Peak to Peak Human Services, Housing Sub-committee Meeting

13 April 2016

Present: Dawn Baumhover, Jeff Fruth, Kristi Venditti, Hansen Wendlandt

We opened our meeting at 6pm, at the Nederland Community Church.

Thanks to Tebo Properties for supporting our housing work, with a grant to help neighbors whose maintenance and sustainability problems fall through the cracks!

Thanks to United Way for supporting our housing work, by agreeing to host our information online, so that we can develop a web presence to the community!

Congratulations to Kristi Venditti, our new Mountain Resource Liaison! She is learning about all sorts of human service agencies and processes, and we were able to discuss some of the housing programs that families use in town. She notes that many people in the mountains still do not know what EFAA is. One suggestion would be for the next edition of the Human Services ‘Where to Get Help’ guide, to open the first page/s to an extensive description of what EFAA can do for folks.

We discussed the vast need for housing in the community and area, some of the more significant options to address that (Town Shop site, Kayla Evans’ project, etc), and how we can support and encourage other appropriate development. Hansen will keep meeting with folks, to try opening up some possibilities for the county Housing and Human Services to be involved, especially in response to their plea that if we identify good land, they would love to build. There are, of course, many hurdles to any potential development, but the need continues to grow, and we may have a more amenable Board of Trustees. We can also help by taking part in the P2P Human Services meeting with the County Commissioners, on 28 June.

We also discussed the issue of housing for town employees, and particularly for school staff. BVSD has apparently entertained developing some teacher and staff housing in Gunbarrel, and there have been discussions about BVSD supporting a Colorado University Building Workshop, where CU-Denver architecture students would design a 2- or 3-unit building specifically for teachers and school support staff. You can learn more about their whole program at http://coloradobuildingworkshop.com. Hansen will follow up, to try to chat with someone at the district level.

We are glad that the Nederland Planning Commission is working on new standards for ‘density’ zoning, that may allow for smaller private developments. That may come to the Board of Trustees in May. We would like them to also consider whether or how the town might be more open to tiny/smaller homes and less traditional housing models.

Thursdays are not the best time to meet for everyone, so for the next meeting (in June), I will poll folks as to what time might be better.