Questions have been raised about Aspen’s affordable housing authority. Aspen Public Radio spoke with legal experts about whether it could be vulnerable to lawsuits. They say probably not, contradicting APCHA’s former director.
The Board of Directors for the Aspen Pitkin County Housing Authority, or APCHA, used to make a lot more decisions. After various agreements with the City of Aspen, the City now has most of that decision making power. Former housing director Tom McCabe is especially concerned about problems that could cause.
“If questions or challenges concerning these circumstances land in a court, anything can happen, including really bad things,” said McCabe at a City Council meeting Monday night. “There is no way to tell how much legal time and money would be expended trying to untangle all of this, if not fixed before it gets to a court.”
“I strongly disagree with most of the assertions made by Mr. McCabe,” said Aspen City Attorney Jim True after McCabe’s comments. “The housing authority that was created between the city and county is perfectly legal, has been operating in a legal capacity. Mr. McCabe is confusing numerous legal issues in trying to create an issue that just does not exist.”
In a 2012 review of the arrangement, an attorney came to the conclusion that, while not illegal, APCHA’s being a mostly advisory board can be confusing, and raises questions about the organization truly being a multi-jurisdictional housing authority. Plus, the authority’s status would be, quote “an issue if the APCHA Board were ever to decide to ask voters to issue bonds or levy taxes.”
“I agree with the City Attorney Jim True that Mr. McCabe is conflating and confusing different issues,” says Aspen attorney Bart Johnson, who specializes in land use, real estate, and municipal law. “He’s bringing in a lot of concepts of private corporate law that don’t have a lot of bearing on the situation.”
As far as Johnson can tell, it’s fine that APCHA doesn’t have as much power as it did before. Since it was created by the City of ASpen and Pitkin County, either government can decide how much power APCHA has. Law professor Richard Collins agrees. He teaches at the CU Boulder. Collins says the current arrangement shouldn’t be a problem, unless something goes wrong, like if someone who owns a deed restricted property and isn’t following the rules.
“What if the housing authority then pops in and tries to enforce the rules, and then that person says you don’t have any right to do that anymore I think the housing authority still has enough power in that context to enforce its rules.”
Where it gets tricky is if the City of Aspen decided to enforce housing rules on its own, and APCHA isn’t. “So that somebody on behalf of the housing authority claims, hey, wait a minute, City of Aspen, you can’t do that,” says Collins. “That’s when you have a court case.”
At Monday’s City Council meeting, it wasn’t clear whether members will take up the relationship between the City of Aspen and the local housing authority in the coming months.
