{"id":2455608,"date":"2020-03-10T20:48:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-11T02:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/facts-and-fixes-to-aspen-housing\/"},"modified":"2020-03-11T07:12:31","modified_gmt":"2020-03-11T13:12:31","slug":"facts-and-fixes-to-aspen-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/facts-and-fixes-to-aspen-housing\/","title":{"rendered":"Facts and fixes to Aspen housing"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

FACTS<\/p>\n

\u2022 Aspen has one of the highest costs of living in the USA, yet most local business pay only average or below wages. Aspen Skiing Co., whose owners own 10% of one of the world\u2019s largest defense contractors, just raised their minimum wage to $15 an hour \u2014 about the same as the average minimum wage in many much poorer communities. Shameful!<\/p>\n

\u2022 Aspen commercial tenants pay some of the highest rents per square foot in the USA. To save money on wages and be more profitable, many of those tenants underpay their employees so they can then qualify for lower category affordable housing. Many local businesses \u2014 often global corporations \u2014 are gaming Aspen\u2019s affordable-housing system at the taxpayers\u2019 expense.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Taxpayers are the losers and wealthy landlords are usually the winners because there are no limits on how much rent they can charge. This is wrong.<\/p>\n

FIXES<\/p>\n

\u2022 Establish an appropriate minimum livable wage for the Aspen workforce so that they too can rent decent housing and some of the nicer things in life. It should be no less than $20 an our.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Require all registered Aspen businesses to make public current employee wage scales. This will help understand who may be gaming the system and help City Council and Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority better understand the salaries of the Aspen workforce so they can make more informed decisions about pricing affordable-housing rentals and sales, and decisions regarding supply and demand.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Consider rent control for commercial real estate to spread the responsibility for affordable housing beyond citizen taxpayers and citizen landlords. New York City is looking hard at this type of rent control.<\/p>\n

\u2022 And if you are really serious about providing more affordable housing, consider a vacancy tax on certain properties.<\/p>\n

Jane Johansen<\/p>\n

Basalt<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FACTS \u2022 Aspen has one of the highest costs of living in the USA, yet most local business pay only average or below wages. Aspen Skiing Co., whose owners own 10% of one of the world\u2019s largest defense contractors, just raised their minimum wage to $15 an hour \u2014 about the same as the average […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2455608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 11:34:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2455608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2455638,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455608\/revisions\/2455638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2455608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2455608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2455608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}