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Employee housing owner keeps home, and another condo

Janet Urquhart

A longtime local who owns employee housing but buys and sells other residential real estate won’t be kicked out of his home.The Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Board voted 3-1 Wednesday to allow retired attorney Doug Allen to remain in his deed-restricted unit at Lacet Lane, though he owns another condo in Aspen and has bought and sold various properties over the years.The decision came on the heels of an enforcement hearing earlier this month, when Allen testified that he had been upfront with the housing office about his real estate dealings when he applied to purchase a deed-restricted lot on Lacet Lane.”Now that I’m semi-retired, it’s not right to kick me out of my home,” Allen said Wednesday night.Typically, the rules governing employee housing don’t permit owners to possess other residential property in the Roaring Fork drainage. In Allen’s case, however, two sets of deed restrictions were recorded on his property; one explicitly allows buying and selling of other residences while the other is silent on the matter.In addition, the documents Allen said he submitted to the housing office when he bought his lot in 1996 are missing from his file. He said those papers show he was forthright about his real estate acquisitions.”Since there’s no proof to the contrary that he wasn’t, then I think we have to find on his behalf,” housing board member Ron Erickson said.”I do want to make sure it never happens again,” board member Marcia Goshorn said.Complaints that owners in employee housing also own other residences are constantly leveled against the housing program, she noted. “What’s sad is this is kind of the poster child in town for those who think the housing program should be blown out of the water,” she said.Janet Urquhart’s e-mail address is janet@aspentimes.com

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