Aspen School District needs about 100 employee housing units to meet incoming demand

The Aspen School District identified a need for nearly 100 employee housing units in the next 15 years to adequately meet staff demand.

Fifty-two percent of district staff expressed interest in employee housing in a 2024 survey, bringing the immediate demand to 35 units. But the school district expects to lose around 62 employees who own market-rate housing through attrition in the next 15 years. It will need to find a way to provide housing for future hires given the increased cost of living in Aspen, according to Joe Waneka, school district director of facilities and housing. 

“The whole caveat is I need capital to transact,” Waneka told The Aspen Times on Friday.

With only around $2 million left from a $114 million 2020 district bond, much of which was spent on housing, the school district may seek another bond measure for the upcoming November election. 

Waneka said they may pursue a bond measure that includes necessary funds for both housing as well as campus renovations and maintenance. He presented $72.55 million and $53.2 million campus renovation funding budgets to the school board on March 5, but the board shot down about $18 million of the budget, he said. The board hasn’t yet directed him on specifics for the housing portion of the bond.

He believes the board will decide if and how to pursue the bond in the next couple months, whether that means including a housing budget with campus renovations or pursuing them separately. He doesn’t expect the bond or bonds to collectively exceed $100 million.

“It’s up to them to pick what they’ll want to do,” he said. 

Should the measure (or measures) pass, he expects to have funds available by May or June of 2026. 

To fill the housing shortfall, he said his goal is to make available four to five units per year, spending $600,000 to $800,000 per bedroom.

“In a perfect world, I would get them all at once,” he said. “That’s not realistic.”

The district currently houses approximately 36% to 40% of its teachers, administrators, and hard-to-fill positions (like lead mechanics), according to Waneka. It owns 98 units and sublets 4. 

Potential options going forward include building up to 12 units on district-owned land at the West Ranch site in Woody Creek and up to 12 units at the district-owned site at Stott’s Mill in Basalt, according to a discussion between him and the board on Wednesday. 

They may also partner with Snowmass to acquire 10 units at the Snowmass Draw Site project, a 60-plus unit project to be built uphill and adjacent to Town Hall, as well as a 60- to 70-unit Aspen development.

The board recently mandated that they strive to buy employee units in just Aspen or Snowmass going forward to keep teachers close to campus. The Basalt and Woody Creek options are outliers as the district already owns the land, according to Waneka.

“I think we have a lot of interesting possible pathways, and we definitely have an identified need,” said Aspen School Board Vice President Sarah Daniels in the Wednesday meeting.  “And I think that all of that together means we need to ask for money, and we need to increase our housing stock.”

Skyler Stark-Ragsdale can be reached at 970-429-9152 or email him at sstark-ragsdale@aspentimes.com.