can safely access bus stops at Brown Ranch. They also want to become homeowners.
“Their dream is to have a home, because it shows them that they have succeeded,” Ceballos said.
The Yampa Valley Housing Authority took their input to heart. A grocery store and an underpass were already part of the plan, but they will include an indoor sports facility with two outdoor playing fields made of artificial turf. About 60% of the Brown Ranch inventory will be for-sale units instead of rentals.
Brown Ranch takes another step forward
Brown Ranch is a hot topic in Steamboat, and a lot of people have been voicing their opinions. In fact, over 3,300 community members participated in more than 220 meetings on the subject.
“If we don't give our voice, then how are we supposed to be noticed?” said Johnny Garmantz, who works for a fine beverage distribution company. “Definitely took the survey, and it was good.”
Garmantz sits on the board of Steamboat’s Young Professionals Network (YPN). YPN disseminated a housing survey to its members, and more than 250 of them completed it. The results showed about two-thirds of participants worry the lack of housing will force them to leave the city. They also found nearly two-thirds of respondents spend more than a third of their income on housing.
“We are already paying more in rent. We are afraid that it's going to be not affordable," he said. "And essentially, the more time it (Brown Ranch) leads on, the less likely it is going to work.”
Some of the comments respondents left were positive. One said, “Brown Ranch is vital to the future of our community.” Others were critical, including concerns about negative impacts on quality of life and an increase in traffic that is “already a problem.”
And now, Brown Ranch is one step closer to becoming a reality. This week, the city council approved the annexation in a 4-3 vote. But residents can still challenge that. They have 30 days to collect enough signatures to bring it to a citywide vote.
The housing development's infrastructure and construction are expected to cost about $1 billion to $1.5 billion over the next two decades. Yampa Valley Housing Authority plans to use public and private partnerships and government grants to fund the project, and additional funding could come from the city’s short-term rental tax. A measure on the November ballot will ask voters to allocate 75% of the rental tax revenue to Brown Ranch.
Despite Garmantz's concerns about the timeline for Brown Ranch, he's still cautiously optimistic. He loves the idea of Brown Ranch and said it could provide an amazing opportunity. He’s looking forward to buying a house in four years and hopes his friends will become homeowners, too.
“Give them (the) opportunity to possibly own property and stay here for the long term and be vital members of this community,” he said.
Next Episode
Steamboat Springs is taking unprecedented steps to solve a housing crisis fueled by the explosion of short-term rentals. We hear from residents who fall on both sides of this contentious issue.
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Credits
The Colorado Dream: “Housing Wanted” is a production from KUNC News and a member of the NPR Podcast Network. It’s hosted by Stephanie Daniel with reporting by Stephanie Daniel and editing by Sean Corcoran. The theme song was composed by Jason Paton. Michelle Redo sound designed and mixed the episode. Digital editing and social promotion by Jennifer Coombes, Jenn de la Fuente and Natalie Skowlund. Photos by Stephanie Daniel and Jennifer Coombes. Artwork by Ashley Jefcoat and Jennifer Coombes. Music from Epidemic Sound.
Special thanks to Rae Solomon, Scott Franz, Robyn Vincent, Robert Leja, Mike Arnold and Tammy Terwelp, KUNC’s president and CEO.
Editor's note: Oct. 20, 2023 this story was updated. The story corrected the spelling of Sanaya Sturm’s name.
