This column is the first of a two-part series. For most recent information, see Part 2.
The public now knows all of the official candidates for the Town of Lyons election, with two people competing on the mayoral ballot, and eight competing for the six trustee seats on the Lyons Board of Trustees. There could still be changes in candidates before the April 7 election, however. According to information in a town press release, February 3 is the last day to file a write-in candidate affidavit, and February 4 is the last day for a candidate to withdraw from the election.
So where do these currently verified candidates stand on affordable housing? I have sent out a request to all candidates asking if they have affordable housing platforms for their campaigns and what proposals they support in the Town of Lyons for affordable housing. As soon as I have a response from all candidates, I’ll write a more in-depth column about their stances.
Both mayoral candidates have a history of supporting affordable housing initiatives (Jocelyn Farrell on the Board of Trustees and Nick Angelo on the Planning and Community Development Commission), so I won’t go into the mayoral race.
For now, we can see the track record of several trustee candidates as supporters of affordable housing. The following candidates for the Board of Trustees have strong experience and a history of supporting affordable housing in Lyons and Boulder County:
Mark Browning has supported affordable housing issues before the Board of Trustees and the Planning and Community Development Commission, and he volunteers regularly with Habitat for Humanity.
Wendy Miller served on the Lyons Special Housing Committee in 2015-2016 and ran as a trustee on a platform supporting affordable housing. She was elected on that platform in 2016 and again in 2018. She is the board liaison to the Lyons Housing & Human Services Commission.
Mike Karavas has supported affordable housing issues before the Board of Trustees in his two terms as a trustee.
Hollie Rogin speaks in support of affordable housing issues on the Planning and Community Development Commission, and she has previously served on the PLAN-Boulder County board, which has identified an affordable housing position.
Look for future columns (See Part 2) that delve into all the trustee candidates and where they stand on affordable housing. As I wrote last week, we need taxpayer-subsidized affordable rentals like Summit’s proposal for Lyons Valley Park. Electing trustees who understand affordable housing will help our town face the challenges before us.
Thanks for keeping us informed on this important issue Amy!
So if a candidate doesn’t agree with your assertion that we need taxpayer subsidized rentals, they are against Affordable Housing?
The public now knows all of the official candidates for the Town of Lyons election, with two people competing on the mayoral ballot, and eight competing for the six trustee seats on the Lyons Board of Trustees. There could still be changes in candidates before the April 7 election, however. According to information in a town press release, February 3 is the last day to file a write-in candidate affidavit, and February 4 is the last day for a candidate to withdraw from the election.
So where do these currently verified candidates stand on affordable housing? I have sent out a request to all candidates asking if they have affordable housing platforms for their campaigns and what proposals they support in the Town of Lyons for affordable housing. As soon as I have a response from all candidates, I’ll write a more in-depth column about their stances.
Both mayoral candidates have a history of supporting affordable housing initiatives (Jocelyn Farrell on the Board of Trustees and Nick Angelo on the Planning and Community Development Commission), so I won’t go into the mayoral race.
For now, we can see the track record of several trustee candidates as supporters of affordable housing. The following candidates for the Board of Trustees have strong experience and a history of supporting affordable housing in Lyons and Boulder County:
Mark Browning has supported affordable housing issues before the Board of Trustees and the Planning and Community Development Commission, and he volunteers regularly with Habitat for Humanity.
Wendy Miller served on the Lyons Special Housing Committee in 2015-2016 and ran as a trustee on a platform supporting affordable housing. She was elected on that platform in 2016 and again in 2018. She is the board liaison to the Lyons Housing & Human Services Commission.
Mike Karavas has supported affordable housing issues before the Board of Trustees in his two terms as a trustee.
Hollie Rogin speaks in support of affordable housing issues on the Planning and Community Development Commission, and she has previously served on the PLAN-Boulder County board, which has identified an affordable housing position.
Look for future columns that delve into all the trustee candidates and where they stand on affordable housing. As I wrote last week, we need taxpayer-subsidized affordable rentals like Summit’s proposal for Lyons Valley Park. Electing trustees who understand affordable housing will help our town face the challenges before us.
You’ve got my vote Kenyon! Time for some fresh faces! And love to see Nick back as mayor!
Did Amy answer Kenyon’s question?
Repeating your column does not answer Kenyon’s question.
Hi, Anonymous, Kenyon, Anonymous, and Anonymous. I don’t think that you are all the same person, so I’m addressing you individually. Thanks for your comments about the discussion on the need for affordable housing, as many kinds of “affordable housing” as we can think of.
To the first Anonymous, I appreciate your thank you. My goal is to keep the community informed.
To Kenyon and the other Anoymouses, here’s some more info:
I thought it was clear in my column from Jan. 30 and in my email conversations with Kenyon and other candidates when I requested whether they have affordable housing platforms for their campaigns and what proposals they support in the Town of Lyons for affordable housing. There’s a lot of room there for various kinds of “methods” to achieve affordable housing.
I was one of many community members (including people who lost their homes) who worked on the Lyons Recovery Action Plan after the flood, and that “LRAP” plan included affordable housing strategies to create a live-work development that can provide affordable housing for artists to live and incubate their trade and business; to encourage constructing homes that are affordable because of lot size, regulatory incentives, construction methods and materials, density, financial subsidies, and volunteer organizations; to encourage manufactured housing (including prefabricated, modular, and mobile homes); and to encourage alternative and sustainable housing developments with different ownership models. I support all of these strategies in combination with each other as intentions directly from our community. When I have a response from all candidates, I’ll write a more in-depth column about their stances (that column will probably run at the end of February in the Lyons Recorder, estimated by other topics on the editorial calendar).
I will first of all report the candidate’s stance to the public, and second I will decide whether I recommend voting for them based on their affordable housing stances. I’ve devoted my free time in the past six or more years to learning about affordable housing as part as multiple task forces, committees, and commissions I served on in the town after the flood, and reading what has worked in other communities. I will evaluate all responses from the candidates and will give an opinion of who I think the best 6 candidates are for the Board of Trustees. For example, if a candidate only supports one isolated option from the long list options that our community has already highlighted, that’s a red flag. But let’s just see what the candidates actually say before implying that I only think federally subsidized affordable housing is the only answer. That’s not true. I do think that a multi-pronged approach is the answer. I do see a red flag if someone thinks the free market will take care of everything. That’s basically what we have now, and the rents keep going up.
I apologize if I hurt anyone’s feelings who wasn’t mentioned in the Jan. 30 column as having a track record on a current board or commission in supporting affordable housing policy. Those four trustee candidates and two mayor candidates I mentioned have made several statements and votes on affordable housing in their roles in the past. The four trustee candidates I didn’t name simply have not. They haven’t served on boards that discussed affordable housing or town policies for housing before. That’s just the way it is. But as soon as all the candidates send in their statements on affordable housing, I will be able to share their platforms, and make a decision for myself of who I will vote for. Also, way beyond the scope of my little “What’s the future of affordable housing in Lyons?” column is a broader candidate forum and interviews and profiles that I expect the Chamber of Commerce and both newspapers will be doing. All the candidates will have many opportunities to campaign. I’m only writing about affordable housing, and all the candidates have many more issues to communicate to the public about.
Hi, Amber Burton. I don’t think you had a specific question for me, unless you are one of the Anonymouses. It sounds like your endorsement of Kenyon Waugh for Trustee as a “fresh face” and Nick Angelo as a past mayor running again for mayor are probably related to reasons and issues much broader than just affordable housing. I expect that’s what all voters will do: consider all the issues that they feel are important for our town.
It takes a lot of time to read through and answer all these questions from Anonymous comments, but I know you all care about our community and want to make it better. Consider telling me who you are, like Kenyon and Amber did. It might make the conversation easier. Thanks for reading and for engaging in the discussion.
No. I wasn’t one of the anons. I speak openly.. always. 😉
I still want to know the definition of “affordable”. And who makes that decision based on what.
Hi, Todd.
Thanks for participating in the conversation. Did you read my column on Jan 17? I wrote about what “affordable housing” means to me, to others, and the requirements for taxpayer-funded programs that require monthly payments that people who earn 60 percent of the area median income can afford (including a table to income levels and rents that don’t exceed a third of the household monthly income). https://lyonscoloradonews.wordpress.com/2020/01/17/challenges-for-affordable-housing-in-colorado/.
Another interesting resource is https://homewanted.org/. And if you were interested in the Town of Lyons, there is also the Lyons Recovery Action Plan that has goals/strategies for “housing that is affordable”: http://www.townoflyons.com/documentcenter/view/388 (search on “housing” to see the specifics that I mentioned in my previous comment).
But I think you live outside of town. As someone who lives in rural Boulder County, outside of Town of Lyons, what are your concerns about affordable housing? What does “affordable housing” mean to you and people you care about?
Todd,
Or were you asking specifically about the proposal for Summit in Lyons Valley Park? Let me know. If that’s the case, I’ll track down the most recent info I have about the income levels and “who makes the decision based on what”.
Did you have any more questions for me?
What I am wondering is: who speaks for lower income residents of Lyons who live here already? Residents living on fixed incomes, residents who can easily be displaced, as surely as if by a flood, by rising property taxes and utility fees. Do you, Amy, advocate for them too?
Who speaks for them?
There are a number of such folks living here, some in homes they own and have for years, some who are renters (but whose landlords will pass along property tax increases). Maybe they have reverse mortgages on their homes (my parents did). They struggle to make ends meet, want to “age in place”: that is, stay in their homes, and stay in Lyons. Not an unusual desire! Who speaks for them?
I don’t think our town’s recently passed 2020 budget, and the property tax increase (the largest in the town’s history) speaks for them. And, Amy, if you are concerned about “affordable housing” why are you not concerned about this? Summit’s own fiscal impact analysis shows the deficit their project will bring to our town’s general fund. How do you think that deficit will be made up?
Meanwhile, the Summit company’s own market study for the subsidized rentals it plans to build in Lyons indicated that most of the occupants would come from western portions of Longmont. Not Lyons. So can you explain why Lyons residents, many of whom do not have spare dollars, should subsidize Longmont’s affordable housing needs? A town with 800 households should address the needs of a nearby city with 30,000?
Amy, I don’t doubt you care about people who are in need of affordable housing. But how is what you advocate (the Summit project in particular) going to help existing Lyons residents who may be displaced by the rising costs of their remaining in their homes, here in Lyons? Is it not understood that the Summit project must be, in part, paid for by the present residents of our town? So, how much of that cost is too much? And is it not true, that the larger the number of new subsidized homes, the larger the cost to our taxpayers?
Robert, thanks for your comment and engaging in the new online Lyons Recorder..
You say “Amy, I don’t doubt you care about people who are in need of affordable housing. But how is what you advocate (the Summit project in particular) going to help existing Lyons residents who may be displaced by the rising costs of their remaining in their homes, here in Lyons?”
First of all, if you read my columns for the past five years (https://lyonscoloradonews.wordpress.com/), you would see evidence that I support a multi-faceted approach – many pieces of the puzzle to solve the affordable housing crisis. Helping both renters and homeowners who need to age in place is a big concern across Colorado and the country, and something I have written about several times: https://lyonscoloradonews.wordpress.com/tag/homeshare/. Maybe making homesharing easier in the Town of Lyons is something that the new Board of Trustees will take up – in addition to the subsidized affordable rental homes, and many other issues to make more affordable rental and homeownership options available.
Supporting taxpayer subsidized affordable housing proposals like the one from Summit Housing Group is one piece in the puzzle, as I’ve written many times in the past five years. Current homeowners of any income struggling to pay mortgages should not be pitted against renters who are struggling to find places to rent that they can afford and who would want to live in new townhomes or homes for rent if built by Summit in Lyons Valley Park. We can live in a caring community that helps both the homeowners struggling to pay mortgages and the renters struggling to pay rent. I think that is the compassionate path that everyone wants in the community – support multiple programs and approaches that ease the burden of the wide variety of homeowners and renters. The $4 million in federal disaster recovery funds and the Low-Income-Housing Tax Credits that Summit would be using here in the Town of Lyons are paid for by taxpayers, no matter where the affordable rental homes are built. Why not build them here in Lyons, where they are needed.
I think you’ll be interested in the two-part series of columns I wrote that are coming up about the the latest report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. It deals with a lot of these multiple facets of affordable housing. Make sure to read both parts 🙂
The record of my support for affordable housing stands in my past columns at https://lyonscoloradonews.wordpress.com/ – easy for anyone to find and look up.
I am not running for the Lyons Board of Trustees, however, so maybe my record of service in the community (advocating for affordable housing, and providing information to the public during a great gap in news reporting resources) doesn’t matter in the same way it does for people who are running for the Lyons Board of Trustees. I’m just here to serve the public. My written record on affordable housing stands at https://lyonscoloradonews.wordpress.com.
Thank you, Amy, for your dedication and commitment to the Lyons community for so many years. Question: Is the Summit Housing Proposal a political issue for the upcoming election? Would a new BOT be able to scrap the submitted proposal?
Thanks, Holli.
From my understanding, the development plan Summit submitted for 21 townhomes on tract A of filing no 8 of the Lyons Valley Park subdivision must go through a process that includes public hearings before the Lyons Planning and Community Development Commission (PCDC) and the Lyons Board of Trustees. It has not started yet. See https://lyonsrecorder.org/2020/02/06/development-plan-submitted-for-21-townhome-rentals-in-lyons-valley-park/ and http://www.townoflyons.com/648/Tract-A-Lyons-Valley-Park-filing-no-8 .
If all the incumbents are elected to the mayor and board of trustees seats in April, and if they all do support Summit building multifamily housing on tract A (past discussions and votes at meetings are supporting evidence that they do), then there will be at least 4 supporters – majority support on the new board.
If you look at the history of posts on Lyons-related Facebook groups, you might conclude there is a block running now that is against Summit building multifamily housing on tract A — at least two people. If they were elected and recruited others on the new board to their cause, maybe a majority of the new board could possibly vote to delay the development plan process for Tract A in multiple ways.
Note that the 19 single family home lots that Summit is also under contract to buy from property owner Keith Bell are already platted and would be treated the same as any other already-platted lots in Lyons Valley Park or elsewhere in town. There is no additional process to go through to build, even with Summit proposing to build rentals affordable to households at 60 percent of area median income (AMI) or less. Although there is no way to block an owner from building those single family homes, I don’t know if Summit would find it financially feasible or not to build only those 19 rentals if construction of the other 21 townhome rentals were delayed or blocked somehow.
Thank you, Amy, for thoughtfully clarifying. I think that explains a lot.
In my opinion, this election is another trial for Lyons affordable housing.
Another attempt to block years of work, affordable housing in a neighborhood, and the Summit proposal.
I hope citizens take time to assess the candidates’ motivation and interests.
We will all own this outcome, again.
There are many questions yet unanswered about the Summit development. And I hope they will be answered at PCDC and/or BOT public hearings. Chief among my questions is how long will these houses/apartments be affordable? Summit will not own these units forever; what’s the onus on the next landlord to keep them affordable? What are the terms of the $4M grant; do the provisions of the grant explicitly contain the words, “permanently affordable?” What are the mechanisms by which the tenants will be vetted for income suitability? For example, say I qualify under the 60% AMI provision, then a year later I get a new job or a raise that puts me above the 60% limit; am I evicted? Or, my new domestic partner moves in with me, immediately putting me over the limit; what happens then? I inherit money or get a work bonus; is that money accounted for? Are there quarterly reports to the town that show the income levels? It would be sad if we go to all this trouble only to find that 15 years later, these units are now market-rate homes.
Hi Greg Lowell. It’s good to hear from you.
The questions you ask are related to this column instead:
https://lyonsrecorder.org/2020/02/06/development-plan-submitted-for-21-townhome-rentals-in-lyons-valley-park/
I’ll move them over there.
Thanks for that info but the nuts and bolts of managing the renters are absent, as are the question of permanent affordability. My own experience with AH back in N.H. was the good intentions went awry within a couple years of construction. Private developers had no oversight from town and the previously affordable homes were market rate by second time they were sold. Will Lyons require quarterly status of renters? I think you see where I’m going with this; town initiates AH project then without oversight it fails, especially when Summit sells this project.
Hi again, Greg Lowell.
Are you campaigning for a seat on the Lyons Board of Trustees on this comment page? Or, do you just have questions about the Summit project proposal? Also what “all that info” are you referring to?
My response to your comment above (because it is about the development plan from Summit) is added as a comment to https://lyonsrecorder.org/2020/02/06/development-plan-submitted-for-21-townhome-rentals-in-lyons-valley-park/
Here’s a comment I have that actually has to do with the topic of this page: the track record of several trustee candidates as supporters of affordable housing – and I mean a wide variety of kinds of affordable housing – in the Town of Lyons.
The candidates I mentioned in my January 30 column above (both candidates for mayor: Jocelyn Farrell and Nick Angelo), and trustee candidates Mark Browning, Wendy Miller, Mike Karavas, and Hollie Rogin all have supported a wide range of ways to ease burdens on both homeowners and renters in the Town of Lyons in their official capacities when serving on the Lyons Planning and Community Development Commission and the Lyons Board of Trustees, whether policies for accessory dwelling units (including tiny homes on wheels and aging in place), short-term vacation rentals, Habitat for Humanity, the $4 million in federal Disaster Recovery funds set aside for subsidized affordable rentals in the Town of Lyons, or highlighting a pain point for local businesses who can’t find employees to hire who can afford to live in town.
Greg Lowell, all I have heard you talk about related to the term “affordable housing” are problems you see with a proposal from Summit Housing Group for a development plan to build 21 townhomes that would have rents affordable to households at 60 percent of the area median income or less (according to rules and regulations of the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits program and federal disaster recovery funds). I haven’t heard you talk about a campaign platform for the Town of Lyons that eases burdens on both homeowners and renters, of all ages, who are struggling to get by in a town and a region with rising house prices and rising rents. Other candidates have talked about these issues in their work over the past 6 1/2 years since the flood.