By Annmarie Jensen
In the 2018 Survey of Boulder Citizens, one of the biggest challenges to our community was affordability. Only 9 percent rated the cost of living in Boulder as excellent or good. Only 8 percent gave the current housing opportunities positive ratings. The variety of housing options was rated positively by fewer than 20 percent.
Yet as Celestial Seasonings, a longtime Boulder employer, seeks to provide workforce housing, including 25 percent affordable housing, the outcry is as loud as if a toxic waste dump was being proposed. I have lived in Boulder County for more than 30 years, and while affordable housing consistently ranks as a significant problem, there has been frequent and loud public opposition to creating affordable housing.
A recent Washington Post opinion piece, signed by 27 mayors including Boulder’s Mayor Sam Weaver, stated that Black and Hispanic families are twice as likely to rent and Black families are 77 percent more likely to have severe rent burdens.
African Americans are also disproportionately impacted by homelessness. In the letter, the mayors call on Congress to fund investment to dismantle the housing-related inequities. They say we must dismantle the systems that keep disparities locked in place. Our nation’s housing system — and the programs and policies that perpetuate racial disparities in housing — is the best place to start.
Boulder has an opportunity to do some of that dismantling right now. The City of Boulder website is full of plans about how to address the problem of affordable housing, but each time an affordable housing development is proposed the opposition says: “I support affordable housing, just not here. Not next to these animals, or next to that park, or near me.”
The council must do more than plan. Now is the time to be part of the solution to dismantling racial and economic inequity.
We must include the human species as worthy of environmental protection. The human species need shelter to survive. According to Boulder Housing Partners, there are nearly 19,000 workers in Boulder (city) alone in retail, entertainment, educational services, and service jobs in which they earn average wages of approximately $15,000 to $25,000 per year.
These people are doubling up, tripling up, and in some cases living in cars or on the streets. The Boulder Regional Housing Plan shows that in 2015 we had 2,349 households paying more than 30 percent of their income in rent. That number should have increased by another 240 or so households since then.
The children in these households have no place to do homework or can’t sleep because their space is too crowded. Children in these conditions do poorly in school when they are frequently moving from one relative to another with no place to call home, perpetuating the cycle of poverty and economic inequality.
If we want this to change, we have to act. The last time I checked, there were about 400 Boulder Valley School District students who were experiencing homelessness. Many of these students have parents who work, yet they still are priced out of the housing market.
This project is part of the solution. While neighbors complain about density, traffic, and home values, the truth is that quality affordable housing throughout the metro area and in the country has raised property values and improved quality of life.
The Celestial Seasonings site makes sense, and if traffic mitigation is needed, let’s work on that. Let’s support a better job-to-housing balance, and start to change decades of culture that have kept economically and racially disadvantaged from living in our community.
Let’s walk the talk of supporting racial and economic diversity. If we value the lives of the hundreds of children who have nowhere safe to live, I encourage the council to listen to reasonable mitigation arguments, but to reject the arguments that prairie dogs are more important than people.
For too long, we have found excuses not to build affordable housing. Solutions must be found, and we cannot jeopardize the future of our children, who, after all, are part of the ecosystem we live in, too. We must start now. I encourage Mayor Weaver and the rest of council to follow the lead of the 27 mayors’ letter and to support the Celestial Seasonings housing project.
Annmarie Jensen is the director of the East County Housing Opportunity Coalition and has lived in Boulder County since 1988, including in Boulder, Louisville, and currently Lafayette.
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