Semrau's PR Vote Scheme: Position Paper
Like Tim Semrau, I have been a resident of affordable housing for many years. I won my current unit at Common Ground in 1997 in a lottery. Winning that lottery enabled me to stay in Aspen and extend my career in public service, an avocation that pays not a whole lot.
For me and my sister and her family, as well as many of my friends, affordable housing has given me much more of an investment than can be described by dollars and bottom lines. It has been our stake in the community and given every one of us a chance to be part of this wonderful place. Most, if not all of us could never have paid the market price for admission.
The community made a bargain with each of the 842 residents who own affordable housing units, a bargain that we were fortunate to be offered. The deal was straightforward and simple: I was allowed to buy well below market price in return for my agreement to pass on that benefit to my successor. Unlike renters, I got to deduct my payments and pay reduced federal taxes.
In striking this deal with hundreds of individuals and families, the community ensured itself a stable work force and a depth of citizenry that is the envy of other resorts where locals are being forced out.Thanks to the affordable housing program, a retired judge can be your city councilman and a mom living in a trailer park can be your county commissioner.
Housing has been a win-win, a win for me, a win for Aspen. Today, every other resort I visit asks for advice increating its own affordable housing programs.
Tim Semrau's proposal offers me and the other 841 owners a chance to escape our end of the bargain by electing him. Instead of the originally agreed upon sale price that would ensure whoever owns my unit next the same opportunity I had, I am being asked to vote for a personal windfall that is financed out of Aspen's Real Estate Transfer Tax Fund, payable at closing.
There are better alternative uses of the Real Estate Transfer Tax, which was approved by voters for the creation of housing,not as a slush fund for election year promises.
The Real EstateTransfer Tax currently gathers approximately $10-$15 million per year on the sale of free market units. We are in the midst of a speculative boom with rising prices even while other parts of Colorado reportrecord foreclosures. Booms don't last forever - the housing shortagewill continue beyond the duration of the current speculative frenzy.
Instead of offering windfalls, the RETT should be used to accomplish the following goals that are in the spirit of its original purpose:
A. We can establish a reserve fund that would generate interest to pay for housing after the RETT expires or in years when the free market housing cools.
B. The RETT can be used to create badly needed additional rental housing and to keep rents low at places like Centennial and Truscott where rents have been rising faster than wages for some time now. Only today the housing office web site posted a one bedroom unit for $1,076 per month.
C. We can preserve Castle Ridge and Centennial, both of which are scheduled to be released from their price caps under prior approvals. Castle Ridge could be reconfigured to provide a mix of rental and ownership units replacing the present aging units.
D. We can also use the RETT to retrofit existing affordable housing units with solar and other facilities that would serve to reduce our carbon footprint and reduce utility bills for residents. Utility bills often are rising much faster than the ability of residents to pay.
E. By 2020,the state predicts our senior population will rise from 6% to 20%. We will need housing for residents who want to downsize and remain in this community.
Creating more housing units rather than buy offs forcurrent residents means we would have a more stable work force, a smaller carbon footprint, a better sense of community, a lesser transportation problem and customer base for local businesses.
Every year, hundreds of local residents are passed over in the lottery process and hundreds more are unable to find affordable rentals. Businesses, nonprofits, schools and local governments struggle to fill essential jobs. As local homes owned by working residents continue tobe sold on the free market, the need for worker housing will continue to grow even if skier visits stay flat.
Mr. Semrau wants toturn the housing lottery into something more like a Powerball lottery,with a cash bonus for winners in addition to the right to buy a subsidized unit. Our housing fund will become a real money lottery for the lucky few rather than a fund dedicated to giving more people an opportunity to live in Aspen. Developers who are able to choose housing winners without a lottery will have enormous power at their disposal.
In a generation, a $1 million Resident Occupied unit administered by the housing program would become a $2 million unit. Do we really want to use tax dollars to enable someone to realize $1million in appreciation on a housing unit?
The price is too high. We are being asked to vote to slam the door on hundreds of others who need ownership or rental opportunities, people who have worked just as hard for the community and are just as deserving as I was of a chance to have a stake here. The housing lottery is already heart breakingly hard enough on those who enter and lose without diverting funds to current homeowners and making the chance of winning even less.
Mr. Semrau claims it would cost "only" $2,750,000 a year to buy down units like mine and keep them affordable. My own estimate is that the buy down or buy off would be more like $4 million per year, perhaps more if inflation remains low.
Mr. Semrau's estimate is also based on the assumption that free market sales will continue to boom at the rate they have in recent years and that the RETT fund will have a generous surplus. But I have been here long enough to see real estate booms come and go. Fractional units may lose favor, we may have another recession, any number of things can happen to that fund. And the fund itself is due to expire in 2025.
I have made a bargain with the community, a bargain that has been good for me, my friends, family and the community. I intend to keep that bargain. I urge the voters, living in affordable and free market housing to resist Semrau's tax-funded mini-Powerball scheme and keep the dream of living and working in Aspen a possibility for our future residents.
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