At this month’s luncheon, we had a great discussion about housing affordability challenges. One thing you’ll hear me often say is that big challenges take multiple solutions. Housing is one of those things, and solutions range from building more supply to adding density to key corridors to public and private partnerships. Pat Matheson with Mountainlands Community Housing Trust spoke to our members about some of the programs offered here in the valley to provide homes for essential workers. I would encourage everyone to look at the Housing Trust’s website to learn more about these programs. This is just one potential remedy to a very large challenge. Other affordability programs include self-help homes, down payment assistance programs, and one that I recently learned about is the Rocky Mountain Homes Fund.

I am probably oversimplifying it, but the program essentially helps home buyers purchase homes at market-rate with the fund providing substantial assistance with the intent to share the equity when the buyer sells the home. I truly believe as we have more programs with a variety of assistance options we’ll be able to help more people where they are instead of a “one-size-fits-all” approach. There may come a day in the future when our chamber will want to enter into a public/private partnership to help create another route to housing affordability. If that day comes, we’ll do what our chamber does best - work together, create meaningful solutions, and help others.