Guest post from Alex Plotkin
A recent article by RMPBS calls out the effects of the failed policies of the Colorado local and state politicians, but it incorrectly singles out the cause of the issue. It’s not just the affordable housing, but a whole slew of factors which have set up some of the Colorado communities for the failures that are starting to manifest. As is often the case, the local and state politicians are behind the curve on seeing the true cause of the problem, which they, in part might have created due to their short-sighted (and, in some cases, dubious) policies.
Instead of creating zoning and building standards which would have dictated the build out of diverse communities where localized, well-paying employment opportunities would be collocated with a variety of housing and educational opportunities, public transit and amenities which would attract a variety of skilled professionals at various stages of life, a number of communities in Colorado will be passed over on the way to locales which are proactively working on setting up their communities for the challenges that are rapidly coming our way.
In Lakewood, specifically, the government has chosen to foster the build out of metro districts and rentals, focusing on the means of extracting profit from those who live there, instead of creating well-paying, localized employment opportunities for the high-skill professionals, who, instead have moved on to other areas for employment, resulting in large parts of Lakewood being economically stagnant. This, in turn is already resulting in death spiral of fewer families, businesses struggling or closing and the schools having to be closed due to fewer children being in the area (see this article for more)
Lakewood is not unique in their failures – as pointed out in the RMPBS article, whole swaths of the state are now setup to tumble down the road of losing out on more and more skilled/educated workers, younger families and a stable base of employment to enable a healthy and diverse economy.
The problem is not just about the housing – it is a lot more complicated than that. For one, more desirable locales usually result in higher cost of housing. The question then becomes – how do you make housing more attainable?
One of the ways is to enable more economic opportunity which would enable higher wages for those trying to secure housing. Furthermore, once a local economic engine is firing, that creates a positive knock-on effect, whereby the surplus tax revenue might be used to subsidize housing for those who are vital to the community (i.e. janitors, nurses, teaches, etc.), but may not have the market-dictated wages to pay for the housing.
The RMPBS article points out that in Denver one now needs a $160,000 income to be able to semi-comfortably afford a home. So, what are the local politicians in the aforementioned counties doing to bring in jobs which provide such income?
This is one of many areas in which Jefferson County in particular has been failing, miserably. Their officials have been proactively rezoning properties originally slated for economic-and-education-oriented development in to residential (largely, rental and metro district to boot). This not only destroys the economic potential, but also further stresses the county finances as residential units generally cost money to provide services to Colorado (as has been stated by Lakewood former city attorney and the documents provided by the developer for the Red Rocks Ranch). Yet, over and over again, JeffCo officials have supported such rezoning and development, instead of figuring out a way to bring in higher paying, localized employment. (see this article for more)
The failures of the past are now leading to more failures in real time. The federal government has recently announced that it will be providing billions of dollars to invest in high-tech development.
Yet, since JeffCo, at large has failed to champion any meaningful high-tech development to begin with, guess where those billions are not going to be invested? Golden may catch some loose change, due to the School of Mines presence, but the rest of JeffCo (especially, Lakewood) – not likely. Hence, in some parts of Colorado, one might argue, the economic death spiral is already in motion.
To add an insult to the injury, JeffCo has largely failed to champion a development of functional public transit. To be fair, so has Colorado at large. RTD is a massive failure, compared to even the relatively less well-off countries such as Czech Republic. No, RTD is nowhere close to being a remotely good value for the dollars spent, if one actually looks at data. Some politicians in Colorado love to drone on about data, yet, they frequently fail to look at metrics from world-renowned sources such as OECD and IPCC, instead falling back on the talking points fed to them by their campaign backers.
Otherwise, why would Colorado have such abysmal rates of public transit ridership?
We get ever more traffic, more pollution, and more and more cookie-cutter rentals, which were never meant for families to live in, a lot of which are owned by corporations, which may or may not have been engaging in collusion to set the rent prices and some of which are already embroiled in a lawsuit.
“RealPage’s clients include some of the largest property managers in the country. Many favor cities where rent has been rising rapidly, according to a ProPublica analysis of five of the country’s top 10 property managers as of 2020. All five use RealPage pricing software in at least some buildings, and together they control thousands of apartments in metro areas such as Denver, Nashville, Atlanta and Seattle, where rents for a typical two-bedroom apartment rose 30% or more between 2014 and 2019.”
Meanwhile, failing to creating conditions to drive the success of more people. Not working on ways for those who would think of starting a family, to be able to do so without drowning financially.
And here is another thing to consider for those constantly claiming that work from home is a savior. It’s not.
And those are just the short term effects to consider. Longer term, it may get far worse:
“Artificial intelligence also is expected to eliminate some positions entirely. Mr. Krishna, of IBM, has said in recent weeks that he could see 30% of IBM’s roughly 26,000 non-customer-facing roles being replaced by automation or AI over a 5-year period.”
We are just starting to see the failures resulting from the shortsighted policies of last couple of decades. Instead of engaging in truly open conversation with the public to see how the public should be helped to succeed in the even more adverse economic and environmental events to come, the local and state politicians are doubling down on enabling the last vestiges of profits for the big money interests at further detriment to the citizens at various socioeconomic levels.
Perhaps, sooner than later, a majority of the citizens will start to realize who put them in the dire straits they are in. Some already are.
The next step would be for the citizens to realize that it is their elected officials who have enabled the types of development, for over a decade now, which have enabled the backsliding of thousands (or is it now millions?) of people in to becoming de-facto rent (and metro-district) financial serfs. Instead of having more economic opportunities and more equitable conditions which may enable those wanting a family, to start one.
