Aspen Times correspondent John Colson reported Nov. 3 that the Garfield County Commissioners have agreed to contribute $960,000 to an effort to build subsidized teacher housing for the Roaring Fork School District.

Colson wrote that the housing would be built on school district land adjacent to former school buildings in Carbondale.
Excerpts from Colson’s report follow:

“We have been desperate for housing at the school district for a long time,” said Roaring Fork School District Superintendent Judy Haptonstall, speaking at Monday’s county commissioners meeting. Haptonstall said the district’s high teacher turnover rate is tied to the fact that teachers cannot afford to buy homes in Basalt, Carbondale and Glenwood, and are unwilling to live long term in apartments and condominiums.

The district has been working on building housing in Carbondale for several years, as part of a complicated land swap that left the town with the old Carbondale Elementary School itself, but the school district holding onto the land between and around CES and the historic Carbondale Union School building at the corner of Third and Sopris.

It is on that land, which includes an existing athletic field, the school’s bus maintenance facility for Carbondale and a parking lot, that the district hopes to build 120 units, of which 96 are to be subsidized so that teachers and other workers can buy them.

The county agreed to the district’s proposal to kick in $10,000 per affordable unit, for a total of $960,000 spread over three phases that are expected to be built in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

County staff reported the county has a $1.5 million housing fund that originally was to be used on housing projects in Glenwood Springs and then in Rifle, but those projects fell through.