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Habitat for Humanity of the Roaring Fork Valley President and CEO Gail Schwartz announced this month that she’ll be stepping down in April and a nationwide search committee is interviewing candidates to take over the position.
The former state senator has led the local Habitat organization since early 2020.
During the last 5 years, Schwartz oversaw Habitat’s ReStore in Glenwood Springs, along with projects that have provided homes for about 70 families, including the Basalt Vista affordable housing development.
Schwartz plans to continue as a consultant on several of the organization’s ongoing projects including the L3 condominium conversion in Glenwood Springs, the Wapiti Commons housing development in Rifle, and the construction of a modular housing production and workforce training facility in Rifle.
Aspen Public Radio and Aspen Journalism reporter Eleanor Bennett spoke with Schwartz on Jan. 10 about what she’s learned from her decades of work tackling the valley’s affordable housing challenges.
The conversation below has been edited for clarity and length.
Eleanor Bennett: You started at Habitat about five years ago, right before the pandemic hit, but you've been working on affordable housing and community planning for decades now. How have you seen the housing crisis evolve in our valley over the decades?
Gail Schwartz: Well, it's so interesting because originally my career was planning resort communities all over North America, and I really saw that we need to make a priority out of the workforce housing. So I became director of development for the Aspen/Pitkin County Housing Authority. Back in the early days, we were writing codes, we were identifying the land, working with governments, working with developers, and during that four-year period at the housing authority, we were able to bring on 800 units. What's changed is we haven't continued to expand or diversify. For example, are we housing families? Are we just housing small households? And then we have the retirement piece as well. How do we create some mobility, especially with the folks that were teaching our children, etc, decades ago? How do we keep them part of the community?
Bennett: I know one of your mantras, and Habitat’s mantras, has been, “How can we help people live and work in the same community and not be commuting hours in some cases?” Is that something we can actually achieve?
Schwartz: This economy has changed so radically since I came over 50 years ago. We were little hamlets in these valleys going from Aspen to Parachute, and you know, there was very little interaction; it was “a long distance call” from Aspen to Parachute, but now we are one economy. The housing problem is everyone's problem. If you need services, if you need health care, you need education, you need construction, etc, then the fundamental solution to that is housing. So what can we do? We can diversify not just our housing sector but our economies, and that is why Habitat and my work to date has been so committed to building 20 homes for people that live and work in Rifle. How can we support that community and that school district and the hospital and those services? And we are also in the process of converting an 88-unit apartment building in Glenwood Springs that's a bed base for much of our workforce, and seeing the opportunity to buy that means we can now stabilize 88 small families and they will stay. And then secondly, we are in the process of building a modular home production plant. Within the next couple of years, there will be 64 jobs, 200 modules coming out, and we'll be training 100 students. How can we invest in those communities? That only helps serve this economy from Aspen to Parachute, even as far as Grand Junction and Fruita for that matter, because our workforce is so integrated, and our economies are so integrated.
Bennett: And in terms of the modular home production facility, I want to hone in on that a little bit because it’s so unique. Why is this project so important when it comes to building more affordable housing?
Schwartz: It's very interesting, because off-site construction is so fundamental to the future of construction, it is the one industry that has not diversified, that has not progressed, and the cost of labor and materials only go up. We build for around $300 a square foot, but we sell for $200 a square foot. The philanthropic dollars are not there to support that gap going forward. So either we are out of business doing one house at a time with volunteers, or we really get serious about our commitment and our mission and we create our own off-site construction. So our board and our development committee, we've been working on a concept of moving our team of 14 that's currently building with panelized systems in Basalt and Rifle to cut costs and make it more efficient.
Bennett: You’ve worked on so many projects over the last five years at Habitat, what are you most proud of?
Schwartz: Well, I'm just proud of the fact that we have a committed, hard working board and 50 staff members who are passionate and come to work every day with a mission, and then working with families. Habitat doesn't give homes away; each adult contributes 250 hours of what we call “sweat equity.” And wow, that is a mechanism that helps build a real community. We're seeing this at Basalt Vista where we have half Roaring Fork School District dedicated homes and half with Pitkin County. Residents are coming together there, managing their neighborhood with an HOA, and the same thing in Rifle. Some people say, “Well, we're not interested in investing in housing.” If you're interested in investing in mental health and the well-being of children, the most stabilizing factor is housing. So to carry that message out and be a spokesperson in the community and be demonstrating the outcomes of working with so many families and supporting so many children and businesses and economies, that's rewarding to me.
Bennett: Gail, can you share with us some of the stories about the families that have found housing through Habitat?
Schwartz: Many stories come to mind, but in particular, a young woman. We interview the families, they apply to us, and we ask if they want to be a partner with Habitat: Do they want to give 250 hours of sweat equity? And does this make sense for them? We want to set families up for success and so we go and visit families. And we were visiting a young mother with two children, a four-year-old and 11-year-old, and we went to find her home, only to realize that for $850 a month — she works at a local bank in customer service — she and her two children are living in a windowless, single-car garage with a sink and a toilet in Rifle. Now that young woman with those two lovely children, she's a homeowner of a three-bedroom townhouse that's minutes from her work.
Bennett: Looking forward to your future with Habitat and also the organization's future, there are rumors that you've been trying to step down for a while and obviously you leave big shoes to fill, but why do you think it's so hard to find somebody to lead Habitat?
Schwartz: Well, I'm grateful for your recognition. We're in a unique environment that has unique constraints on our housing. We have stepped up, I think, in a very unique way compared to other Habitats in the nation; we're a development company and we're a nonprofit. We're working with families to help them live affordably and understand what ownership means, so we're supporting our families. We also have 50 employees and we're soon going to have well over 100 employees. So it is a big operation, and I guess that's where we’re looking for different expertise than a person that's running a nonprofit, because we're also acting like a business. We want to be responsible in our financials and our fiduciary role. And it’s big, but I know there are a lot of people out there that can do this job better than I can. My goal is to have a transition, but have continuity and stay close to wrapping up these big projects.
Bennett: And do you have any parting words of advice for our community as we face these housing challenges and affordability challenges into the future?
Schwartz: It's one family at a time. When you go to a restaurant, ask that person how they got there, ask what their story is. Try to connect with people that mean a lot to us, you know, if you're in the ER, etc, try to connect with the people working there, because it's really heartfelt work. How can we define and build community for everyone, with public policy, with philanthropic investment, and with public private partnerships. If you work in the Roaring Fork Valley, you probably can't live there. How do we embrace communities all the way through western Garfield County? And personally I think we have enough second homes, but we don't have enough homes to take care of the people that really drive our economy. We're not going to chew up our open space, and we're not going to chew up our backcountry, but we are going to rely on our communities to integrate people into them to actually have quality of life and be able to live there.
