Housing

Housing Series: Fading West

by

THE STRESSES OF TODAY’S HOUSING MARKET are present nationwide, though their seeming stranglehold has become even more apparent in the Upper Ark Valley through the obvious labor crisis numerous industries are experiencing. While many still contemplate how to handle real estate’s skyrocketing prices concurrent with wage battles and rising inflation, Fading West Development is paving …

Read more

Building Earthships

by

IT’S A DELICIOUS, IF TORTUROUS, CYCLE WITH ME: just when I’m on the brink of throwing up my hands and writing all humanity off as a wretched lot of uberconsumerist, plastic-mongering jackasses who deserve to suffocate in the ozone-depleted bed we’ve made for ourselves — lo and behold, some brightly shining soul or earth-conscious initiative …

Read more

You Are the Proton

by

WHEN I WAS EMERGING (RELUCTANTLY) into adulthood, I wondered if I would live long enough to see the boundaries between religion and science come down like the Berlin Wall. I did.  Consider the phenomenon of quantum entanglement: Electrons have a property called “spin”, and it can be “up spin” or “down spin.” When two electrons …

Read more

Salida’s Housing Crunch: A Firsthand Look

by

By Jessica Wierzbinski

It can’t really be that hard to find a place to house your family, right? Not even in a little mountain town that has in recent years become a veritable Mecca for mountain biking, river sporting, alternatively medicating, retiring and any number of other activities folks come here for. Even amid this influx, one can always cover the basics like housing, right?

I can say from personal experience what the recently published housing needs assessment reports in numbers: families have it hard here, and many are being forced to move away.

Beginning in January, 2015, I spent well over a year proactively scouring the housing market in Salida – both the rental and the sale markets – for a way to house myself and my sons. Having lived in our beloved S-Town for over five years, we’d already thrown down roots. Good, deep roots. We didn’t want to leave. But who knew simply staying put would prove so tooth-and-nail difficult? 

Read more

Affordable Housing – Has it Become a Myth?

by

by Daniel Smith It’s a phenomenon affecting communities from Denver to small mountain towns – a lack of affordable housing for lower-income workers often employed in service industries vital to a community’s economic health. Many political candidates are voicing concerns over the need for affordable housing, but assessing and addressing the issue is a lengthy …

Read more

Housing Market

by

by Hal Walter

You see, it’s a little like this,” said my friend Peter. “It’s sort of like a roach motel. It’s easy to get in, but it’s hard to get out.”

Peter was talking about Custer County, specifically real-estate ownership here, where a quick look at the 81252 ZIP code on realtor.com brings up a mind-numbing 227 homes for sale. That’s one home on the market for every 15 residents, and most of us already have homes.

Read more

What’s a lodge?

by

Brief by Allen Best

Housing – November 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

The word “lodge” gets used with some frequency in ski communities, as in “ski lodge.” In such use, it has assumed a generic meaning as a building near ski slopes for use by the general public.

Thus, for lack of a better word, any mountain-side beanery that slings cheeseburgers and fries becomes a “lodge,” a word that in its original connotation implied a place for sleeping.

Read more

Rico tells Telluride to keep its worker bees

by

Brief by Allen Best

Housing – June 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

The twin towns of Telluride and Mountain Village are having a problem finding room for all their employees. They don’t want to use their open space or building sites, which means that they’ve been looking elsewhere — down-valley or even beyond.

Located 25 miles away and across Lizard Head Pass, the tiny town of Rico has served notice that it doesn’t want to be the dumping ground for Telluride’s housing needs, reports the Rico Bugle.

Read more

‘Trailer Trash’ deserves a place in the New West

by

Essay by Dewey Linze

Housing – October 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine

IN THE MID-1930S, when poverty had a stranglehold on the country and sliced bread was a nickel a loaf, we lived in a trailer park, or trailer court, and everyone outside of the encampment called us “trailer trash.”

It was insulting, but this was the way the “haves” set themselves apart from the “have nots,” or the trailer people. To the cops and welfare and truant officers, the trailer court was where all evil spawned and spread.

Read more