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Danae Banks and her daughter, Lilla, in their new home in Farmington. Because of Durango’s rising rent prices, Banks, a local special-education paraprofessional teacher, was pushed to seek housing elsewhere./ Photo by Jamie Wanzek
Priced out How the local housing crunch is impacting the workforce by Jamie Wanzek
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ver the past year, Danae Banks had been renting a two-bedroom apartment near Fort Lewis College. For $1,260 a month, it was an ideal situation for her and her 1-year-old daughter, Lilla. Banks is a single mom and special-education paraprofessional teacher at Park Elementary. So the place was close to work and fit within her budget. It also provided a safe and comfortable place to live as a new parent. In January, Banks received a mass email from the apartment complex; every tenant’s rent would increase at the end of each lease. At first, it wasn’t clear how much the rent would increase. “I thought maybe $50 or $100,” Banks said. Shortly after, she found ads on Craigslist for her apartment listed at $1,600. The $400 increase in rent was out of the question; she could no longer afford to live there. Banks, 28, quickly noticed a shift in demographics at the complex, too. When she first moved in, the majority of people who lived there were students. “In the end, though, I was surrounded by people who were twice my age. I didn’t see students anymore.” By June, she began hunting for a new place, with her lease ending in mid-August. “I got discouraged pretty quickly,” Banks said. Most two-bedroom options were going for $1,600-$1,700. And with her daughter, she couldn’t consider single bedrooms or roommates. Banks tried everything. Craigslist. Facebook. Zillow. Friends. Friends of friends. “Some people just don’t even respond,” she said. “It’s such a tight market right now.”
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Ultimately, Banks had no choice but to consider Farmington, where she secured a four-bedroom house, costing less than her previous apartment. They have more space now, even a back yard. And the hour commute to Durango for work isn’t terrible. But, she explained, it feels defeating to be forced out of Durango. “This is the community I love,” she said. “This is the community that has stuck by my side. But it feels like I’ve been pushed out.” As the real estate market booms across the Durango area, the scarcity of housing is squeezing the workforce out – making stories like Banks’ increasingly common. And the current conundrum has community members, institutions and local governments casting wide nets, seeking solutions. Housing boom Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Durango has received an inflow of people fleeing cities and relocating to other high-quality-of-life places. As a result, housing prices in Durango have shot up. The median home prices of Durango in-town homes went from $499,000 in 2020 to the current price, $650,000, representing a 30% increase. Out in La Plata County, home sales prices increased 25%, from $422,500 in 2020 to $527,100 in 2021. Since July 2020, the housing inventory for single-family homes in the Durango areas has diminished 70% consistently every month. And as it stands, it would take one month to sell the current inventory of homes in the Durango area, according to data from the Durango Area Association of Realtors. The situation equates to simple supply and demand economics: a bottomed-out inventory means
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higher home and rental prices. “With these kinds of pressures, it creates a housing crisis, literally,” Mike French, executive director of the La Plata County Economic Development Alliance, said. “And with the lack of inventory, we’ve seen a continuous increase in pricing, which is pricing out our essential workforce.” The Alliance works to build the La Plata County economy through public and private partnerships by helping recruit and retain local employees. Although, without affordable housing, its work can’t take root. In fall 2020, the Alliance drafted a three-year strategic plan to ensure economic prosperity following the COVID economy. Its No. 1 priority was workforce housing. “We can no longer separate housing and economic development; they’re in the same conversation,” French said. “This community is going to have a tough time advancing any economic development initiatives without focusing on workforce housing first.” Workforce woes Ben Waddell, an associate professor of sociology at Fort Lewis College, believes when we look to other mountain towns, “the writing is on the wall.” Waddell grew up in Telluride, although at age 8, his family moved to Norwood where housing was more affordable. Through his perspective, he sees it like this: when the essential workforce gets pushed farther into the periphery of a place, it creates a vicious cycle. The labor pool shrinks, which in turn drives up labor prices and ultimately goods and services. “And then that cycle continues to push on society,” Waddell said. 4
