The Forest Service is trying to build affordable housing to keep staff in Colorado

The U.S. Forest Service is in charge of millions of acres in Colorado’s mountains, but their workers can hardly afford to live there. Now, the service is trying to build more affordable staff housing.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The U.S. Forest Service is in charge of millions of acres in Colorado’s mountains, but their staff can hardly afford to live there anymore. That’s the impetus for a first-in-the-nation housing development on Forest Service land high in the ski resort communities of the Rockies. Colorado Public Radio’s Andrew Kenney reports.

ANDREW KENNEY, BYLINE: Evergreen forests streaked with golden aspen groves cling to the steep slopes around the Rocky Mountain town of Dillon. But Forest Service supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams is visiting one of his agency’s more mundane properties. It’s a depot filled with shipping containers for equipment as well as old sheds and decades-old wooden cabins nestled in the trees. The views of the high country are great, but the place is kind of falling apart.

SCOTT FITZWILLIAMS: It is not the Taj Mahal. It is not the Regis, that’s for sure. These are pretty primitive, and the standard, we need to improve it. We’re asking a lot for folks to live in this kind of conditions at 9,000 feet elevation in the middle of winters.

KENNEY: It symbolizes a big problem for Fitzwilliams. Facing the choice of exorbitant rent or beat-up housing in these mountain towns, or sometimes both, a lot of job candidates are starting to turn down coveted posts with the Forest Service.

FITZWILLIAMS: People are declining permanent job offers at about 56%. So more than half of the time we offer a job, people are saying, would love to, but I can’t afford it. I need housing.

KENNEY: Fitzwilliams says the service doesn’t have the money to solve that problem, but they’ve got something else – lots of land. The Forest Service is about to sign a lease that will transform this hilltop property. It’s a collaboration between…