“The authors specifically call out new construction that is significantly controlled by comprehensive plans or through more restrictive land use regulations “referred to as ‘compact development,’ ‘urban consolidation,’ ‘growth management’ and ‘smart growth.’” The thesis is that these places create housing that is unaffordable. And conversely, the places ranked as affordable – Phoenix, Atlanta, Las Vegas – tend to be areas associated with sprawl development.”

Read the entire article at The Atlantic Cities: The Most and Least Affordable Housing in America.

“Scott Remmert of the Remmert Group of Colorado Landmark Realtors said it’s frustrating to not have more homes to show prospective buyers, while James Simpson, with Fuller Sotheby’s International Realty, said it can work in a Realtor’s favor. ‘A limited inventory creates a high demand, plus it gives you the opportunity to pitch developers on the idea of spec-building houses again,’ Simpson said.”

Read the entire article at the Boulder County Business Report: High-end home inventory up for debate.

Reference to these commuters is often made in Boulder’s discussions about such issues as housing, transportation, jobs, parking, traffic and sprawl. We refer to them in mass as if their wills might easily bend all at once to our well-intentioned wishes. I wanted to associate faces and real life situations to this number and drill down into some personal stories about why they live where they live.

Here are four stories.

The Artist

The useful life of artist Priscilla Cohan’s car came to an end. Without the financial means to buy a new one, she decided to go car-less. That was almost two years ago. Her decision would be unusual if she lived in Boulder, but it is even rarer than that — she lives in Lyons.

Her job downtown at the Boulder Art’s and Crafts Gallery makes her eligible for an EcoPass, but her comfort level in giving up her car mainly came as a result of the Lyons Community Bus Program. According to Boulder County Alternative Transportation Coordinator, Scott McCarey, Nederland has also received funding for a community wide bus pass that will likely start that in January, 2012, assuming RTD gets on board. The county is also working with the City of Longmont on a similar program.

The Artist, Priscilla Cohan

She doesn’t see the half hour commute into Boulder on the Y bus as cramping her style, rather she cherishes it as it offers her downtime she wouldn’t otherwise afford herself. She uses it to read the New Yorker, the subscription paid for with money saved by not owning a car. She’s also purchased a B-Cycle membership which, along with her personal bike, supplement her transportation options while in Boulder. Her entertainment opportunities are enhanced by the generosity of friends who lend her a car now and then and allow her to spend the occasional night in Boulder.

Years ago while working at the Boulder Public Library, her decision not to buy a house in Boulder was based on her desire to live in a more rural mountain setting. Lyons appealed to her for two main reasons. First, it had more of a community “feel” than Boulder. It was a good balance between the quiet of a rural town, yet compact enough to allow easy access to neighbors. Second, while she considered Nederland, the commute up and down Boulder Canyon did not appeal to her.

“I never tire of the drive between Lyons and Boulder, it’s so beautiful!” she remarked during our interview. Aesthetics trumped the cost of a commute, indeed, cost didn’t even enter into her decision.

She lives in the small apartment over the garage in the rear of her little house in Lyons, which she rents to a young couple. The improvements that Lyons has recently made to its downtown have made the community more cohesive. She volunteers and participates in many community projects in Lyons such as The Clarifier Project, writing grant proposals for the Lyons Historical Society and Confluence Community Arts.

“I would love it if my life were more Lyons centered,” she says, “but there aren’t any jobs there. So I have to go to where the jobs are.”

The Non-Profit Executive

David Dadone’s partner thinks he should hire a professional scheduler. As the Executive Director of the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMOCA), he attends many meetings that can be held anywhere in the metro area and some require a suit and tie.

He also enjoys hiking and yoga classes in Boulder. Consequently, his car doubles as a locker with changes of clothes always available to respond to unanticipated events and spontaneous activities.

The Nonprofit Executive, David Dadone

He tries to take the bus twice a week into Boulder from his home in the Highlands Neighborhood of Denver, but it’s often difficult because of time and location constraints of his many meetings. When he does take the bus, he finds it relaxing. “It’s time I can use to catch up on emails, work or sleep.” Museum employees all have EcoPasses and access to an eGo CarShare membership.

A native of Argentina, David grew up in Buenos Aires. Well, not actually IN the city but in one of its many suburbs, and ended up in Denver by way of a relationship. While working on his bachelor’s degree in Buenos Aires, he commuted for one and a quarter hours on the subway followed by a walk of ten blocks. “This is not an uncommon routine in big cities,” he says. That’s part of the reason that he doesn’t flinch at his forty minute driving commute into Boulder.

“Boulder is simply part of a metro area that extends from Castle Rock up to Boulder.” he says, “So, when considering where to live we considered the whole metro area.” As they narrowed it down they felt that “Lafayette and Louisville didn’t offer the kind of amenities that the Highlands Neighborhood has and, for five more minutes of commute time, we could live in a more vibrant setting.” His partner, a Denver native who commutes to the Denver Tech Center, selected the neighborhood, and though David would have liked to live in Boulder, splitting the commute was a higher priority.

The little craftsman style house he and his partner own is divided into two dwellings, affording them some revenue from leasing out the second unit. David tends a garden there and another one in one of Denver’s Urban Gardens community gardens. “I feel very fortunate to own a house, though higher density buildings instead of individual houses would provide more affordable housing.”

According to a January 2011 City of Boulder memo, Land Use Tools and Affordable Housing, higher density results in increased affordability only when coupled with Inclusionary Housing benefits in the form of permanently affordable units or cash-in-lieu.

Does the commute cramp his style? “No, we go out for entertainment wherever there is entertainment, if it is in Morrison, we go to Morrison. We come into Boulder, too, especially since the coffee here is better!”

The Analyst

Lori Krager and her husband had tired of living in apartments. They wanted a house with a yard so they could have a dog. Four years ago, at the age of 30, she and her husband set out to find one. At the time, she worked for Boulder County in the GIS department (still does) and her husband was working in Lakewood. They wanted a place located somewhere in between, so they chose Westminster. Boulder was never in the running as a place to live. They wanted a single family house and just assumed they would be priced out.

The Analyst, Lori Krager

According to AAA, it costs about $54.10 for every 100 miles driven. I asked Chris Ketterhagen, a Boulder realtor, how much more you could afford on a mortgage by giving up one car. According to him, a widely accepted number for miles driven per year is 12,000 which translates to $541/month in vehicle expense. At 5.5% interest, a full point above today’s rates, over 30 years, $541/month maintains principal and interest on $95,000. With a 10% down-payment, that $541 would maintain an additional $85,000 in mortgage.

Her husband now works in Boulder and, though Lori takes the bus to work most of the time, he drives every day. They don’t carpool because of their different schedules. Lori estimates that the bus commute costs her one hour each way, factoring in the drive to the park-n-ride, parking, walking over the highway and waiting time. However, she really likes the down time that riding the bus affords, “I’ve never read so many books or listened to so much music,” she exclaimed, “on days I drive, I miss my down time.”

“Most of our social life happens in Boulder after work. This as an advantage because it keeps us off of the turnpike during rush hour,” she explained in response to my question about whether or not her commute time allowed for activities outside of work and family.

A few times during the summer she will venture to work on her bike even though it is logistically challenging. The eighteen mile ride requires a change of clothes, brought to work and prepared a day ahead, and a shower afterward. She has a membership at the downtown gym that affords her a comfortable shower and changing space.

Does the commute cramp her style? “No, not really, we’ve been doing it so long we don’t think about it.”

The Designer

Colorado native Mac Bernhardt and his brother bought a house together six years ago. “We chose Broomfield because it is between Denver and Boulder.” says Mac, “Jobs in our field are either going to be in Boulder or in Denver, so a house in between made sense.” Mac is a designer for 505Design in Boulder. As an artistic and tech oriented professional, he sees himself as an undeniable member of the “Creative Class.”

In his book The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida defines the Creative Class as consisting of two components “the super creative core” and the “creative professionals.” The former includes scientists, engineers, academics, artists, novelists and entertainers as well as the society’s thought leadership: non-fiction writers, editors, cultural figures, analysts and opinion-makers. The latter works in “knowledge-intensive” industries such as high-tech, finance, law, medicine and business. According to Florida, the Creative Class adds economic value through their creativity.

The Designer, Mac Bernhardt

After graduating from the University of Colorado-Boulder with a degree in Environmental design, he attended graduate school at the University of Colorado-Denver, after which he got a job in Denver, worked there for a year then moved to a job in Boulder. He’s changed jobs four times in ten years. So when he and his brother, a high school baseball coach and teacher, bought their house, it was based on the idea that frequent job changes are a part life and that since most jobs in his industry are either in Boulder or in Denver, a community halfway in between would make a manageable commute in either direction.

His is one of the many single occupancy vehicles heading west on the turnpike every morning. “The bus is not really an option,” he asserts, “my home is not convenient to a transit stop and it would take an hour to drive to a park-n-ride, take the bus and get to the office (just north of Downtown Boulder).” The dollar value of his time trumps the dollar cost of an average thirty minute driving commute.

His extra-curricular activities revolve around softball teams and games that are usually after work in Boulder. The Orchard Town Center, a quick drive from his home, offers many amenities such as restaurants and movie theaters. He doesn’t feel that the commute cramps his lifestyle. Would he like to live close to work? “It would be nice to live close to work, but with the turnover of jobs in the design industry and the struggling economy, it’s hard to predict where my career will take me.”

His brother married and moved out of their house three years ago and the house that he currently shares with roommates will soon become a perfect place for the next stage of his life, Mac is getting married next spring.

Conclusions

These four profiles begin to reveal the intricate nature behind individuals’ housing decisions. By acknowledging the myriad of complexities that rule people’s lives, perhaps our conversation about how to deal with the in-commuter problem can shift from one of numbers to one of understanding the fuel behind these complexities.

Solutions to quell in-commuting such as building more affordable condominiums inside Boulder City limits might help but are over simplified and not a panacea. We need to acknowledge and address the two-worker household phenomenon and the transient nature of modern jobs.

Innovations like exploring allowing workers to clock-in on the bus and city-wide EcoPasses coupled with an educational campaign about the true costs of commuting could encourage more use of public transit. Boulder County recently installed giant locked bike cages as an option to putting a bike on the bus to help with the “last mile” connection. On the private sector side there are technologies already in existence to help make ride sharing easier, while making offering rides a source of revenue. Policy changes that would allow additional housing solutions such as carriage houses and basement apartments that can also boost household revenues would put owning a single family house more within reach of middle class incomes.

Near the end of The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida lists three types of high-tech communities: nerdistans (like Silicon Valley), latte towns (like Boulder) and old urban centers (like New York’s SoHo). Leading Creative Centers, he says, provide all three options. In fact, he points to the Denver region that combines the assets of Boulder and the urban character of the LoDo district to create its “nerdistan.” His view is that Denver is a region that includes Boulder and communities in between and beyond.

The four people profiled here can all be considered part of Florida’s Creative Class and, like Florida, understand that Boulder is part of a region. In striving to solve the in-commuting problem, we should, too.

 Thanks to Priscilla, David, Lori and Mac for their generosity in granting me an interview. I’d also like to thank Scott McCarey for helping me develop a set of relevant questions and Chris Ketterhagen for running the numbers. References are linked to directly.

Union Depot (photo by Roger Wolvington)

The project will incorporate RTD’s planned bus station, along with 78 to 80 affordable housing units, a 135-room hotel, restoration of the historic Boulder Union Depot into “a lively gathering place” and a 360-space parking garage. Boulder Housing Partners will be involved in the development of the affordable housing. The developers state in their concept review documents that the project will use solar energy as “a key component,” depending on the continued availability of Xcel Energy’s solar rebates.

The RTD garage will be underground, with the mixed-use project built atop it. The bus station will have seven boarding gates for local, regional and bus rapid transit coaches and will be the third RTD station in Boulder. The parking garage will provide park-and-ride spaces for transit users and parking for the apartments and hotel.

Consideration of the concept plan will be on the agenda for the April 21 meeting of the Boulder Planning Board. The meeting will start at 6 PM and be held in the council chambers at the Municipal Building. Public comments will be heard at the meeting.

An initial look finds, at least from my perspective, an imaginative concept that conforms to the principles behind the admittedly mediocre Transit Village area plan. The 3.2 acre site is zoned MU-4, which allows (and indeed encourages) high density development. The actual architectural details will evolve from public hearings and input from City planners, members of the Planning Board and ultimately the Boulder City Council.

Concept Plan (from http://tinyurl.com/64kwl27)

Three issues may cause some controversy:

• Should Union Depot be restored and used for public purposes or leased as a private restaurant or entertainment facility? When the depot was located across 30^th Street in what was then the parking lot of the Crossroads Commons shopping center it was managed by the Boulder Jaycees as a meeting place for community organizations.
• The residential units wrap around the parking garage on the east and south sides. The apartments on the east side will be adjacent to the BNSF railroad tracks, which could result in noise problems for residents.
• The concept plan shows the apartment building to be four stories in height, which should be within the city’s 55 foot height limit for the Transit Village. However, the hotel is portrayed in the architectural renderings as having five stories, which could violate that ordinance.

Pedersen Development Company has already received city approval for Junction Place, another transit-oriented project directly across Pearl Street from the RTD project. That project will include 319 apartment units atop about 16,000 square feet of retail space. Both Junction Place and the RTD project will capitalize on the Transit Village’s concept of lessening reliance on auto use by including facilities for bike share and car share, reduced garage parking spaces for tenants and with covered bicycle parking.

It is difficult for developers in the current economic environment to obtain construction financing. However, Boulder’s land use policies limit, to some extent, the potential for overbuilding, so market conditions for apartments are particularly favorable. The last market-rent apartment project built in Boulder was in 2003. Construction on Two-Nine North, the new apartments at 30^th and Walnut streets, will be completed later this year, well before Pedersen’s Junction Place project comes onto the market.

City Council will discuss the next steps for the downtown area south of Canyon Blvd. on Wednesday evening, November 3, 2010.

Controversy and Consensus, a Channel 8 production hosted by Ralph Gregory, devoted a recent episode to downtown development.   Will additional density solve our affordable housing, commuting, and energy problems?  Watch former councilman Steve Pomerance and architect Fenno Hoffman debate the issues here.  Select the September 2010 episode.

Read the staff memo here.

Arete photo courtesy Roger Wolvington

The Boulder City Council has adopted an affordable housing goal of 10% of all residential units.  The Permanently Affordable Housing program is funded partially through local taxes and some government grants, but the primary means of creating new affordable units is through the Inclusionary Housing program.  Under this program, new residential development must make one out of every five residential units permanently affordable on site.  An optional “fee-in-lieu” program allows a cash payment for up to half of the affordable units to fund construction of new affordable units off site where land might be cheaper.  The Inclusionary Housing policy relies heavily on new development to meet the affordable housing goals, however to get to the 10% goal only using this approach, the City of Boulder would have to wait for tens of thousands of more housing units to be built.

The City of Boulder is currently engaged in a comprehensive review of affordable housing policies that will examine existing affordable housing stock, current programs, demographics, housing goals, and funding mechanisms.  That review will offer valuable insights to affordable housing issues.  Rather than conduct that level of evaluation in this report, we have focused on the relationship between housing affordability and dense development.

Does Density Deliver?

One of the most frequent arguments in favor of increased density in Boulder is that more dense housing means more affordable housing.  However, according to the California Planning Roundtable (1993) high density housing is often not at all affordable, finding that, “San Francisco’s Nob and Telegraph Hills, Los Angeles’ Wilshire Corridor, and high-rises in San Diego are all examples of upper-income areas where housing densities are quite high.”

They concluded that new, high density development offers the potential to be more affordable than new low density development but that, “Density is not always enough.  To ensure affordability, local governments must intervene with programs and additional concessions if the new high-density units are also to be affordable.”

In Flushing NY, similar conclusions were reached about the density/affordability paradigm and the need for government intervention to ensure that higher density achieves affordability.   The authors of Flushing’s Fortune, Will Gateway Give Way To Luxury Development? examined upzoning, concluding that “upzoning cannot guarantee mixed income housing” unless programs such as inclusionary housing are part of the equation.  They found that in “cities where inclusionary housing has been a reliable generator of affordable housing, the programs are mandatory.”

Developer Windfall

The conversion of lower intensity zoned land is linked to inclusionary housing.  When development pressure causes land to be rezoned to higher intensity use, the resulting increase in property value is a “windfall” for the property owner.  The increase in value is therefore attributed to government intervention and not to investment made by the property owner.  This raises the question, “Should the newly created value resulting from upzoning and the subsequent unearned windfall benefitting current property owners be recaptured for the public benefit?”  Affordable housing advocates say, “Yes.”

The effects of upzoning on property values and the potential to either achieve affordable housing as a result, or to create an unearned windfall for property owners that could be recaptured for the public benefit, is a widely understood paradigm, both in the U.S. and abroad.

In the British Commonwealth it is referred to as “value” or “betterment capture” and is an integral part of land use legislation.   Betterment capture is applied to property value increases not solely due to upzoning but also where a portion of the increase is conferred by the wider community through provision (subsidy) of infrastructure that will service the area, like schools, police services and health facilities.  The benefit offered by these community funded (as opposed to developer funded) services are manifested in property prices.   Properties benefitting from these services are generally valued more than those that do not.

Stay tuned for Part 6:  Recommendations

With the current debate swirling around SmartRegs, I support them, professionally and personally. However, there are some details in the regulations that need correction and further work. As is often stated, the devil is in the details. No one would deny that improving the standard of housing in Boulder, or anywhere for that matter, is a good thing. SmartRegs is a step in that direction. The current outcries for and against this ordinance often depend upon whose ox is being gored. Tenants speak in support with hopes that it will reduce their energy bills, which, in most cases, it will. Negative outcries from landlords, some of which are barely hanging on, are about the mandated work that will cost them scarce money during a bad economic time. Both points are correct. What has been lost in this point-counterpoint debate that has mistakenly focused only on the energy savings to cost ratio promotion, is that it is not financial zero sum game. Debates will rage about how tenants will financially benefit but the reality is that there will be the canceling effect when their rents go up. What is overlooked is that it will reduce affordability in our town which is counter to one of the legs of our three legged stool of a sustainable community: economic. The three legs are economic, social and environmental. SmartRegs will lengthen the environmental leg while simultaneously shortening the economic leg. When each leg of this stool is worked on independent of the other two, the end result is much like chasing the carrot attached to the stick stuck on our back. We’re never going to get there.

To a greater sense this is really more about a comfort and quality of life for tenants. This is a good thing. The reduction in consumption and waste is beneficial to the community and the world as a whole. This is also a good thing. Setting aside landlords protests about costs, improvements to the asset increases their value and demand. This is also a good thing. The promotional focus for SmartRegs should remain on three points: reducing energy consumption, decreasing our carbon emissions, and increasing the quality of life environment.

Funding Dilemmas

What is missing for landlords is a way to fund the improvements. The cost of improvements are eventually recouped through rental increases and tax write offs but the catch for many is in how to pay for them. Some are able to finance out of pocket, some have reserved funds for improvements, and others will have to borrow the money. Currently, financial institutions are only lending to the absolute AAA class of clients. These landlords already maintain their properties in good condition, maintain reserves for unexpected expenses, and enjoy rents near the top of the price range. The properties in need of the most important upgrades and repairs are often the least able to do so. They may be owned by over-leveraged owners or by people that do not manage them properly. Their only option is to make the necessary improvements through the Climate Smart Loan Program. But, its long term ability to be funded is questionable given two recent events. First, voters last year turned down expanding the funding amount. This, despite the fact that this program is not a tax on everyone, but a debt obligation only to those who use it. The second problem that could potentially undermine Climate Smart directly and SmartRegs indirectly is the State Legislature’s attempts to stop or restrict all debt bonding abilities of Colorado public entities, (cities, counties, school districts) through Amendments 60 & 61, and Proposition 101. These bills attempt to eliminate the de-Bruceing fixes to the Tabor Amendment. If voters do not authorize new funding for Climate Smart and the amendments pass, you can say goodbye to the only real option at funding the SmartRegs for a vast majority of Boulder property owners.

The Real Culprits

Over the course of my career in this town, I have witnessed, firsthand, that where the greatest number of violations of non-permitted work, unlicensed rentals and greatest physical challenges to upgrade structures are in older historical homes. Unlicensed rentals units in basements, attics, and garages that were converted to such without permits are a serious life safety issue more than they are an energy problem. A blind eye toward unequal code enforcement and the granting of special exemptions from numerous parts of the city code further exacerbates the problem. Preservation of historical structures is very important, whether they are landmarked or not. For over thirty seven years I have saved and remodeled many of Boulder’s historical structures, some landmarked, some not. All have had physical challenges and expensive options. That means that not everyone can afford these homes. Should the public be subsidizing private ownership where the least able to afford them gain special privileges in the goal of preserving historical structures? These types of structures make up a large number of rental units in the city and are the ones that should be targeted to comply because they have the greatest deficiencies of in energy consumption, carbon emissions, and quality of life environment.

Hardship

Regulations should provide incentives to do the right thing, not punitive threats to force them into compliance. These regulations are the needed nudge when coupled with readily available and well funded Climate Smart loan options. The downside to these regulations is that they could bring owners to a tipping point. It will drive many owners to reassess whether owning the properties is worth it or whether they can hold on in this economic climate. Four years to comply, even with an additional four years is no guarantee that they will be able to come up with the funds either by borrowing or income reserving. Opportunistic investors will be waiting on the sidelines to quickly scoop up those on the edge. This begs the question of why we would not grant the same time and financial assistance that is being offered to the publicly owned affordable housing properties to everyone. The very same challenges outlined in the Affordable Housing sector’s reasons also apply to private individuals. Unfortunately, the horse trading allowing hardship exemptions by purchasing carbon offsets whose funds will be used to upgrade public housing means that only public housing will get fixed. Neat trick, similar to “borrowing from Peter to pay Paul” but does not reduce our carbon emissions. This false zero sum game is really an averaging of emissions at a much higher level and a financing trick for public housing. There are better options to support affordable housing. Carbon offsets are a bad thing and should be eliminated because, while they lessen guilty feelings, they do not solve the problem.

In my career, I have also remodeled and maintained many rental properties for clients and myself. I am also a licensed Building Contractor and rental inspector. A majority of the properties I have inspected are in good to excellent condition with responsible tenants that are eager to live in them. The rental rates are a predictable result of this cause and effect. Those with serious neglect and in need of major work fill the range of “affordable’” rental housing. They fall below a quality of life standard for housing than should be allowed in this city by any human measure. Many of the improvements necessary fall outside the rental license baseline check list and the SmartRegs would not even begin to address the deficiencies of these types of properties. Improvements to these would be a major quality of life improvement for the tenants and go a long way towards reducing our energy waste and consumption. But, the remaining deficiencies would still fall between the cracks.

The Prescriptive Path

SmartRegs’ proposed Prescriptive Path guidelines point system has missing and nonsensical points for some of the categories. At its root goal, SmartRegs is about carbon emission reductions. There are no points given for electrical power that is Windsource originated. Xcel clients that choose Windsource, pay a premium and in the current regulation would not get credit for the easiest way an owner and tenant can reduce their carbon footprint. The Prescriptive Path points for Windsource should be up in the same range as solar generated power sources. These alternate energy sources do more than carbon offsets ever will. Give people more time if needed but avoid creating more bureaucracy via government run money pools.

Points are not given for natural cooling methods such as opening windows or doing so in conjunction with ceiling fans. Giving two points for ceiling fans or whole house fans versus eight points for air conditioning encourages going the carbon emitting air conditioning route. Also, there is potentially too much ambiguity with the city discretionary review for Passive Solar Design option. I have constructed many passive solar homes that have extremely low to net zero energy costs. Will discretionary review necessitate extensive documention, costing time and money, to prove your case?

Unintended Consequences

The last point I want to make addresses the constant pitch that these regulations “will be cheap to comply with so just do it”. Some options will, but many won’t. What is forgotten when we create new ordinances without dovetailing them carefully into existing ones, is the resulting adage: sometimes the best of intentions can produce the worst results. Case in point: any electrical work performed to meet the SmartRegs that requires obtaining a permit will trigger making the structure totally comply with the smoke detector requirements under current city ordinances and the National Electric Code. That requirement means that a smoke detector must be inside each and every bedroom and outside of each of them in a common room and that they must be hard wired and interconnected. This is a life safety issue that is a good thing because battery operated smoke detectors, while better than none, often fail to perform at the critical moment due to bad batteries or complete removal. I have inspected many student occupied units only to find they have removed the batteries because “they kept going off”. The code was changed to counteract this problem and it means electrical work in the range of $1,500- $3,000 per unit would have to be performed, far from a simple $600 upgrade.

My fear, with every new regulation we pass, is the entrenchment of a culture of avoiding the painful route. Many tell me that it is easier (and cheaper) to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission. The end result, though, is that this drives rentals back underground and increases remodels using unlicensed trades performing very questionable work without permits. That is not the comfort and quality of life results that any of us desire.

The implications of climate change are extremely serious and the science is very compelling as predicted changes are actually occurring around the planet.  This is just the beginning of the substantive actions communities need to take to start doing something about it.

As an organization whose mission supports sustainability and environmental protection, Plan Boulder should come out strongly for the Smart Regs ordinance and its individual members should make their voices known to City Council.

Will these energy efficiency upgrades make a big difference for Boulder’s GHG reduction goals?  I believe they will when one considers about 52% of our housing stock are rentals.  They also promote the city’s goal of housing affordability and for me, it is a question of social fairness.  I think it unjust that people who in many cases can’t afford to buy in Boulder, or who are students really stretched thin with higher tuition costs, are made to bear the cost of their landlords’ choosing not to invest in their property. The upgrades should  be part of the cost of doing business.  Spread out over a few years, they are reasonable and manageable with proper budgeting. Many landlords have owned their properties for years and can tap into considerable equity as such.  Landlords also receive tax write offs when they list the improvements as depreciable assets In this case, the investments required by property owners end up being value added for the property, much as any other upgrades, and are a big economic advantage for the tenant.  There are going be trade offs, but in this case, the benefit overwhelms the costs.

We in Boulder like to tout ourselves as environmental leaders when in fact other communities have had regulations in place for quite a while. Berkeley and San Francisco have had rental property energy standards since 1981, Anne Arbor and Minneapolis since the 1980s, and  Burlington since 1997.  Memphis, Tennessee passed a rental housing ordinance in February, 2009 that requires rental units to insulate their attics, seal ducts, close off leaks and properly seal and glaze windows.  Inspections occur when tenants call in with documented high energy usage and utility bills.  The whole state of Wisconsin requires energy standards at point of sale for all residences with a special section for rental properties.

Much of the housing stock in Boulder does not even meet the minimum building energy standards of the 1970′s as the bulk of it was constructed pre-1965 where at best the insulation was a few inches of rock wool in the attic and nothing in the crawlspace and walls. Many homes have not been retrofitted. Payback periods for putting in attic insulation can be as little as a year, and a tremendous amount of heat is squandered without attic insulation.  If inefficient air conditioners are added to the equation, the energy expended as coal, a very potent CO2 contributor, is very high.  Insulation keeps structures more comfortable in all the seasons.

The good news is that in most cases it is not costly to blow insulation into existing attics and walls. Please see the insulation calculator site: When I plugged in the cost of taking 1000 sq feet of attic space from R5 (typical Table Mesa home with no modifications) to R30,  the cost savings was about $300 for natural gas in the first year alone. This is almost the cost of the insulation itself. The CO2 reductions are about 3000 pounds for natural gas and 11,000 pounds for electric. With electric heat the savings will be more than double.

Tenants will realize substantial savings for heating and cooling.  The assertion that upgrades will raise rental rates is simply not grounded in fact and is a scare actic perpetrated by the landlord association to dampen enthusiasm for this ordinance. The rent is determined by these factors:  rental market demand at the time of advertising, the number of bedrooms and location. It also depends on whether the landlord is going for “top dollar,” which may result in a higher vacancy rate and more frequent turnover, a big trade off.

As a landlord who has upgraded two homes that had no insulation and leaky single pane windows, I’d like to describe the details of having upgraded these properties.  Our houses do not generate lots of income; we have to be satisfied with the long-term view of retirement savings.

Our house in Table Mesa and the bungalow in Longmont now have R-40 and R-30 fiberglass batts respectively.  My husband laid the batts, wearing a dust mask, taking about 3 to 4 hours for each home. The insulation cost about $300.

My son installed the batts along the Table Mesa crawlspace, again the total cost was about $300, including his pay and the insulation. It took half a day.  He is not a professional. He helped us with insulating the walls in Table Mesa, the cost was less than $200. We hired someone to blow cellulose in the Longmont bungalow; the costs were so minor, I have since forgotten them, but think it was less than $300.  The Longmont house was done in 1999, and the Table Mesa house between 2001 and 2004, as we could budget in the improvements.

Window replacements were more costly, but definitely worth every penny.  The total cost for replacing 8 windows has been about $2000 for our Table Mesa house and about $1500 for a little bungalow we own in Longmont. All included new trim and insulating foam sealant. Our tenants were extremely appreciative when we swapped out the old leaky aluminum framed single pane windows.  The appearance of the house has been really enhanced and I am confident they have increased the property’s values by far more than the installation costs.  We hired part of the labor for the large difficult ones and did the easier ones ourselves.

All these costs, insulation and windows, have been listed as depreciable assets in our taxes each year, so they count as a tax write off.  These investments have been less consequential and much more satisfying in terms of adding value than other repair and maintenance expenses we’ve encountered over the years.

Obviously we cut costs by doing labor ourselves, and by purchasing about 5, high quality, used windows from Resource, but it shows that this is an option for the landlord on a shoestring budget. The Two Techs and a Truck program should facilitate the process and reduce retrofit costs.

As for increasing rents, actually the opposite happened. We charge less for the Longmont house for the past 8 years than we did at first, because the market is soft, and we have a long term tenant who can’t afford much.  The same thing happened in Table Mesa; for years after the upgrades we reduced the rents by about $120 a month, as a result of a weak market.  I think the upgrades have, however, helped us attract responsible, longer term tenants. We have had 0% vacancy.

I think it essential that the City develop a system for tracking down people who have never licensed their properties. This may require sorting by names through the County database to see which property owners pay taxes on more than one property or who live out of town.  These people should be encouraged to get licensed with incentives at first, and penalties if that doesn’t work. If we don’t track these non-licensed landlords down, it won’t be fair to those who do comply. My concern is that the tracking methods suggested won’t get to landlords who have never been in the data base.

Secondly, the properties should be required to do a substantial portion of the upgrades within the first 4 years or the owner may simply “flip” the property in the meantime, getting out of the requirement.  We have already taken years getting to this point of finally having the ordinance before you, let’s not wait for years before we see the energy savings.

Much of our housing in Boulder has had substandard energy performance for years. We need to seize this opportunity to raise the bar. If we can’t do this, who will, and how can we claim to be leaders in addressing climate change?  Folks, we need to not just talk, but act.

Is there anything more affordable than mobile home living?  Is there a better and safer place for your children to live and play than in a mobile home park?  Is there a better place to form a neighborly and cooperative community than in a mobile home park?  So what is the problem?

The source of the difficulty has been that the residents of the park own their own homes but must rent the pads that their homes stand on from a landowner.  What occurs is a conflict of ownership.  Laws and ordinances that cover ordinary rental situations or ordinary home ownership do not apply to owners and residents of mobile homes.

In Colorado, the owner of the property on which the mobile home sits can evict a family almost without cause and within a few days.  He can sell the property to a developer without adequate notice, who can then change the use of the park, again, without notice.  And all of this can happen, usually forcing the residents to move and forfeit all of the equity in their homes—which can range between $15,000 and $80,000, the entire life savings of most of the residents.

The park owner can raise the pad rent without limit and without justification, relentlessly chewing up a retiree’s income. As the law now stands, the owner of the park must provide water and sewage utilities but can at the same time refuse the city and county access to “his/her” property to inspect those very utilities for quality and serviceability.   In short, landowners hold in their hands the health, living, safety, and life-savings of their residents. Ownership rights are grossly out of balance.

Surely, by now, everyone in Boulder has heard about the struggle of the Orchard Grove community to keep their mobile home park affordable and livable.  That struggle goes on.  Recently some residents have done some research and found that most states in the U.S. have stronger and more equitable laws about mobile home owner rights than Colorado does.

Many other states have spelled out detailed “First refusal” or “Purchase Opportunity” rights when their park is going up for sale.  Some also require the landlord to reimburse moving expenses up to the amount of home equity if the residents are forced to move.  We have met with legislators and heard some of our strong, but reasonable, opposition and come up with a new bill for Colorado that will advance justice and equity for mobile home residents and landowners alike.

The good news is that the bill has passed through the State Senate Judiciary Committee and will go on to the Senate floor the first week in April.  We will be meeting with our opposition and are now working cooperatively for a bill that will help residents as well as landowners achieve what we all desire:  secure, happy, and healthy lives for all mobile home residents—and landowners. Legislative contacts tell us that, after a few minor and helpful amendments, the law should pass the Senate and the House before the end of the session in May.

Healthy cooperation and sensitivity to everyone’s needs may win the day yet!

First,  I question the assumption that we want any developer to “help people move into the city.”    Growth will happen without planners assuming we need to encourage it.   This 300-unit proposed development sounds great, and well located to serve many of the current and aging (soon to be car-free) Boulder residents,  right at the transit hub.   The apartments won’t be rent controlled,  nor prohibited from going-condo.   If well done, this will become the new hot, metro-Boulder housing, and quickly be priced accordingly.

Second, the policy requirement for permanently affordable housing in any development must be reaffirmed and stripped of the cash buy-out option.  The developers do the math to make money.  No matter how high the price is set,  developers will find a way to make money if they have full rights to develop a property for the highest return.  Current city planning has a projected future imbalance,  job growth outstripping housing growth.  We already have an existing imbalance causing more and more commuters to drive into work in this high-priced town.   City leaders can mitigate this accelerating problem with a strong commitment to affordable housing.   City leaders, please revise this policy before the next development is approved without the permanently affordables.  Our future diversity and quality of city life hangs in the balance.