How to Make Housing Affordable in Boulder County

“It’s not that people aren’t speaking, but it’s that louder voices and more influential voices are being heard.”-Leonard May, Boulder City Planning Board member.

Affordable housing is hard to come by in Boulder, Denver, and the entire Front Range and there are a lot of conversations happening around how to making housing more affordable but many people say there is little action happening. Maeve Conran speaks with Boulder City Planning Board member Leonard May and former City Council candidate, Cliff Smedley, Co-Organizer of the Affordable Housing Advisory Panel Discussion.

The Affordable Housing Advisory Panel Discussion happens this Saturday 2/25 from 2-4 pm at the Alfalfa’s Community Room in Louisville. More information on the Facebook Event Page. 

This event is being sponsored by three regional City Council candidates that lost by thin margins – Cliff Smedley in Lafayette, Angie Layton in Louisville, and Daniel Ziskin in Boulder.

Panelists will be:

Leonard May – Boulder City Planning Board member and former City Council candidate.  His vision is described in an editorial entitled “Boulder’s Growth Should Meet Community Values”

Sandy Stewart – Very knowledgeable regarding senior housing situation.

Ian Swallow – Boulder County Housing Authority Planner II is the development project manager for the Kestrel Affordable Housing project in Louisville, and is also working on Affordable Housing policy throughout the County.

Shae A. Frydenlund – PhD Candidate in Geography, University of Colorado Boulder Co-Founder and Lead Graduate Student Researcher, Boulder Affordable Housing Research Initiative Executive Board Member, Boulder Cooperative Housing Association (BOCHA) Research focuses on the relationship between labor and housing, access to and experiences of affordable housing in Boulder, debates surrounding cooperative housing. Doctoral Dissertation research examines Burmese Muslim refugee experiences of work, housing, and home in resettlement in Denver.

Darren O’Connor – Knowledgeable regarding foreclosures and homelessness, and how programs like cash-in-lieu (paying to NOT build affordable units into new housing developments) end up paying for services but not necessarily housing. He can also speak to the tiny house movement as an alternative to skyrocketing home prices and the reasons we aren’t seeing more of them.

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