Answers to important questions regarding housing supply in Mesa County

I was recently asked a question at the Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce candidate forum. The question was as follows; “ Housing is of utmost importance to our local workforce. What policies, partnerships, or method are you considering to create more housing supply in Mesa County."

I am formulating a plan to resolve this very complex issue, I have recently met with Diane Schwenke and Katie Dais with GJARA. I will meet with Shawnia Grieger later this month.  

Here is a response from GJARA and we will continue to update you when more data becomes available:

• This is a well-put question, because it correctly identifies the need for more supply as the largest driver of our community’s housing issues. 

• There’s a lot of talk about housing prices, affordable vs attainable vs workforce housing, but at the core of the whole issue is a major shortage of inventory. Any meaningful solutions must address the situation as such. 

• There are several things we should be doing to move the needle:

1. Partnerships: We need to get past the outdated notion that housing is a question of the community (or the government) vs big bad developers and the real estate industry. We have a major housing shortage and its time to admit it. while we have a role in assuring good growth, the only people who can help ensure our kids can afford to own homes here when they grow up are the people who add inventory. We should be partnering not just with our traditional business organizations such as the chamber, but also with the realtors, homebuilders, and contractors associations, (as well as non-profits such as housing resources) to better take advantage of their experience and expertise so that we can understand how to overcome barriers and obstacles to success. 

2. Policies: We should first and foremost create a regulatory and policy environment conducive to the addition of housing inventory, and while we by no means need to let our development policies be a total free-for-all, we need to understand that the more we attempt to prescribe a particular level of amenities or impose technical hurdles and requirements, the less that will get built and the higher we’ll raise the barrier to entry for homeownership in the valley. In particular:

   1. Maintain adherence to the county’s pro-housing planning and zoning philosophy. Frankly, the county maintains a lighter regulatory touch than the city right now, and the result is that housing can be built far more easily outside city limits…whereas it is more expensive to build and harder to break ground in the city because of their planning philosophy.

   2. Permitting requirements, reviews, approvals, and timelines: Focus on highly-efficient and timely permitting processes. This is one of the largest single drivers of cost and inventory deficits. 

   3. Infrastructure: Our infrastructure commitments and resource allocation decisions should prioritize needs and projects which allow us to add housing supply (such as the 29rd project). At the same time, we should be careful not impose infrastructure requirements that will suppress housing or add to the price of what gets built, such as the kinds of traffic/multimodal infrastructure mandates we’ve seen add as much as $30k to the cost of a home in the city of GJ.