Home Is Where The Parking Is

by Julia Caulfield

Simon Perkovich stands in front of “Just Some Bus” in Telluride’s Town Park

Many of Colorado’s mountain towns are facing a housing crisis. Soaring prices and a limited housing stock can make finding a place to call home difficult. But as KOTO’s Julia Caulfield reports, this winter, Telluride is trying something new to find homes for locals.

In the summer, Telluride’s Town Park is the home to music festivals, softball games, lazy days in the sun. Winter brings a sledding hill, Nordic skiing, and this year, housing.

“Alright we’re in the Town Park parking lot. This is my bus, I call it ‘Just Some Bus’,” says Simon Perkovich. This winter, he’s living in his bus, in Town Park’s parking lot. Although, he sees his bus, as much more than a home.

“It has a deck that folds down to be a performing platform. It’s painted with chalkboard paint, so you can draw on any surface of it. It’s meant to be kind of a perfect COVID-mobile,” he says, “You could drive it to a cul-de-sac and set up a show and do theatre while we can’t gather indoors.”

Perkovich is living in Town Park this winter as part of a pilot program to provide RV housing for the winter. The Town of Telluride is providing 9 parking spaces for residents to live in their trailer, mobile home, RV, or vehicle.

Telluride Town Councilmember Dan Enright helped to push the program forward. He first heard the idea before he was on town council, and a member of Telluride’s Planning and Zoning Commission.

Enright says, “this was the one that really caught my attention and felt the most immediately accessible. The most available to be able to bring housing this season.”

Enright notes the Town of Telluride has other housing projects in the works, but those are months, if not years down the road.

Telluride Town Council approved the program for the winter last fall, with tenants moving in mid-November. This winter, the program is housing 12 individuals – paying $300 per month in rent.

Walk inside, and “Just Some Bus” is a modest affair.

“It’s pretty simple in here. I built most of it. It’s pretty much just a bed and some storage boxes, some shelving. The Town Park gives us electrical outlets, so I’ve got two heaters running. That’s how it keeps warm in the winter, you know this close to the San Miguel and Bear Creek,” Perkovich says, “It has insulation and paneling, wood floors, nothing too fancy.”

He uses a camping stove for cooking, although working at a restaurant also provides a lot of his meals. He uses sinks provided by the Town to wash up.

So far, Perkovich says the situation has been great.

“It has been awesome,” he says, “It’s the best form of employee housing I could think of. As far as affordability, after one month of working here, I saved up enough to pay off my whole season here. That is something I would never have dreamed of in Telluride.”

Perkovich was born and raised in Telluride. He bought “Just Some Bus” at the beginning of COVID, built it out and drove it to Pittsburg, where he was finishing university. He graduated and home was calling.

“I link it to ‘Lord of the Rings’. I say that hobbits always return to the Shire. I’ve seen it with all my friends. We all went to Boulder, and we all come back,” he notes.

He said the housing in Town Park hit at just the right moment.

“I was figuring I would park this back in Norwood, and do a half Telluride, half Norwood gig,” Perkovich says, “But when I graduated, it just so happened that Telluride was doing the acceptance of RVs in Town Park. I thought, since I’ve been living in an RV I really should capitalize on that.”

Both Enright and Perkovich acknowledge allowing RVs or buses to stay in Town Park isn’t the silver bullet to housing in the community. They add, it’s in essence, legalizing what some are already doing.

“It’s a good stab at community housing, at employee housing. I do know a lot of friends who are interested in this kind of thing, and even have rigs, but reserve it for camping because it’s somewhat illegal to sleep in a car,” says Perkovich.

Enright adds it’s a sign of the time for the region.

“It speaks to the needs of our community that we’d even consider something so outside the norm to address our housing crisis,” says Enright.

Come April, the individuals living in Town Park will be headed down the road in search of the next housing opportunity…the housing crisis will not disappear. But for the moment, snuggled up against the San Miguel River, a line of RVs, busses, and vans call Town Park home.

Short term Rental Tax Raises Funds for Housing

By Julia Caulfield

Elena Levin, Hayley Nenadal, Pepper Raper-Contillo created a citizens initiative ballot measure to tax short term rentals (Courtesy of Suzanne Cheavens)

It takes more than want and will to build affordable housing in Colorado’s mountain communities. Limited land pushes up prices, and building costs are high. KOTO’s Julia Caulfield has more on how Telluride is looking to raise a little bit of extra money to offset building and maintenance costs.

In 2019, three Telluride locals identified what they saw as a problem.

Pepper Raper-Contillo was one of them.

“We see our town is just bleeding people – and wonderful people that are volunteers, and great workers, and wonderful community members – and people can’t find housing,” she says.

The Trust for Community Housing, a local housing non-profit, estimates there are currently fewer than five housing units on the market for rent, and affordable housing projects in the area currently have waitlists over 100 people long each.

So, Raper-Contillo and her friends decided to put democracy in action to do something about it.

“We decided, ‘hey, let’s tax the problem and turn the problem into a solution’,” Raper-Contillo says.

That “solution” was a citizen’s initiative ballot measure.

“The citizen’s ballot initiative we did was to put an excise tax on short term rentals within the town of Telluride. We proposed a 2.5 percent excise tax,” she notes, “and that money was specifically earmarked for the affordable housing budget of town.”

The measure was aimed at short-term private rentals like Air BnB and VRBO, and excluded hotels, and commercial accommodations. Those short term rentals, Raper-Contillo says, is contributing to local residents losing their long term housing. Roughly 35 percent of Telluride’s housing stock is currently short-term rentals that’s up from about 20 percent five years ago.

That fall, the measure passed with 56 percent of the vote. The tax went into effect in January 2020.

In the first year Telluride collected just over $400,000 in tax revenue. In 2021, Telluride Mayor DeLanie Young anticipates the Town will collect $800,000.

She says that funding will help float a number of construction projects coming down the pipeline. The Town of Telluride is currently building a 30-unit rental project, and is planning to break ground on two other housing projects within the next year – adding another 30 to 50 units of housing.

“You can never really have enough dedicated funding sources for something that is at this level of crisis. We just need to keep our eye on the goal, which is to get as many units built as quickly as we can,” says Mayor Young.

And for Raper-Contillo, housing efforts related to the tax are “essential” to keeping the community sound. For one, she says, the lack of affordable housing discourages people from starting new businesses in Telluride.

She says, “they don’t want to commit to anything because they don’t know at what point they might get kicked out of their housing and have to move town.”

Mayor Young adds housing is more than just a roof over your head.

“It has to do with your mental health. It has to do with economic health for the region,” Young says, “housing is, if you will, the hub of the wheel and all of the spokes that come off are related to what that stable housing can provide to the entire community – for not only the employees who live in it, but the businesses where they work, the schools where their children attend, etc. etc.…”

Now, the idea for a short term rental tax didn’t appear out of thin air.

Other mountain towns, including Crested Butte provided a roadmap for what the tax could look like in Telluride. Voters there passed a tax on short term rentals that took in 2018.

Dara MacDonald, Town Manager for the Town of Crested Butte, says “having a defined revenue steam that’s been pretty consistent these past few years is a great benefit for the community and the affordable housing fund. It’s certainly gives us the stability to do things that we couldn’t necessarily plan on being able to do in years prior.”

MacDonald notes the town collects about $400,000 a year from the tax – which goes back into the town’s affordable housing fund.

 “It certainly has not impeded rentals,” MacDonald says, “We’ve just continued to see growth in the revenue numbers we’re receiving.”

But MacDonald and Raper-Contillo recognize the tax is just one element.

“It’s not enough. We still, like Telluride, have an uphill battle to be able to secure sufficient housing for our local housing,” says MacDonald.

“This is one small puzzle piece of many actions we can take. Some say 2.5% wasn’t enough to make it worth is, so we shouldn’t have done it at all,” notes Raper-Contillo, “but if you look at it, at the end of the day, it’s raising funds that were not there before.”

And now, more locals are stepping in again. A new citizen’s initiative to cap the number of short term rentals in Telluride is working its way to the ballot this fall.

The Housing Lottery: Part 2

By Julia Caulfield

It’s lottery day for the Longwill 16 and Silver Jack housing developments, and Rebekah Hall is buzzing. At the front of the room is a large golden, metal tumbler, like you’d see for Bingo. Beside it on the table are small red balls, each with a number on it. There are 93 households in the lottery – each with between one and three numbers. That means 193 balls, for 24 units available.

The Hall is packed, and beneath the nervous chatter you can hear as each ball is dropped into the tumbler.

Dennis Andrejko sits in the second row of seats. He and his partner, Shawnna Rice, are hoping to get a unit through the lottery so they can move in together. Rice is at work, but Andrejko took the day off so he could be here.

Just after 12 p.m., Town Council member DeLanie Young calls the meeting to order.

“At 12:02 p.m. I am calling to order the special meeting of the Telluride Housing Authority Subcommittee on September 12th, 2019…” says Young.

Council member Young notes that even if a number isn’t one of the first 24 drawn, that doesn’t mean a household is out of the running. Some lottery winners will decide against a unit, or the finances won’t come through. Young says anyone drawn in the top 30 have a good chance to get a unit.

Several more people provide remarks, and the lottery begins. County Commissioner Hilary Cooper reads out the numbers.

The energy is high. Even for those not in the drawing, you have to remind yourself to breathe.

Cheers erupt as the first numbers a drawn. But as the numbers inch closer to 20, 24, 30, the mood begins to drop.

Somewhere around the 50th ball being called, Andrejko decides to leave. Just as he steps outside, his number is called for the first time.

“Okay, cool. I guess I just called in the 55th or something…” says Andrejko.

His number was actually the 57th called.

Andrejko adds “I feel like a lot of people were kind of going for the same units. So, I don’t know, 50th, 55th, somewhere in there, it’s a little disheartening, but that’s how it is, I guess. Literal luck of the draw.”

Andrejko says the lottery doesn’t just indicate a need for more housing in the area. He says there needs more housing to buy, not just rent.

“People don’t want to rent. I mean obviously, the crowd in there and the number of people that signed up, people want to live here and own here, and be in this community and be a part of it, for as long as they can.”

At the end of it all, Andrejko’s feelings are still mixed about the whole thing.

“I looked around the room, seeing people cheering in the first handful of ones called. So I’m happy for those people. I’m jealous a little bit too. I’ll be honest. But I’m glad. It’s new families, it’s people that I know have lived here, that are living here,” He says.

Back in the Hall, numbers are still being drawn. But the crowed has thinned. As the final numbers are called, there are only a dozen or so people in the audience. No one is cheering.

And in what seems like a cruel twist, the final number called…is Andrejko and Rice’s.

The full results of the housing lottery will be available on the San Miguel Regional Housing Authority’s website on Friday. Winners of the lottery can expect to begin signing contracts next week.

The Housing Lottery: Part 1

By Julia Caulfield

Dennis Andrejko and Shawnna Rice

Dennis Andrejko and Shawnna Rice recognize they don’t have the typical housing story in Telluride. Andrejko works at the library, and has lived in town for about 12 years.

Andrejko says,“I am really fortunate in that the first couple years I was living here was only winter. So for four winters I lived in a different place. After that, I currently live in deed restricted housing, and I’m super fortunate that I’ve been able to do that.”

Rice moved to Telluride two years ago and works as the school district psychologist. She’s been in the same house since she got to town.

But now, Rice is losing her housing at the end of November. Plus, she and Andrejko want to move in together. Which leads them to be one of the 93 applicants participating in this year’s housing lottery – 99 applied, but 6 applications were deemed unqualified.

“It’s just stressful because there aren’t really any other options. We don’t really have a backup plan. I have to move out of my place on November 30th. So it’s like, ok, if this doesn’t happen…where am I going to go?” says Rice.

It’s mid-August, and Andrejko and Rice are taking a sight walk of the Longwill 16 project on the west end of Telluride.

The Longwill 16 is one of two new affordable housing projects in Telluride. The other project, call the Silver Jack, is on the upper floors of the SMPA lot, across from the library. In total there are 26 units, although two have been reserved for town employees, which leaves 24 units up for grabs. The units range from single bedrooms, all the way up to four.

To be entered in the lottery, households go through an extensive application process, and provide all kinds of documentation including “past tax returns, or W-2s, or in some instances, people showing that they graduated from Telluride High School.”

Melanie Wasserman, is the Interim Executive Director for the San Miguel Regional Housing Authority, the organization managing the lottery. To be part of the lottery, applicants needed to complete all the paperwork, and submit it during an appointment with the SMRHA. Wasserman says her role at the SMRHA can be difficult. The SMRHA isn’t in charge of deciding the qualifications, they administer the rules decided by the Town.

“On one hand it’s very black and white, and then on another hand, you come across these people, individuals, couples, families, who are just so wonderful and you really want them to end up in housing,” says Wasserman.

After getting all the application paperwork in, it’s mostly just a waiting game.

Rice says, “getting all the application materials was super stressful. Once we were done with our application, then I’ll just be like, ‘ah, okay, we’re done.’ And then we just wait to see if we’re lucky, or not.”

“Then it’s just literally luck of the draw,” adds Andrejko.

For everyone that enters the lottery, that luck of the draw could be the difference between having a home in Telluride, and potentially having to move. Rice says that brings up some conflicting emotions.

“It’s one of those things where you’re really excited if you get it, but then people who don’t get it that have to move out of town, that’s going to be really sad,” Rice says.

And while the nature of a lottery means some families will win and some will lose, Andrejko says at some point you have to accept that it’s all up to chance.

“It’s not a competition as far as, ‘if I’m faster or stronger, then I can get it’. It’s literally ping pong balls pulled out of the hat or whatever. I think whoever gets it is deserving,” says Andrejko.

After making it through the application process Andrejko and Rice were granted three numbers in the housing lottery. The drawing will take place at Rebekah Hall on Thursday at noon.