EnCana USA has won Garfield County approval to operate up to 31 temporary facilities housing nearly 750 natural gas development workers north of Parachute.

Each of the facilities, known informally as man camps, is allowed to hold up to 24 employees and contractors. None would be operated more than one year under the county permits.

Energy companies have used temporary housing facilities under the permission of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, but the county learned it had authority to regulate them and instituted its permitting process last November.

Parachute Mayor Roy McClung wrote to the county that while the onsite housing will help, the town still will see traffic impacts related to EnCana’s drilling plans and is worried about overloaded intersections and the lack of funding to improve them.

He suggested in the letter that the county needs to be collecting impact fees from such developments to meet highway improvement needs.

Read Dennis Webb’s full article . . .

Despite two and a half years of planning and support from both the City of Glenwood Springs (deferred payment of $800,000 in development fees and construction of a park on the property) and Garfield County ($1.5 million in cash), a proposed 120-unit lower-income apartment project at Glenwood Meadows is dead.

The Colorado Housing and Finance Authority turned down a request from the Aspen-based Dunrene Group for $8.9 million in tax credits.

Arny Porath, the project’s developer, is hoping to build the project on another property, but finding that property could be a challenge.

CHFA previously had awarded the project the tax credits, but developers couldn’t meet the deadline to use them. They reapplied once they had put together a package that included the city and county assistance, but CHFA worried about continuing increases in construction expenses for the project.

While the developers can reapply for the tax credits later this year, but Dunrene Group’s Robert MacGregor said he couldn’t afford to losing another construction season and the prospoect of even higher construction costs.

Macgregor said he expects he will look to partner with a developer of more traditional middle-class housing on his property. Such a project would have to comply with Glenwood Springs requirement to provide 15 percent affordable housing, or contribute an equivalent amount to an affordable housing fund.

Read Dennis Webb’s full article . . .

After a long meeting and extensive public comment, the Steamboat Springs City Council approved two resolutions that support eventual adoption of a controversial linkage policy. Linkage would require residential and commercial developers to compensate the city, either by a fee or by construction of affordable homes, for a percentage of the market-rate housing units or employees created by their new development. The Council tabled proposed revisions to the city’s inclusionary zoning ordinance until May 1.

Read the full article . . .

The Grand River Medical Center, based in Rifle, recently told the Garfield County commissioners that employees are leaving because they can’t find a place to live or rent, and that could affect the organization’s ability to provide quality care.

The district, which employs 300 people in the Grand River Medical Center and E. Dene Moore Nursing Home, has between a 5 and 15 percent vacancy rate at a given time, Human Resources Director Michael Weerts said.

“I have to hire temporary employees who travel 100 miles each way each day,” because of the housing problems, he said.

He called on the commissioners “to look at borderline outrageous solutions” to the housing problem in the valley, “because we have an outrageous housing problem.”

Read the full article . . .

Saanich, BC wants residential builders to build “green” by cutting “red” tape. It is giving priority to applications for housing projects using energy-efficient components and provide those builders rebates of up to 30 per cent on building-permit fees.

Read the full article . . .

Seattle and Boston are on opposite coasts but they share a common concern — a lack of affordable housing. And not just a lack of affordable housing for lower income residents. Each city is facing a severe affordable housing shortage for low and middle income residents.

As the Post-Intelligencer reports, the median prices for a house in Seattle was about $450,000 and $290,000 for a condo, while the typical single person in Seattle earned enough to buy a home for just under $200,000. Many median-income workers choose to buy and commute rather than rent and hour commutes each are becoming more and more common and today, only 49 percent of Seattle’s workforce lives in the city.

Boston is looking for ways to build affordable housing lost to the free market. Robert Kuttner writes in the Boston Globe, that the $60 billion of federal money spent between 1965 and 1990 to subsidize private developers to build affordable housing in Boston is now being squandered since there were no requirements to keep the units affordable in perpetuity. Once the initial federal loan is paid off, developers/owners are free to sell or rent the housing to the highest bidder. Consequently, the affordable housing built with at taxpayer support is now becoming a windfall profit for the developer/owner.

Although there is still time for other candidates to enter the race, the current candidates for Mayor of Aspen began their first debate in the media by sparring over the city’s affordable housing program. Candidate, and former City Council member, Tim Semaru recently suggested increasing the appreciation cap to 5% annually on deed restricted units . The current cap is 3 percent or the national rate of inflation, whichever is lower.

Candidates Mick Ireland and Torre both discarded the suggestion. Ireland, who lives in deed-restricted affordable housing, said Semaru’s suggestion would be a negation of the deal between the city and citizens more than 20 years ago. Torre commented that he didn’t think the change was neccessary since people “who are in employee housing aren’t using it to make money, just to get in the door.”

Tom McCabe, director of the Aspen/Pitkin County Housing Authority, said he is worried that the Semaru’s plan would hurt local government’s ability to prevent the conversion of some 224 housing units into free-market condominiums in the future.

Learn more about Aspen’s Affordable Housing Program . . .

The national housing market may be stagnant, but housing in the mountains continues on an upward trajectory. According to a recent article in the Aspen Times, the average price for a three-bedroom home jumped, often substainally, throughout the region in 2006.

Basalt: $694,880 (up 21%)

Carbondale: $476,000 (up 4%)

Glenwood Springs: $383,932 (up 21%)

Rifle: $231,851 (up 14%)

The median income for a four person household in Garfield County was $62,300 in 2005.

Garfield County joined the billionaires club in 2006 as the volume of all real estate sales in the county topped $1 billion for the first time last year. The $1.04 billion in total sales for 2006 was an increase of 22 percent over the 2005 mark and growth of 137 percent from 2003.

The oil and gas boom in western Garfield County is driving the real estate development boom in western Garfield County. An estimated $75 million of the $1 billion in commercial and residential sales in Garfield County occurred in Rifle last year.

Meanwhile, Pitkin County has remained above the $1 billion level in annual sales volume for each of the last four years. Sales volume topped $2 billion in 2005 and soared to $2.64 billion last year.

Read Scott Condon’s full article …

A recent NY Times article highlights examples of condos being built without associated parking spaces. Although this practice goes against the codes in many communities, planners are realizing that “free parking” might be a reason why housing has become so unaffordable to middle-income families.

The article quotes Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California at Los Angeles and the author of The High Cost of Free Parking, “In the United States, housing is expensive and parking is cheap. We’ve got it the wrong way around.”

Although condominiums without parking are common in Manhattan and the downtowns of a few other East Coast cities, they are the exception to the rule in most of the country. In fact, almost all local governments require developers to provide a minimum number of parking spaces for each unit — and to fold the cost of the space into the housing price.

The exact regulations, which are intended to prevent clogged streets and provide sufficient parking, vary by city. Houston’s code requires a minimum of 1.33 parking spaces for a one-bedroom and 2 spaces for a three-bedroom. Downtown Los Angeles mandates 2.25 parking spaces per unit, regardless of size.

Today, city planners around the country are trying to change or eliminate these standards, opting to promote mass transit and find a way to lower housing costs.

Read the full aricle in the New York Times . . .