Two Colorado communities offer lessons learned in their efforts to improve affordable housing.  Yes, it takes money, but leadership and a forward-thinking vision for community character are essential. Read more here.

Whitefish still has a strong local community, but is wanting to keep it that way. Recent trends show increasing second home ownership, decreasing local occupancy of homes, declining affordability and rising unfilled jobs. Hoping to stop these trends, the City is in the process of exploring solutions. Beginning with a menu of over thirty options that many other resort communities have used, the community is adding their own ideas. This

After completing a housing needs assessment, identifying housing market rends and the lack of available and affordable homes for locals, WSW Consulting with Rees Consulting and Williford, LLC, are helping the City of Whitefish create a plan for what to do next.  The process will occur over a 6-month period, engaging the community and 20-member task force, to identify housing goals, strategies and a timeline for addressing housing needs. The

Top of the Rockies, a regional, multi-platform contest for reporters and news organizations in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, awarded the series a 1st place award for General Reporting and a 2nd place award for Investigative/Enterprise reporting.  The series educated residents about housing issues, helping to secure the passage of a sales tax dedicated for housing by voters in the November 2016 election.  Voters approved, by better than 57 percent,

The Huron Landing 26-unit workforce apartment complex is set to open this summer. It will provide two-bedroom units for tenants who work a minimum of 30 hours per week within the county.  Units will be priced below market, but higher than what federally-funding housing projects allow, filling a needed gap for renters earning up to about 100% AMI.  Each apartment has a storage unit and, importantly, tenants can have up to

A new Aspen Skiing Co./KSL Capital Partners alliance purchased Mammoth Mountain ski area, June Mountain and others to add 6,000 acres of California ski terrain to their portfolio. This was announced just days after their purchase of Intrawest Resort Holdings’ six ski areas. Aspen Ski Co. has long operated the four ski resorts in and near the City of Aspen/Snowmass Village/Pitkin County – an area that has retained a strong

We are excited that the city of Whitefish is using the housing needs assessment WSW Consulting, Inc., Rees Consulting, Inc., and Williford LLC completed at the end of 2016 to support several zoning amendments to help produce needed housing for residents and the workforce.

Following up on the completion of the Tahoe-Truckee Regional Housing Needs Assessment in 2016, Truckee is launching a series of workshops to get the community involved in its efforts to find solutions to the regional housing crisis. The first meeting was held on January 31st, at which some of the core housing problems were presented. The public participated in several interactive workstations to help prioritize and expand upon various options that could

Several housing studies have shed light on the workforce housing problems in the Lake Tahoe Basin, both among its communities and the region as a whole. Local residents, experts and agencies have been meeting to discuss the issues. A bi-state housing task force organized by El Dorado County Supervisor Sue Novasel had their first meeting in November 2016. “The hope is that we can end up with a very relevant and timely type

The City of Boulder and Grounded Solutions Network have collaborated over the past few years to learn about the challenges facing mobile home communities, and they’ve explored ways that communities can preserve these communities.  WSW Consulting conducted a research on mobile home infrastructure challenges in a national scan of policies, practices and strategies that can be read here.