County preps to take over regional housing authority

Focus on property management first

By Katherine Nettles

 Gunnison County and local municipalities are preparing for the Gunnison Valley Regional Housing Authority (GVRHA) to dissolve at the end of the year, and county commissioners discussed with their staff this week how to absorb the bulk of the organization’s work. The property management aspects will be a primary focus, while home ownership oversight and GV-Heat administration, a regional utility subsidy for income-qualified residents, have not yet been determined. 

The GVRHA board agreed earlier this year to dissolve due to chronic management turnover, and the Gunnison County Housing Authority will take on the GVRHA’s work in 2026 when it comes to managing deed-restricted housing rentals, federally subsidized housing and being an information hub to the public.

Former GVRHA director Melissa LaMonica, now Gunnison County’s CFO, joined assistant county manager for sustainability and operations John Cattles on Tuesday to update commissioners on the transition preparation. 

The county owns and will now manage several housing developments in the valley, including Sawtooth 1 and 2 and Mountain View Apartments in Gunnison and the Whetstone Community Housing project under construction near Crested Butte. 

The county will oversee LIHTC (Low Income Housing Tax Credit) housing such as Anthracite Place and Mineral Point as well. Staff agreed that the GV-HEAT program could transition to the county Health and Human Services department but are not yet ready to commit. 

“John [Cattles] has been very involved on the Whetstone side and I’m going to be more on the operational side,” said LaMonica. She said the county’s annual contributions to the GVRHA of about $245,000 would now cover the salaries for the staff needed to run it in-house. This includes property management, accounting, office management and general housing compliance.

“We are separating and tracking the property management fees, making sure they align with what the projections are in each property in the pro formas,” said LaMonica. Fees will go to a property management cost center, including from the anticipated management of Anthracite and Mineral Point and then some of the smaller contracts like the Valley Housing Fund.

Commissioner Laura Puckett Daniels confirmed that this would mean collecting rents, then keeping a portion for property management fees and administrative costs.

“It’s like running a business, but instead of taking profits everything drops back into the pot,” said Gunnison County manager Matthew Birnie. 

Cattles said they have pledged the county’s own housing authority revenues, except those related to Mountain View apartments, toward the debt service on Whetstone. He said some county staff are allocated fully to the housing authority, and others are partially so. “We are going to track their actual time so as we work through this over the years we’ll be able to make sure that our allocations are accurate and make adjustments each year,” he said.

County facilities staff will operate like a business providing services to the housing authority, and creating invoices separately from regular county operations.

“And if we continue to manage properties that are not ours it’s also a revenue opportunity,” said LaMonica. 

There is still a question of how home ownership services will look in the community. “There are multiple technical processes within the home ownership bucket,” said Puckett Daniels. “But the bulk of what GVRHA has successfully done since I got on the board was property management, which is moving over to the county and continuing to be offered to partners, and being a general hub for the public with questions and feedback…the county is going to continue to be that hub for folks and provide people to answer the phone and connect them with services.”  

LaMonica said the county has the capacity to continue doing many of the other services and more; they have to assess each one separately to determine legalities and efficiencies first.

Commissioners plan to hold a work session early next spring to assess how the transition is going.