City leaders talking solutions on lack of affordable housing in Colorado Springs

It's no secret housing is expensive in Colorado Springs.

From being unable to stop renting to being house poor to being unable to have a home at all, the effect can be felt at all socioeconomic levels.

City leaders know this a major problem and are trying to find a solution.

"We are a fast-growing western city. So we have tens of thousands of people moving here, and our infrastructure is not keeping up with it," said John Weiss with non-profit Together For Colorado Springs. "We need to get ahead of the curve."

Leaders say this conundrum is one reason homelessness especially is increasing in Colorado Springs.

"People are working so hard to create some shelter in transitional housing for homeless people ... once people leave transitional housing, where do they go?" asked Bart Mitchell, CEO of Community Builders.

Wednesday, leaders held a public forum to find some solutions to the lack of affordable housing in Colorado Springs.

Some ideas being considered include incentives for developers so they'd be more inclined to build smaller, more affordable housing intermixed with bigger homes; and transforming a 5 1/2-acre lot into a tiny home village.

"There are folks living on it now -- campers, folks without a roof over their heads -- and that just really highlights the problem in Colorado Springs," said Steve Wood of non-profit Concrete Couch.

The open space sits southeast of downtown near South Royer Street and East Las Vegas Street and has ample potential for a neighborhood of tiny homes, Wood said, though he cautioned it wasn't as simple as just going in there and building.

"There are lots of legal steps that we need to go through, re-zoning, planning."

According to Mitchell, community leaders were also looking utilizing that space to help people learn job skills.

"What people call the quarry site is one that a foundation owns and they are open to really thoughtful ideas about whether this could be a place that provides warehouse-type space for people to develop skills working with equipment, carpentry and the like, also maybe a place to build some tiny houses.”

Weiss said the housing problem needed a multi-faceted solution.

"See what we can learn from other cities on how to create more housing. Not just low-income housing, but how do we create a coordinating intelligent housing program and what can we learn from other cities? ... We have to make it Colorado Springs-focused. It's not cookie-cutter, but we can learn from other places."

Along with increased homelessness, Weiss said too-expensive housing could eventually stagnate Colorado Springs' economy.

"People are going to keep moving here until there’s no reason to move here anymore, and we don’t want that to happen. We want to create good quality housing, and it’s important not just for people, but it’s important for our economic development.”

In a poll on our 11 News Facebook page, 93 percent of responders agreed there is a housing shortage in Colorado Springs.

Nearly 700 responded to the poll.