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Police officer Andy Sandoval lives in one the most beautiful places in the world near Vail, Colorado, where world-famous ski resorts are nestled between Rocky Mountain peaks. His living situation for years, though, was far less dreamy.
Until last month, the 26-year-old, his wife and their two small children were squeezed into one bedroom in a three-bedroom house that held nine other tenants — the best they could afford because of bloated housing prices fueled in part by sky-high land costs.
“Seeing my kids who wanted to run around, and my kids who wanted to stay up and watch a movie, who just didn’t have the space to do a lot of things … was heartbreaking,” said Sandoval. “I feel like I was failing them.”
Sandoval and his family were able to move into a home of their own last month thanks to Habitat for Humanity, but their all-to-common plight was an impetus for Colorado lawmakers to wade into the housing crisis.
The legislature is considering a new proposal to free up vacant parcels of state-owned land that could be leased or sold at a discount for affordable housing projects. If passed, one project near Vail would build 80 units of affordable housing in the first phase, and potentially hundreds more.
The proposal is part of a snowballing trend kicked off locally by cities such as Boston, New York and San Francisco that has since been adopted by California lawmakers in 2019 and spawned requests to the federal government to open up land for residential development.
“The cost of land in Colorado is one of — if not the — highest barrier to building affordable housing,” said Democratic state Rep. Dylan Roberts, one of the bill’s sponsors. “By eliminating that barrier, we’re hopefully going to see projects happen that would have never happened before.”
The bill was the first of several housing affordability measures the state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature is considering this year as they prioritize what has become a vital issue after the state’s median home price rose by 40% since the beginning of 2020, nearing $600,000, according to the rental platform Zillow.
“This is unaffordable if you are a teacher, nurse, restaurant manager, or city employee, the very workforce that help our Colorado communities thrive,” said Karen Kallenberg, executive director of Colorado’s Habitat for Humanity, in a committee hearing on the bill.
