For years Forrest City and the City and Stapleton Development Corporation (SDC) have struggled with meeting original plans and projections when it came to having affordable housing in Stapleton, and therefore, living up to its goals in becoming a diverse, urban community. Forrest City has tried several options, but none have moved the needle much when it came to hitting its goals of 10% affordable housing.
“It has been really frustrating, because we feel like we are making the efforts,” said Forrest City President Phil Dargossi. “On the other hand, we do make a lot more money on these expensive houses, so I guess that is nice. Plus, we hear a lot of people complain about not having enough affordable housing, but when the plan is to build it near their homes, those complaints double. So, for us, it is a double-edged sword.”
Running out of options, Dargossi and his team came up with a great idea. “We always have FOX News on in our building to keep us informed of the latest breaking news,” said Dargossi. “We happened to hear a story about the President being able to increase our debt ceiling by simply issuing a trillion dollar bill. Really stupid, right? Well, it got us to thinking, ‘we are working so hard to get affordable housing here, why not re-define what affordable housing is?’”
After meeting with the city of Denver and the SDC, the plan was approved to raise the definition of affordable housing to $368,000 and below. This instantly moved affordable housing in Stapleton from 5.6% to 12.6%. “The one thing that may be affected is friendships in neighborhoods,” said Forrest City spokesperson Janelle Ayers. “You might suddenly find yourself friends with someone that lives in affordable housing, and it may strain the relationship.”
Long-time proponents of affordable housing in Stapleton are not satisfied. “This is really not what we were out to accomplish,” said Ryan Fisher. “Everything is not about the numbers, but this is really embarrassing what they did. Plus, there are real estate implications of people now having to say they live in an area with a lot of affordable homes, which is really not the case.”
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