The Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority will host two community feedback sessions next week to gather more input on its five-year strategic plan.
It is part of the organization’s efforts to connect more with the community. The sessions, on Tuesday, Feb. 18, and Wednesday, Feb. 19, from 4-6 p.m. and 6-8 p.m. respectively, will allow community members to expand on recent community survey results about the goals of the housing authority.
The five-year strategic plan outlines goals of the APCHA board of directors to ensure the program remains effective. APCHA conducted a survey in December to include community input on the strategic plan, the first time in years it has done such widespread community outreach.
“There’s always more to be done, but I don’t think this has been done before,” said APCHA Executive Director Matthew Gillen during a Wednesday board meeting.
Some of the feedback gathered through the survey included improving transparency between APCHA staff, owners, renters and the public, and maintaining consistent and proactive communication and community outreach. While some of the feedback were suggestions of practices already in place, consultant John Dougherty, principal of Human Services Innovations, told the board it could be beneficial to consistently address what APCHA is working on with the community.
“Some of these are being addressed, they just may not be visible to everyone in the same way or at the same level, so it may not be their personal experience, but there are several items that either have been addressed or are in process,” he said.
There was no single issue that rose above others in the survey results. A majority of the 291 respondents were APCHA owners.
Some respondents suggested focusing on more rentals over ownership units, while others requested a better pathway from renting to owning in the program. Many respondents also requested APCHA focus more on compliance and stricter enforcement.
A majority of respondents commended the purpose of APCHA, some of whom said there is no Aspen without subsidized housing.
“If this is the core of why APCHA exists, then how do we build on and emphasize this in our strategic plan? How do we think about goals and strategies that are going to highlight the success that APCHA does create over holding out what is inevitably, in a very large system, going to be people having bad experiences because it’s a large system trying to meet a lot of needs,” Dougherty said. “So you have to balance both perspectives on that.”
He recommended the board focus on four goals as it determines its five-year plan: compliance, quality, community and leadership. Those goals will help guide specific goals in the next five years, he said.
The board will look to more community feedback during the two listening sessions before reviewing its five-year strategic plan during its board retreat on Feb. 20.
As an industry-leading program, consistently making improvements will not only help APCHA, it will help the communities who look to the program for guidance, board member John Doyle said.
“We are going to continue to be looked at and followed, so we need to do the best job we can, not just for Aspen, but for the rest of the state and the other ski towns,” he said.
