Older adults, off-gridders, and social network housing: Crestone

Affordable Housing in Crestone and the San Luis Valley

Welcome back to Mountain Town Frown, an occasional newsletter on affordable housing in Colorado mountain communities. 

In each edition, we take a look at one Colorado mountain community’s approach to affordable housing. Last week, it was Steamboat Springs in ski country. This week, we head to the much less-affluent San Luis Valley, to look at affordable housing in Crestone.

Each edition concludes with a roundup of affordable housing news across Colorado. Today, I’ll also review author Ted Conover’s book “Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America's Edge,” about homesteading and the quest for authentic independence in the San Luis Valley

In Steamboat Springs, you’ll find a plethora of luxury restaurants, boutique gift shops, and bougie slope-side accommodations. You won’t in Crestone.

Crestone is much smaller and has branded itself as a small-town spiritual mecca for those seeking an escape from the mainstream.

👵 Affordable housing for an aging population

The average Crestone resident is 69 and they need a place to live, oftentimes on a fixed income.  

Kirsten Schreiber is the chair of Crestone Peaks Community Housing, a local nonprofit helping low-income elders, as she called them, find affordable housing in rural Saguache County, home to the town of Crestone.

Schreiber said there is a large population of older people, many women, living on social security income that need housing in or near Crestone. 

These are folks who have been here a long time, consider this rural southwest corner of Colorado home, and want to continue living independently.

“Many elders want to stay here even though there are not medical facilities available close by, they still want to be here. This is their community. This is where people care for each other,” Schreiber said in an interview with Mountain Town Frown last week.

San Luis Valley Health is the nearest hospital to Crestone. It is roughly 50 miles away in Alamosa. 

Schrieber said she knows older people in the area who are couch-surfing. Crestone is a hard place to grow old. Winters are extremely cold and all of Saguache County is authentically rural America. The quest for basic resources often requires a big trip in the car, according to Schreiber. 

The Baca Grande subdivision lies just south of Crestone’s town boundary. On about 16 square miles of land, 1,236 people reside in the Baca Grande. Crestone’s population is only about 150, according to Schreiber. 

According to Point 2, an online real estate marketplace, Crestone’s area median income is $8,750 a year. For reference, Steamboat’s area median income is just above $100,000 a year. 

The Baca Grande subdivision is more affluent than the town of Crestone, but that doesn’t make it all that much easier of a place to age, according to Schreiber.

Schreiber is a caregiver who understands what happens to people when they grow old in the isolated Baca Grande subdivision. The remoteness of the area makes aging very difficult, Schreiber said.

Crestone Peak Community Housing is working to address the affordable housing issue for seniors. They have raised $1.4 million on their own and paired the money with funding from the state and county to fund the Living Wisdom Village 55-plus affordable housing project, according to Schreiber.

“We got substantial donations from people living here,” Schreiber said. Small donations from folks across the San Luis Valley and from people who’d come to visit added up, and made Living Wisdom possible. 

Schreiber is proud of the fundraising efforts taken on by Crestone Peaks Community Housing, saying, “That is astounding for this small place.”

The Living Wisdom Village project was the dream of a group of older adults in the Crestone area about 15 years ago. It has taken patience and persistence to make this project a reality, according to Schreiber.

Only a small amount of patience is still required. Crestone Peaks Community Housing hopes to sign a contract with a builder in the coming weeks. The builder then has to seek a permit from the Crestone Board of Trustees. Once Crestone Peaks Community Housing finalizes a contract with a builder and acquires a permit from the town, they will break ground on the project.

The Living Wisdom Village project is within Crestone’s town limits. The project will be within walking distance of Crestone’s stores and restaurants, which is critically important for Schreiber.

In a close-quarters community, like Living Wisdom, older adults can experience a sense of community and they can help one another in the effort to remain self-sufficient and independent, according to Schrieber.

🧑‍🔧 Family and workforce housing

Crestone’s older population lends itself to a somewhat unique affordable housing issue among Colorado mountain towns, but Crestone also has affordable housing issues which are more familiar to other Colorado mountain communities, namely housing for service workers and their families.

“Crestone definitely has an overall need for housing, for all age groups,” Evan Samora, Saguache County Housing Authority’s housing director, said in an interview with Mountain Town Frown last week.

The Saguache County Housing Authority was under contract to purchase a lot for an affordable housing development project for all ages near the Living Wisdom Village lot. The Saguache County Housing Authority backed out because the town of Crestone couldn’t provide reliable water services for the lot.

The project would have included the construction of three fourplexes, for a total of 12 homes, as well as an office/laundry room, according to reporting from the local nonprofit paper, the Crestone Eagle.

Crestone has a water storage infrastructure problem, according to Samora, and the housing authority, which has very limited resources wasn’t willing to take on such an uncertain project, Samora said.

Samora himself represents the reality of rural southwestern Colorado. He is the sole employee for the Saguache County Housing Authority.

When asked what the housing authority would do if they had unlimited resources, Samora said:

That’s a fantasy I’ve had numerous times. We would put a housing development in Saguache and Moffat … [we would] give the town of Crestone a couple million dollars to fix their water issue and then put a housing development in Crestone.

The Saguache County Housing Authority doesn’t have unlimited resources and so Samora has to prioritize projects that are relatively inexpensive and feel feasible. Right now, feasible inexpensive projects don’t exist in Crestone, in part because of water issues.

The Saguache County Housing Authority is pursuing a project on a plot of land, already owned by the housing authority in the town of Saguache.

According to reporting from the Eagle, social networking has long been the solution for people looking for affordable housing in Crestone. People find a room with a friend or neighbor.

There is not an apartment complex in Crestone and someone is always looking for housing, according to Samora. Social network housing has emerged, while residents don’t have affordable housing options provided by the town or the housing authority.

🏠 Social Network Housing in Crestone

Elizabeth Crosby, who asked not to be identified by her real name for personal privacy reasons, took advantage of social network housing in Crestone. She left her home in Oregon with her daughter and headed to Crestone, where she briefly stayed at Colorado College’s Baca Campus.

In an interview, when asked why she chose Crestone, Elizabeth said:

We’ve heard about some of its really amazing spiritual centers and the history of the land … especially with the native tribes and the underground aqua crystalfer riverbed. [We thought,] well if we’re going to be in Colorado, if we’re gonna be in the mountains, [we want] to be part of a town that is super spiritually active and showing kindness and support to all of its community members.

Elizabeth traveled to Crestone six years prior and had connections in the area. When Elizabeth decided she wanted to stay in Crestone, her community of friends helped her find a place to stay.

A friend published a post on one of the multiple Facebook pages for the Crestone community, and people spread the word that Elizabeth was looking for a place. Initially, Elizabeth didn’t have any leads, and she prepared to leave Crestone.

On her way out of town, Elizabeth got a call from the friend of the owner of the place she’s now staying. The owner was willing to do something short-term and then transition into a longer term arrangement in the future. Elizabeth got to go see the studio apartment that day with her daughter and moved in days later.

In Crestone, housing providers can be willing to accommodate people operating on tight budgets. Partial trade happens in communities like Crestone, according to Elizabeth. Folks are willing to accept activities, odd jobs, or items of value when tenants can make arrangements with landlords, and the property can benefit from their skill set.

Elizabeth is traveling on medical leave and she said she has had to be frugal. She’s not currently engaged in partial trade, but can be if her situation changes.

📚 A review of ‘Cheap Land Colorado: Off-Gridders at America’s Edge’ 

In “Cheap Land Colorado,” author Ted Conover, a Denver-raised journalist and journalism professor at NYU, writes about an overlooked part of our state — the San Luis Valley. It’s a story about the desire for independence, the freedom of land ownership, and the difficulties of setting out on one’s own in one of the most physically brutal places to live in our country. Ultimately, it’s a story about housing. 

In the 1970s, a development company set out to build a massive subdivision on the “flats” of the San Luis Valley, the high-elevation valley between Southern Colorado’s Sangre de Christo and San Juan mountain ranges. They failed. Developers created a grid of dirt roads to eventually serve the subdivision and tried to garner attention for the project. They never built any structures and abandoned the idea. They left behind an enormous plot of cheap land. The land didn’t have utilities like sewer and water, but it was land and could be purchased for next to nothing, so people bought it.

Folks who no longer felt welcome in mainstream American society had the chance to leave it. They did just that. They bought land in the valley, moved trailers onto their lots, and attempted to tough it out. Conover brings his readers along on his journey to the San Luis Valley. He sets up shop in his trailer, which he parks on the lot of a friendly family, who can use the extra rental income. He volunteers with a group called La Puente, trying to help people experiencing homelessness in the San Luis Valley, especially during the frigidly cold winter months. 

The San Luis Valley has attracted a fascinating blend of people. Conover encounters families trying to raise and homeschool their children without the influences of the modern world, people attempting to strike it rich by growing marijuana or cooking meth free from government oversight, folks who are living independently with crippling addiction and mental illness, and gay and transgender people seeking an escape from the judgment of the rest of the world. None of them are doing all that well, and Conover tries to help provide them with necessities for survival, like firewood, jackets, and food. 

These people came to the valley to get away, yet they’ve developed a strange semi-dysfunctional social network. In the book, characters defend their properties and marijuana grows with firearms. They enter into conflicts and make enemies. Sometimes, though, people in the valley get together with their neighbors. They smoke weed or drink and share the unique experience of being on America’s edge. 

In an interview with Mountain Town Frown last week, Conover told me he was surprised a place like the flats existed, in a state he felt he understood.

According to Conover, the San Luis Valley is culturally different from other Colorado mountain towns shaped by the affluence associated with ski culture. Many Colorado mountain towns were first mining communities and then evolved into meccas for skiing and ski tourism. The San Luis Valley never was a mining community and never developed a strong ski culture. It has been an agricultural community throughout. 

Conover said the San Luis Valley is more culturally similar to New Mexico than it is to other Colorado mountain communities. 

“A lot of people who live off-grid in the valley are not necessarily interested in being approached for an interview by a journalist,” Conover said.

But getting to know and trying to understand people very different from Conover, an NYU journalism professor, was a part of Conover’s purpose when he set out to write “Cheap Land Colorado.” Conover said:

If a person like me who had the benefit of education and the things cities have to offer, if I could establish channels of communication with other kinds of people, people who haven't had my privileges … this is an opportunity to build a bridge.

Conover set out to write Cheap Land Colorado to understand America’s fringe and more specifically their housing situation. They happen to be living in Colorado, very close to Crestone. Their housing situation could be better, but they are here because they are free. They’ve chosen independence over comfort.

💨 The Roundup

❌ Proposition HH failed. The Colorado Sun’s Jesse Paul and Brian Eason reported property taxes due this coming April will increase by 40% without legislative or local government intervention. “For Colorado renters, it means the uncertainty of how much their rent will go up as landlords pass on their costs to them,” Democratic Gov. Jared Polis said Thursday when announcing a special session to address property taxes in Colorado.

Watch Gov. Polis announce a special session to address property taxes, explain the impact of Prop. HH’s failure for renters, and wear safety goggles to smash a little box with a baseball bat to announce the special session here: Colorado Gov. Polis calls special session on property taxes.

• The Other Side:

Marianne Goodland reported for Colorado Politics that renters would have lost thousands of dollars in TABOR refunds over the next decade had Prop. HH passed, according to a recent study from the Common Sense Institute.

🗳️ According to reporting from Dylan Anderson for the Yampa Valley Bugle, Steamboat Springs ballot measure 2I passed with 55% of the vote. The measure allocates 75% of funding generated through short-term rental taxes for affordable housing units in Brown Ranch and sets short-term rental taxes at 9% for the next 20 years.

📜 Winter Park voters decided to increase the lodging tax for hotels from 1% to 3% to fund the town’s affordable housing goals, according to reporting from Emily Gutierrez for Sky Hi News. Winter Park Mayor Nick Kutrumbos, in a statement to Sky Hi News said:

Providing community housing that adds quality of life for the local workforce is imperative to the ongoing health of our community. Increasing community housing also allows both our locals residents and visitors additional opportunities to access services in the region and get out to enjoy world-class outdoor recreation.

🖊️ Zoe Goldstein reported for Vail Daily that Avon voters chose to retain excess 2023 lodging tax revenue to support the local workforce. The ballot measure allows the county to retain revenues derived from a 2% excise tax on short-term rentals to fund childcare programs and affordable housing opportunities.

🧑‍🚒 Voters in Basalt chose to increase property taxes to improve the Basalt Fire Department’s facilities and fund employee housing projects for Basalt firefighters, according to reporting from Josie Taris for the Aspen Times.

About me:

My name is Charley Sutherland. I am political science major and journalism minor at Colorado College. I grew up in Denver and love visiting Colorado’s mountain communities. I love to ski, hike, bike, and run in the mountains, but I also just love being in mountain towns and learning about what’s going on.

I’m a freelance reporter for the Sky Hi News, where I cover local government meetings for the neighboring towns of Winter Park and Fraser. I’ve covered all sort of things, but affordable housing always feels like the most important. I’m eager to get involved in the world of journalism following graduation, and if you have any opportunities that you think I might be interested in, you can reach me at c_sutherland@coloradocollege.edu or 303-908-2602.