Steven and Ashley Miller have lived in Aspen, Colorado, for more than 10 years. Steven works at a local school, and Ashley is a physical therapist.
When their twin boys, now 4 1/2, were born, they wanted to set down roots in Aspen. But buying a home in an expensive resort town is often a privilege available to a select few.
Affordable housing programs that sell homes below market rate for lower-income homebuyers can help — Aspen has been operating one for decades. In 2021, the Millers won a lottery to buy an affordable condo through Aspen’s housing authority.
“If we had just had to figure out the rental game and bounced around as costs went up, I think it would have pushed us out,” Steven Miller said.
They paid $262,000 in 2021 for their three-bedroom unit. The median price of a condo that size at the time was more than $3 million.
While the Millers were thrilled to receive one of the town’s highly sought-after affordable units, many of these condos and single-family homes are aging and in need of repairs.
When they moved in, the Millers found lots of problems that the home inspection hadn’t revealed, including water damage and black mold in the floors, cabinets and drywall of one bathroom.
The repair bill was more than $11,000, and after just buying a place, money was tight.
“I didn’t have the cash, period, to do any of these projects outright,” Miller said.
There’s not much incentive for homeowners who buy these affordable units to invest in repairs since future sale prices are capped to keep these homes affordable from one owner to the next.
Recognizing this trend, Aspen tried something new — it started offering these homeowners up to $10,000 in matching funds for essential repairs. The Millers got $8,052 for their bathroom repairs and paid about $3,500 out of pocket to make their home safe and healthy for their kids.
Most affordable housing nonprofits or programs don’t have the resources to tackle these repairs, said Todd Swanstrom, a professor at the University of Missouri-Saint Louis who co-wrote a recent report on nationwide housing deterioration.
“There are a lot of people who are in homes that are really bad for their health,” Swanstrom said.
Necessary repairs are sometimes invisible, he added.
If you drive by a deteriorating home, you may see a broken window or a collapsing porch, he said. “But you don’t see the child inside the home suffering from asthma attacks because of mold. And you don’t see the elderly couple on the verge of heatstroke because they don’t have adequate air conditioning.”
Aspen’s new program is trying to help, but it does have limits.
First, homeowners must pay for repair costs up front before they’re refunded. They could apply for a home repair loan, but because the value of their home is lower than it would be on the open market, they’d qualify for less money.
Some homeowners try to save up and pay for the maintenance themselves, including Ryland and Kim French, who moved into their Aspen condo in 2020. Their unit was built in the 1980s and had some problems.
“We needed to address mold issues,” Ryland French said. “We spent a couple of thousand dollars on insulating shades, so it’s more energy efficient and not so loud, and we can keep the cold out in winter and the heat out in summer.”
Because their home is part of the local affordable housing stock, it’s not clear if all of those upgrades will be factored into the home price when they eventually sell, and with a kid on the way, they’re starting to question how much they want to continue improving the place.
“Before we start putting even more money in, we want to be in a three-bedroom that we can be in for the next 20 years,” Ryland French said. In order to afford their next home in Aspen, they’ll have to purchase it through the same local housing authority, and who knows how many repairs that place might need.
