(music playing) - I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if I didn't know who I am.

- No matter what happens in life, the sun will always rise and set the same way.

- As you can tell, I love using my language and I love seeing how language can really change the world.

- Build our community, because that's what makes us strong.

(music playing) (music playing) - The way housing impacts me right now is, it's the last thing I think about before I go to sleep, and it's the first thing I think about when I wake up.

- It's gotten to a point where people like me, who work in the service industry, you can't just work one job and afford a house.

- We are experiencing housing shortages like we have never before.

- I pay month-to-month, so that's a fear.

What if she wants to sell the house?

Where would we go?

- We can't keep teachers in the area.

We can't keep young families because there's not a place for them to live.

- Id hop on my bike, say hi, ask them if they heard about the housing petition.

- Does anyone see me as the bad guy?

Certainly.

There are people that do.

- I think the level and volume of short-term rental in single-family homes is definitely unprecedented.

- Small businesses and businesses will do their best to solve it, but sometimes there needs to be a bigger entity taking action.

- Housing is the foundational element of our community.

Accessibility to a wide range of housing is critical to the vibrancy and health of our community.

It's the most important thing that we can do for ourselves.

(music playing) - My name is Maria Elsa Castillo Fernandez.

I moved to Silverthorne in February, 2001.

First, my husband moved here in 1998, and then he went to Mexico and brought me here.

My husband works in construction and I work in housekeeping.

I lived in apartments for 17 years, and I have lived in this house for two years.

I am very happy that I found this house.

It was a challenge, but thank God we found a great place.

Now, in pandemic times, it's harder than before.

Things have changed a lot, the biggest difference is in the rent.

An apartment used to be rented for $1,000.

Now, two years later, rent has increased to $2,200.

It's a big difference.

One time we didn't have money for rent and FIRC helped us.

I was very happy with the program, FIRC.

- The Family and Intercultural Resource Center is really a social services agency dedicated to looking at social determinants of health and trying to help families be successful here in Summit County.

- We are experiencing housing shortages like we have never before.

And it's been really, really difficult on the people that are trying to work and live here, making our job very busy.

I think when the pandemic hit, a lot of people who had always enjoyed coming to the mountains to visit, all of a sudden, had an opportunity to work remotely.

And so, they came, taking that housing stock, but not really contributing to our local workforce, making it a more complicated situation.

Our biggest program is our rental assistance program, mortgage assistance program.

- It was because my husband's job went down last year during the pandemic.

It was a hard time for everyone, not just for me.

Then jobs went down again during the pandemic, both construction and the hotels.

- What it comes down to is a family having a decision forced upon them.

And so, we are losing our workforce up here.

And I think that is starting to become evident to anybody that visits up here.

- We are living here without a contract.

I pay month-to-month, so that's the fear.

What if she wants to sell the house?

Where would we go?

- Having long-term housing is the fabric of what you need in order to feel successful and safe in a community.

And when you feel like your housing might be pulled out from under you or that you're one paycheck away from potentially losing your home, that's a very stressful situation.

- [Speaking Spanish] - All of these stories show just how important housing is for our entire community.

We can't have teachers living in hotel rooms and your pharmacist assistant living in a car.

It just doesn't make for the community that we want.

- As long as they don't kick me out of here, I won't move from Silverthorne.

I won't leave Silverthorne for anywhere else.

I love Silverthorne very much.

(music playing) - The housing situation here in Frisco is part of the national zeitgeist.

Communities everywhere across the country are reconciling with how to deal with the proliferation of short-term rental technology.

I think the level and volume of short-term rental in single-family homes is definitely unprecedented.

My name is James "Hayes" Walsh.

I go by Hayes.

I started the Frisco Housing Petition.

[DOG BARKING] Frisco Housing Petition requires a single-family-homeowner live in the house to have short-term rental rights.

It does not prohibit anybody from short-term renting.

It simply sets a framework of rules and guidelines around operating the short-term rental out of a single-family home.

I go talk to my neighbors, and they all agree it's a bummer when the house next door to you sells and you don't get to meet the person who buys it.

You never see their face.

You don't know what car they're driving.

You don't know who they are.

The housing situation here in Frisco was definitely exacerbated by the pandemic.

And I don't think anyone saw that coming.

- The pandemic has created a massive paradigm shift in terms of people's ability to work outside the office.

That has also influenced the short-term rental market.

More people are second homeowners, and vacationers are looking for that place where they really want to stay and spend more time.

More properties are converting from long-term to short-term rental.

And that also is having an impact on what's available.

It's making it really impossible for people to really get their toe in the door, let alone their foot.

- Id hop on my bike, say hi, ask them if they heard about the housing petition.

When I knocked on doors, people were in support of signing the petition.

The number one piece of feedback I got that was oppositional is that people are not going to convert their homes to long-term rentals.

If they can't rent short-term, they're going to not rent at all.

- Here we are at Frisco Town Hall, where all the conversations happen.

I am in my last year of a four-year term.

2006, I ran on a platform of affordable housing.

This has been a part of our conversation here in Frisco, from a business perspective, for a long time.

Housing has been the challenge for keeping quality people here.

And I'm afraid we're going to start losing some of the small businesses that are so important to our economy, our culture, our community.

They're part of the fabric of this town, and we can't afford to lose anybody.

- Many small business owners signed my petition.

They're continually talking about workforce housing and that people don't have anywhere to live.

These business owners are adjusting their operations based on the circumstances, so reduced hours, reduced services, and just outright closing have become the norm.

(music playing) - I think that there's a wide variety of solutions that we need to implement.

I don't think that there is any one strategy that's going to alleviate the issue.

- The Council, we've really pushed to try and create sustainable solutions.

It starts with... working with what we have.

And the town does have an opportunity to partner with two state agencies that do have some land in town to develop some workforce housing.

In the short term, we're looking to take money that we have in what's called the 5A Fund that created a sales tax that's distributed to the towns.

And that money is there for housing.

We're looking at creating an aggressive program to help convert short-term rentals to long-term rentals, where that capacity is available and owners are willing to participate.

- At FIRC, we also have a small program that talks to homeowners who rent their houses short term.

And we convince them to turn them into long-term rentals so that we can match a family for that home.

A lot of people do it because they really do care about Summit County.

- Housing in Frisco is the foundational element of our community.

It supports our economy.

It creates our culture.

It's the lifeblood of our community.

And it's reached a crescendo of urgency in the last year.

Accessibility to a wide range of housing is critical to the vibrancy and health of our community.

It's the most important thing that we can do for ourselves.

(music playing) - Most, if not all, of the available long-term renting housing has been bought up by people fleeing the cities and coming to our small town.

And as a result, we're starting to have workforce shortages in the area.

Never, in the 35 years I've been down here, have seen such a drastic reduction in employees or workforce.

I've been running "help wanted" ads for the last four months and had literally no response.

I switched my "help wanted" ads to "housing wanted" ads.

I just recently got two more employees displaced from their housing.

Fortunately, I'm going to have a place to put those people.

- There you go, my friend.

She'll ring you up right down there.

- We actually help pay rent.

We pay first, last, security deposits, things like that, to get our employees into houses.

When they lose their housing or are forced to move, it bothers me because I want to have a community where my employees can live in.

And with all the vacant homes and short-term rentals and things like that, a lot of these people have lost their housing.

- This is our living room, which is right now being used as a storage space for someone who's moving out.

Over here, we have the front room that's the parlor that also someone is using as a bedroom.

Anything you can find available, a one-bedroom studio apartment for $1,000 that I couldn't even fit my daughter and I into.

That's when I started becoming really, really concerned.

Where was I going to go?

I've worked for Ouray School and Ouray Brewery for 10 years.

I have jobs.

I just could not find a place for my daughter and I to live.

And that is where I am so fortunate that my boss keeps leases in town on houses that he can keep for his employees.

We do have a fenced-in backyard with storage in the huge garage, as well.

There is plenty of space for a lot of people, which worries me.

[LAUGHING] How many people can we fit?

It started out, there's five of us in the home, two adult women, a teenager, and two children living here, which is lovely.

It's kind of like they're watched over, and I don't mind having them here.

What I worry about is when Kris and Owen, her son, move out, will I--Who will I have to live with then?

That concerns me, being a single mom with a daughter.

We make do, huh, Jace?

- Mm-hmm.

- I've really seen a continued increase in property values.

Also, new properties that are being built are being sold much higher than they were in the past.

And this problem is getting worse and worse.

Right now, as the city administrator, I'm renting a house in Ouray.

I have to live within the city for the city charter.

And that's become very difficult.

I would love to buy a house here and even have an incentive within my contract to buy a house within town, but it's just not attainable.

The City Council voted to allow RV camping on private property within the residential areas.

We don't know how many people will take us up on this offer, but we're trying to find creative ways to be able to meet the workforce housing.

- We can't keep teachers in the area.

We can't keep young families because there's not a place for them to live.

You have your restaurant workers living in RVs.

Do you think that's the kind of community we want to have?

No.

We want our families living in apartments and homes that they can call their own.

- Close you out again?

- Yes, last round.

- Our restaurant workers are making enough money to afford a reasonable place.

We just can't afford these giant VRBO prices.

We have to be able to have a place to live.

The only way we are going to get affordable housing is to build it.

- I think there's a number of drivers.

I'm not a big fan of the VRBO situation in the state.

I feel you're operating a commercial business out of your home, or running a hotel.

You're not paying commercial taxes like I, as a business owner, might have to.

To me, that's a great deal of housing in this area that's been absorbed through speculation and people wanting to have a second home that they might use in 15 years.

Small businesses and businesses will do their best to solve it, but sometimes there needs to be a bigger entity taking action.

(music playing) (music playing) - BV is an easy place to love living in.

It's really charming.

You feel welcomed right away.

And then, of course, we are nestled in some of the most beautiful mountains.

My name is Catherine Eichel, and I'm a resident of Buena Vista.

I own my own photography business.

I have lived in the Arkansas Valley for five years.

Every day, I'm at least partially consumed with a thought that I might lose my current housing.

It's the last thing I think about before I go to sleep and it's the first thing I think about when I wake up.

I lost housing during COVID.

And it took me actually 9 months with a budget of $1,800 to find another rental to live in.

I stayed on friends' couches.

I rented out subletting.

I stayed with relatives, just however I could piece that together.

But I ended up moving to five different spots during the pandemic.

It made me feel like I was on the outside of our community and that I didn't belong and wasn't wanted here, which, in a community where you only have a few thousand people, that's an extremely isolating feeling, for sure.

- Standing at this one block in South Main, there's a huge variety of different types of buildings.

And I think it's part of what makes the neighborhood unique.

My name is Jed Selby, and I'm the owner of the Surf Hotel and the cofounder and president of South Main, which is the neighborhood that we're in.

South Main itself is a development and construction company.

And we also do short-term rentals.

As we're building the whole neighborhood, we can sort of expand into areas where the market is needed.

Yeah, does anyone see me as the bad guy?

Yes, certainly.

There are people that do.

- I know the South Main development is controversial.

But for the wedding industry, in particular, which is a wedding industry that I work in mostly, I wouldn't be able to live here without places like South Main.

- I think that if you look at a town and you say, "I love it how it is.

I don't want it to turn into something different that's scary," then I think that that's a justified perspective to have.

And I think it's very real.

The changes have been dramatic.

- The Arkansas Valley has always had a lot of housing challenges as far as affordable housing.

But really, in the last year, when COVID came and those lower interest rates happened, and along with a lot of people being able to work remotely, we had a huge wave of buyers in the valley.

Last month, our median price was over $500,000.

Our average median income here in the valley is 51,500.

So, you can see there's a pretty big gap that seems pretty insurmountable to people like myself.

- It's gotten to a point where people like me, who work in the service industry, you can't just work one job and afford a house.

My name is Devin Rowe, and I am a town trustee for the town of Buena Vista, so like the City Council.

Being a trustee is only a part-time job, so I work as a bartender here in town.

And I've been in BV for a little over six years now.

This is the Melvin IPA, so just a good, awesome IPA.

I felt like there was not any representation of people that are younger on the board, and I figured there should be someone like me on the board.

And turns out that I am someone like me.

[LAUGHING] - Mayor Pro Tem Fay.

- Yes.

- Trustee Lucrezi.

- Yes.

- Nyberg.

- Yes.

- Rowe.

- Yes.

I'm lucky that I found a place that I live in, but I live in a very small studio, 200 square feet.

And it took me four months to actually find an affordable apartment here.

And that's kind of how a lot of the locals find housing around here, is you have to know someone or know a place that's opening up.

- The way that you find a house here is, there are two Facebook sites, and you essentially have to sit on those and then compete Mad Max style whenever there's a listing.

- We can't build things fast enough, and the town is growing.

Things take far too long to permit.

The process is very cumbersome, which drives up expense and it delays the timeline.

There are additional problems which are, short-term rentals are obviously a big hot button and they have become popular since Airbnb and VRBO and all of this has sort of normalized over the last decade.

- I've had many friends here lose their housing, whether it's being sold or being rented out as short-term rentals.

- One thing that makes it a little bit difficult to talk about that in a factual way is that we don't actually have a lot of data.

We have a basic count of short-term rentals, but it's not really been verified by a third party.

And then we don't actually have data on how many long-term rentals we have or how many people are looking for long-term rentals.

So, it makes it a little bit difficult to talk about except from a personal experience.

I do personally know a lot of people whose homes that they were renting have been sold to use as a short-term rental.

- Which is a really hard subject because people want to make money on their property, and we get that.

But it also, it's been steadily becoming a higher and higher percentage of our housing stock.

- This building right here is a three-unit building that is--This is actually used all as a short-term rental.

And the folks that own it from Golden will come down from time to time, whenever it's available.

- I did participate recently in giving my public opinion on the hearing to change the STR regulations in the town of BV.

- We don't have the exact numbers to correlate short-term competition with long-term rentals, but we do know that our housing crisis has dramatically increased in the last year.

- This has been a big project, and I know it's not going to be something that everyone is going to like.

But I think it's a great step forward to help protect our town and really help people to live and stay here.

We have a cap on short-term rentals.

Out of county at about 6%, and we have 3% for in-county, with about 1.5% reflecting that number.

And then, we have no limit if you live on the property and no limit on South Main and Main Street where all the businesses and restaurants and shops are.

- I'm hopeful that a cap might be helpful, as far as maybe then making it not as desirable a place for out-of-town investors to come and buy.

That way, maybe at some point, housing values will level out or maybe even come down so people in my income bracket can then afford to buy here locally.

- It's easy to say short-term rentals are taking housing stock.

Workers can't find housing.

If we stop this, it's going to fix this.

But where I'm looking at the housing prices right now, they're so far removed from where the long-term renter needs that I think it's almost--you just need a different solution.

And I would like to see the conversation shift a little more from "if we stop short-term rentals, we're going to somehow fix this problem," to, "that gap is way too big."

But in Colorado, commercial property tax is almost four times the amount of residential tax.

So, as soon as you're running your hotel out of a house, you have much lower expenses.

You have lower property taxes.

You have a residential loan instead of a commercial loan, which is longer term, it's lower rates.

Doing business as a hotel is more expensive than doing business as a short-term rental.

I think that the regulators are starting to see that gap, and I think they're going to close that gap.

- I think one of the things that the planner for the town of Buena Vista has actually mentioned is reworking regulations with developers themselves.

I'm hopeful that will let us attract some developers that are aimed more at developing affordable and attainable housing within the town.

During COVID, we had 4 million visitors to Chaffee County.

It was projected for 2021 that that number would increase to 8 million.

But you can imagine, in a town where we have infrastructure to house 1,800 people, and we have 4 million, maybe 8 million people coming in, there has to be a balance, right?

We have to know what our inventory with housing is for both long and short-term.

Without that data collection, we can't answer these questions.

We can't set metrics.

We can't figure out what our pathway is forward.

I know that there has to be a sweet spot of a ratio between people living here to serve that tourism industry and then housing to provide for the tourists.

What I know right now is it's severely unbalanced and it's severely geared towards tourism.

And if we don't correct that, we are going to lose the heart and soul of our town.

That's what I know.

(music playing)