Opinion: Timothy Thomas: Renters and homeowners in Boulder: A tale of two cities
In the public discourse over affordable housing in Boulder, discussions tend to revolve around issues of housing density, job-housing imbalance, increased traffic, the number of students at the University of Colorado Boulder, flood protection and lately, adequate supplies of water for our growing population.
While all of these points are worthy of public debate, we seem to be ignoring one elephant in the room: Approximately half of residents in Boulder are renters. As a result, Boulderites exist in two different worlds.
Boulder homeowners have achieved the American Dream. If you are a homeowner, the value of your home has (pun intended) gone through the roof. If you have a mortgage, you can deduct your interest payments on your federal taxes. You can also borrow against the increased equity in your home to finance college tuition for your children, invest in the stock market or make renovations and additions to your home that will make it even more valuable. All these options lead to greater financial stability for your family.
Renters face a very different situation. Some of us — a few thousand — are fortunate enough to find housing within the city’s affordable rental housing system. We live in developments built and/or operated by Boulder Housing Partners (the City of Boulder’s Housing Authority), Thistle Communities or private landlords who keep rents low enough for occupants to use the few Federal Section 8 housing assistance vouchers available.
These vouchers allow recipients to pay the federally recognized affordable housing rate of approximately 30% of their gross income on their rents. In order to live in these housing developments, though, families must income qualify as well as face many other restrictions.
If you are not lucky enough to live in an affordable housing complex, you must look for private rental housing. These renters must pay whatever the market will bear.
In my almost 30 years of living in Boulder, I have yet to hear of any renter being offered a lease longer than a year. I once asked my landlord if he would give me a two-year lease and he laughed at me.
Most landlords do not have to renew leases, and unlike essentially fixed rate mortgage payments, they often raise the rent from year to year. As result, many renters move numerous times during their Boulder residence.
Couple this with the added burdens that most local and federal regulations contribute to the arduous rental process, and you begin to understand the problems renters face.
For example, some neighborhood zoning does not allow more than three unrelated people to live together in a rental property, even though the home may have four or five bedrooms. No such restriction exists for a family. Hopefully this restriction will be eliminated by the current Boulder City Council.
There are affordable home purchasing opportunities available from the city and Boulder County, including down payment assistance. Unfortunately, deed restrictions on resale prices force those who wish to sell these homes in the future to forfeit most of the gains in appreciation that market rate homeowners have at their disposal.
As a result, they are in the same position as renters in terms of exclusion from building intergenerational wealth though home ownership.
There are vast differences in the financial security felt by homeowners and renters. Many low-income renters are struggling paycheck to paycheck just to survive. This is not to say that homeowners don’t feel the current pain of inflationary prices. But, renters have nothing to look forward to at the end of the year as far as building wealth through homeownership.
It is not my intention to be divisive. I realize than an increase in the amount of affordable housing limits the appreciation on existing homes. But, as a renter speaking to my home-owning neighbors, we are all Boulder residents and we must find common ground if our community is to thrive.
As always, I remain optimistic and open to incorporating diverse perspectives. But, as Princeton professor George A. Miller said, “where you stand” on an issue often “depends on where you sit”. When it comes to affordable housing in Boulder, renters and homeowners clearly sit in two different worlds.
Timothy Thomas is a former member of the Boulder County Democrats Executive Committee and a former member of the CU Environmental Center’s Environmental Justice Steering Committee.
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