Candidates for Basalt Town Council are raising the alarm over the municipality’s lack of affordable housing.
During an election forum at the Basalt Regional Library on Monday, the issue continued to come up, even as candidates discussed other topics like economic vitality and community culture.
Hannah Berman, Angele Dupre-Butchart, Kaja L. Rumney, Chris Mullen, and Richard Stevens are running for three open council seats. Incumbent councilor David Knight is running unopposed for town mayor.
Dupre-Butchart lives in Elk Run and currently works from home as the managing director of Dupre Interests. With a 10-year history working in Aspen’s hospitality industry, she said affordable housing would be her top priority if elected.
“If we can't fix housing, we can't fix anything,” Dupre-Butchart said. “In my opinion, our businesses and workers are essential. Services need workers. Our schools need teachers, and so I really feel that concern.”
She recommended lowering zoning barriers and incentivizing homeowners to build additional dwelling units (ADUs) that can be rented to Basalt workers.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recommends communities identify zoning ordinances that limit affordable housing development, such as those that prohibit duplexes and townhomes in single family neighborhoods or ban residential units in commercial districts.
Knight said on Monday that he’d like to consider zoning changes during his next term.
He also promoted land banking, where the town purchases lots for future affordable housing projects.
“We've already done a little bit of that, but where else does it make sense to go and make an investment for the future?” Knight said. “Making sure that we have a place to live for the people that work here, and they can spend their lives here and they have a future.”
Knight has been on the town council since 2020, and has helped negotiate with some developers to increase the percentage of affordable housing units in their new projects.
Berman commended Knight for his work on the Black Mountain housing project, which would add 64 units to the town's housing stock, 50% of which would be deed-restricted. The town only requires developers to sell 20% of new units as deed-restricted.
Berman, who works as the senior sustainability and philanthropy manager for the Aspen Skiing Company, said the town council could work to make that percentage even larger in future projects.
“We're never going to be able to build ourselves out of this problem, nor should we, because we want to protect the open space that makes this [place] so special,” Berman said. “But we have some good examples of how you can eke out more affordable housing. There are programs like ADU incentivization that we can use, as well as deed restriction incentive programs.”
Berman added that she can represent the 39% of people living in Basalt who are renters.
Mullen took some of Berman’s ideas even further, proposing that developers could be required to make 80-90% of their new construction projects into affordable housing.
“We really have a limited number of projects that can be pursued, that are left in the urban growth boundary.”
All of the candidates agreed that increasing the town’s affordable housing stock would help the town’s businesses, who struggle to find employees that aren’t commuting long distances.
Richard Stevens, who’s running for town council, said if he hadn’t acquired a deed-restricted unit when he was younger, he wouldn’t have been able to stay in the Roaring Fork Valley.
“My wife and I were in a lottery with 104 people for 28 units up in Aspen in a location called Lone Pine,” Stevens said. “And we got a pingpong ball pulled out of a fishbowl. And that's why we're still here. So that dream can come true. The community can really benefit from people that are allowed to access those housing units and build those housing units.”
According to the Basalt town clerk, Stevens served as Basalt mayor from 1994-2004 and on town council from 2012-2016. He ran for mayor in 2016 and lost.
Rumney has worked as a nurse but now runs her own business as a birth coach. She said at Monday’s forum that being married to a teacher gives her an intimate understanding of the region’s affordable housing crisis.
She recommends Basalt invest in a diversity of housing options.
“We really need to tackle this issue of affordable housing because without being able to house our town government, our police, we're not going to have a town,” Rumney said. “I think there's also a lot of work being done about this across the country. So we're going to have to look at places that have done this successfully and bring that here to the town of Basalt.”
Courtney Sheeley Wyckoff was running for a Basalt town councilor position, but the town announced on Monday that she has dropped out of the race.
The Basalt Town Council election takes place on April 2.
