Aspen tackles housing crisis with deed restrictions

Pitkin County, Colorado, has the second-most expensive housing of any county in the country. The average home is $2.4 million. The median single-family home in the county seat, Aspen, is worth more than $13 million.

The whims of the free market make it impossible for chefs, teachers, police, nurses and doctors to live here, so the community has charted its own course for nearly 50 years. Established in 1982, the Aspen Pitkin County Housing Authority (APCHA) was the first workforce housing agency in Colorado and one of the first in the country. With more than 3,100 deed-restricted units (more than half of which are owned by occupants), it is the largest mountain resort workforce housing program in North America, and especially impressive when you consider Aspen’s population is about 7,000.

“Housing has always been tight here, and it probably is in most resort communities,” says Rachael Richards, mayor of Aspen. “Over time, you end up seeing more and more teardowns or conversions of places that used to have working locals.”

Richards moved to Aspen in 1978 and bought one of APCHA’s deed-restricted condominiums herself in 1988. For hers (and most of APCHA’s homes with deed restrictions), annual appreciation is 3 percent or the increase in the consumer price index, whichever is lower.

A two-bedroom condo on the free market typically goes for $2.5 million, give or take, says Richards. “I’m in a deed-restricted two-bedroom that would probably have appreciated at this point to about $200,000.”

That’s downright affordable for just about anywhere in Colorado, let alone Aspen, but demand still easily outstrips supply. “There’s not enough,” says Richards. “Sixty percent of the workforce in Pitkin County does not live in Pitkin County, and 20 percent of that workforce comes from over 50 miles away on a daily basis. We’re seeing a growing percentage coming through the I-70 corridor from Rifle or New Castle.”

Federal standards for low-income housing tax credits (LIHTCs) are too low for Aspen’s workforce, she adds. “We can’t use those programs anymore, and it’s been impossible to get any sort of federal acknowledgement that would allow you to raise the income levels allowed on the ownership side.”

Without any sort of federal help, Aspen’s leaders have implemented zoning that requires mitigation in the form of affordable units. This kind of inclusionary zoning “has really grown over time, and it’s been a very deliberate activity,” says Richards.

When developers demolish existing free-market housing, they must replace those units with deed-restricted affordable housing to build new free-market units. If they are unable to replace the demolished units, at least half of the new units must qualify as affordable.

Whether the developers sell or rent affordable units, tenants need to be qualified through APCHA as a resident working in the county for 1,500 hours a year. Retirees are allowed to stay in their ownership units, and about 400 of APCHA’s deed-restricted units are now occupied by retirees.

Richards says that point has caused some tension in the program, but she supports it nonetheless. “I believe it’s wrong to ask someone to give 40 years of their best working years developing a community and contributing to the local hospital and the school district with their taxes and then expect them to uproot and move somewhere else at that age,” says Richards.

Regardless, the overall dynamic means many Aspen employers have gone into the housing business themselves. “The school district has some [deed-restricted homes] of their own, the hospital district has some,” says Richards. “You’ve seen private businesses purchase and preserve units.”

Aspen Valley Health (AVH) is a prime example. CEO Dave Ressler says that the local housing costs mean even doctors qualify for workforce housing in many cases. “The only reason I came in 2004 was because there’s a house dedicated for the CEO on the property where I’ve had the privilege of living for the best part of the last two decades,” Ressler adds.

AVH owns 66 units for about 500 employees and manages another 40. Some of the units are used as “call rooms” for on-call employees on a night-by-night basis, which allows for much longer commutes. “We have employees who live on the Front Range and across western Colorado,” says Ressler. “There’s no charge for the call rooms, but they’re in short supply.”

The market is defined by a certain “price insensitivity” that trickles down to the workforce. “There’s enough billionaires in the world that can move to Aspen and afford $10 million or $15 million, there’s not a lot of difference for them,” explains Ressler. “For all practical purposes, there isn’t any affordable, free-market housing within 45 minutes of the hospital.”

Beyond owning housing and call rooms, AVH works to find employees who currently live in Pitkin County. “We’re trying to tap into local pipelines for community members who already have housing,” says Ressler. “We have programs to identify community members who might want to start in an entry-level position here at AVH.”

A registered nurse with AVH, Taryn Hernandez came to Aspen on a travel contract in 2022 and was offered a full-time job with two years of housing in late 2023. The initial year was free-market housing. “As a traveling nurse at that time, the pay was good enough to where I felt like I could afford $3,700 a month for rent,” she says. “But when you transition to full-time status, that pay is different, so that is not possible.”

After a year and a half, Hernandez and her family moved into a workforce unit in Basalt in early 2025. Despite the robust programs, the housing market “is very tough,” says Hernandez. “If you’re trying to buy something through APCHA, that’s years and years on a wait list.”

She adds, “You need however many people to run a hospital or the local gas station or whatever, and you can’t possibly house every employee in this town.”

While it’s one of the most robust in the Rockies, APCHA’s program is not without its challenges. Maintenance costs are not inflation-capped, and some units have had HOA dues “become totally unaffordable,” says Richards. “We’ve had to allow a number of those to go to free market sale and use the money from that sale to create other affordable housing units.”

There is also a certain amount of NIMBY-ism that comes with the territory. “I can’t think of a single project that wasn’t a little bit of blood, sweat and tears,” says Richards. “As everyone says, there are two things people hate: One is sprawl and the other is density, but you have to pick your poison.”

What lessons can other communities struggling with housing prices learn from Aspen? “Starting early was a big thing and really putting the tools in place that we need,” says Richards. “We were a lucky community in Colorado that passed a real estate transfer tax prior to Douglas Bruce and TABOR coming along.”

Enacted by Colorado in 1992, TABOR, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, “took away a very important tool for a local community to choose to tax itself for these purposes,” she says. “We do benefit from that, but the surrounding county can’t do a real estate transfer tax.”

Aspen’s real estate transfer tax (RETT) of 1.5 percent generated $24 million in 2024. About two-thirds of the revenue goes to fund housing and the remainder supports local arts and culture. Critics argue RETTs are drag on housing values and regressive, but Richards argues otherwise. “From Aspen’s experience, it hasn’t dampened sales prices at all,” she says.

Richards remembers a meeting of the Colorado Association of Ski Towns in Crested Butte in the 1990s. “We were telling people about the Aspen housing program,” she says. “The reaction was like, ‘Oh, we don’t want that. We don’t want something so complicated. We’re not going to need that.’ Then you turn around and 10 years later, you can’t afford to hire a police chief because the housing prices are out of control.”

“Any part of Colorado is a desirable place to live when you really get down to it,” Richards adds. “We’re a microcosm of what eventually happens to almost all communities. The ability to have workers of different income levels for different job types is a real issue, and it isn’t going away.”

This article appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of ColoradoBiz under the headline, ‘Aspen’s workforce housing program tackles affordability.’