Report: County residents are happy with housing they have

Seasonal residences drive up cost of single-family homes

Whether it’s the place or the people, or a bit of both, a recent survey shows more than three-quarters of Gunnison County residents are satisfied with where they hang their hat.

The survey is part of a county-commissioned Housing Needs Assessment completed by Denver-based BBC Research and Consulting on December 8 that looks at the details of who has a place to live in Gunnison County, who wants one, and how that might change in the future.
BBC analyst Heidi Aggeler told the Gunnison Board of County Commissioners in the fall that while she expected more survey respondents to say they wanted to live closer to the north end of the valley and the ski resort, that wasn’t the case. Instead, 81 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with their housing.
Of the people who did want to relocate inside the county, the majority said they would rather live in Crested Butte, according to the assessment.
The assessment, however,  does not paint a picture of people lining up to buy houses. It reports that population growth since 2000 has been “modest, especially relative to other resort communities,” averaging about 1 percent annually.
Information from nearly 1,000 county residents went into the study, which ended up showing some positive trends for seasonal home ownership, leading to data that suggests a dramatic shift away from affordability is under way.
Since 2000, construction of seasonal units made up 68 percent of all new residential development in the county. During that period the median home price rose by more than $550,000 in Crested Butte, $260,000 in Mt. Crested Butte and more than $100,000 in Gunnison.
The price increase has made home ownership in the Valley extremely difficult. According to the assessment, a person who moved to the Gunnison Valley and purchased a home in 2000 would have to make nearly $65,000 more annually in 2009 to afford the same home.
If they moved farther north to the Crested Butte area, their income in 2009 would have to be about $150,000 higher than it was in 2000 to afford the same home.
“Seasonal homes have driven the new home construction and the price increase,” Aggeler said. “You can see that since 2000, the county has added more than 1,200 new seasonal homes. Price increases have been extreme in Crested Butte.”
As a result, families are being forced to move more often than they intend or want to. Almost half of the people who responded to the BBC’s housing surveys responded ‘yes’ when asked if they have had to move in the past three years in spite of not wanting to. Thirty-three percent of those people lived in Crested Butte—the most expensive area of the valley.
One third of the people who had been forced to move had listed “affordability” as the reason.
High home prices lead not only to a lot of moving around for area families—they can also lead to time at home being traded for time at work.
Mt. Crested Butte has the highest percentage of households without an employed person (like retirees), along with the City of Gunnison. But the town also has the highest proportion of households—one in 10—where people work at more than one job.
“In Mt. Crested Butte, Crested Butte and Crested Butte South, between 17 and 25 percent of households work three or more part-time jobs,” the assessment reports.
According to Aggeler, in addition to the spike in housing prices, seasonal home ownership leaves the county’s vacancy rate at a relatively high 43 percent. On the other side, she said Gunnison County does pretty well keeping homes filled, with a 63 percent occupancy rate, considering the resident student population.
“Considering the college population [in Gunnison], that’s very good,” she told the commissioners. “You’ll never get above 70 percent unless you get rid of the college.”
Despite the relatively high occupancy rate, for a college county, and the reason for the high vacancy rate, the assessment concludes that there is still a lot of work to be done in Gunnison County before everyone’s housing needs are met.
Aggeler said if the county population continues to grow at a consistent pace over the next five years, Gunnison County will gain 720 permanent households during the next decade.
BBC’s research also turned up a handful of people unable to pay their rent and manage other household costs. For those families, the assessment suggests the county develop a rental assistance program that would help those families make ends meet.
The assessment also predicts that there will be 250 households in the county over the next 10 years that could be potential homebuyers, but are priced out of the housing market. For this, the assessment suggests adding to the supply of “affordable attached housing products and small lot single family homes.”
As for housing needs right now, Aggeler said most of the employers she has talked to over the course of her research say it is relatively easy for their employees to find housing, especially if they are in the rental market.
The cost of rent has not gone up nearly as fast as home sale prices, and renters need to make only $24,000 to cover the median rental price in the county, according to the assessment.
The findings in the Housing Needs Assessment will help guide future housing policy in the county, and inform decisions the Board of County Commissioners and the Housing Authority make regarding issues like affordable housing and assistance programs.