Housing for Economic Health
Housing must be at the heart of our efforts. Real progress begins with strong regional cooperation. Success isn't just about building more units; it also involves creating homes for all life stages, maintaining existing deed-restricted units, aligning priorities between counties and towns, ensuring our infrastructure can support growth, and respecting local community values and voices.
Housing for Economic Health
Housing is the economic infrastructure of this county. When the people who staff our clinics, classrooms, restaurants, and trail crews cannot afford to live here, every other part of the county weakens with them. This is not an inevitable result of being a desirable place. It is a structural problem, and structural problems can be solved.
The 2025 Regional Housing Needs Assessment told us plainly how far behind we are. The work now is not another study. It is delivery, and delivery means the county and the towns planning as one region instead of competing parcel by parcel. Ouray County has shown that neighboring jurisdictions can pool effort and move faster together than any one of them could alone. We already have the legal tools to do the same. We have not fully picked them up.
Real progress also means respecting the people already here. New housing has to match what our water, roads, and emergency services can actually carry. And it has to be built with the voices of the communities around it, on the east end and the west end alike.
Plan as one region
• Coordinate with the towns and the county to implement the 2025 Housing Needs Assessment.
• Strengthen coordinated planning of regional housing development, and prioritize building among the county and the towns.
• Align affordability standards and deed restrictions across jurisdictions wherever possible.
Build for every stage of life
• Bolster a full spectrum of housing options, from seasonal workers to retirees.
• Fully occupy and maintain existing deed-restricted homes.
• Help long-time residents right-size within their communities.
• Adapt successful models from other Colorado communities, including Ouray, Summit, Eagle, and Pitkin Counties.
Match growth to capacity
• Match new housing to water, roads, and emergency service capacity.
• Conduct a county-wide infrastructure capacity study to identify where housing growth can be accommodated.
• Prioritize county capital improvement spending in areas with housing development potential.
Make the land buildable
• Continue to refine the land use code to simplify affordable housing construction while ensuring local community voices are heard and incorporated.
• Identify potential land swaps with the BLM, the Colorado Department of Transportation, and the US Forest Service to acquire and bank buildable land.
• Accelerate the closing and repurposing of the Pathfinder gravel pit on the east end.