Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority takes steps toward adopting strategic plan in 2025
Five-year proposal will address housing issues like right sizing, capital reserves
Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times
As 2025 approaches, the Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority will begin taking steps toward establishing a strategic plan to address local housing issues, including right sizing and capital reserves.
“This is the time to begin planning for the next five years’ strategic plan for APCHA,” said John Dougherty, Community Office for Resource Efficiency chief executive officer. Dougherty led Wednesday evening’s strategic plan presentation to the APCHA board.
With Dougherty’s help, APCHA board members pinpointed their top priority: to set strategic direction on behalf of the community, and how to get there.
To get there, the board will engage with the community and gather feedback to help set the plan for the next five years. Feedback will be gathered through a series of surveys distributed by APCHA staff. Survey questions will be created based on what board members want to find out regarding the affordable housing scene in the Roaring Fork Valley.
Dougherty will then analyze this data, present it to board members, and together, they will begin creating the strategic plan.
“You all are going to serve as the windows on behalf of the community in your role as board members,” he said. “But we are going to bring as much information through that window as possible so you can really understand what the community is saying is important to them from their perspective.”
Dougherty also said this work will provide board members an opportunity at board meetings and work sessions to look back and ask themselves “are we doing what we said we were going to do?”
Based on the answer to this question, the board can then make adjustments to the plan to ensure goals and objectives are continuing to be met.
Working with Dougherty 1.5 years ago, APCHA board and staff took their own survey and then, during a facilitated work session, put together a base framework to help pinpoint the purpose of the board and staff when they come together, as well as how they are advancing the goal of APCHA.
“Those were operational priorities, essentially those things that the staff said, ‘this is where we’re going to be focusing our energy,” Dougherty said. “My question is: has this been done?”
APCHA board member Carson Schmitz said that he feels confident that what the board committed to 18 months ago feels consistent with where they are in terms of the strategic plan.
“I think we’ve made some progress on right sizing, but we still have work to do,” he said. “This was 18 months ago, but I feel like the problems get worse. It’s hard to move the needle.”
John Ward, another APCHA board member, agreed, saying they need to incentivize people to right size.
“The people that are in a multi-bedroom unit that they don’t necessarily need anymore, downsize to two bedrooms versus four or three, that’s probably something that we have to continue to work on,” he said.
Ward also said that the board “absolutely have to continue to work on” capital reserves and “figure out a way to maintain the stock.”
The tentative timeline for adopting the strategic plan is:
- Establish and launch a strategic planning committee in December 2024.
- Review and adopt survey framework in December 2024.
- Survey, data analysis, and reporting in December 2024.
- Survey, data analysis, and reporting again in January 2025.
- Review and refine plan framework in Jan. and February 2025.
- Staff team and board of directors work session in February 2025.
- Committee finalizes for adoption in February and March 2025.
- Strategic plan board adoption in March 2025.
Board member Ward Hauenstein requested the strategic plan be completed by the spring 2025 election since new faces will be on the board, and it would be difficult to get them up to speed. Hauenstein is term limited and will be leaving the board, as well as Aspen City Council.
“I think that is our goal to make sure that this is the body that gets us through this next phase, especially since you’ve been looking at all the information for the past several years that would inform that direction,” Dougherty said.
During Wednesday’s meeting, APCHA Executive Director Matthew Gillen moved to begin gathering staff and board members, including himself, for the committee in order to get surveys out as soon as possible.
The next APCHA meeting is scheduled for Dec. 11.
In other news
APCHA is implementing a new requirement for applicant tax transcripts.
As of Nov. 4, applicants must obtain their official tax transcripts directly from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) through a third-party service at their own cost, according to an Oct. 30 news release.
The service costs $25, but if applicants go to the APCHA office and access their tax transcripts in person, it is free.
This requirement, approved by the APCHA board of directors on Aug. 21, is meant to increase transparency and reduce fraud during the application process for housing in the area, the news release states.
It also mandates that tax transcripts must be from the most recent year filed to ensure the accuracy of financial information submitted to APCHA. An IRS Form 4056-T must be completed through a private vendor, which will securely transmit the tax transcripts directly to the housing authority.
“The board felt this additional step was necessary to uphold the integrity of our affordable housing program,” Gillen states in the news release. “By requiring applicants to use third-party vendors to access their IRS transcripts, we can better ensure the accuracy of the income and work verification process, helping us prevent fraud and maintain fairness across all applications.”
Regan Mertz can be reached at 970-429-9153 or rmertz@aspentimes.com.
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