LONGMONT, Colo. — A new affordable housing apartment complex opened this month in Longmont with 83 units, and it's already almost fully rented out.
Seeing how quickly the units in the Crisman II Apartments got leased shows just how much affordable housing is needed in the city, said Harold Dominguez, interim executive director for the Longmont Housing Authority (LHA). It's getting more difficult for people to stay living in Longmont as rent prices increase.
“What we’re seeing is that people will still work here, but in order to have a place to live, they’re having to commute farther," Dominguez said.
Depending on a person's income level, rent for a one bedroom apartment at Crisman II ranges from around $821 per month for an individual making about $35,000 a year, to $2,190 per month for those making just under $82,000 a year.
MGL Partners worked with the Longmont Housing Authority to complete this $30.4 million project.
"Boulder County has been economically booming, and communities like this help keep our critical workers in the area and cut down on their commute times," said Danielle Vachon Bell, development director for MGL Partners.
She said they used nine sources of funds to finance the project, including lenders and investors from the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHFA), the Colorado Division of Housing, the City of Longmont and the Longmont Housing Authority.
Crisman II is the first low-income tax credit or affordable housing community that offers housing to people above 60% of AMI, or area median income, Vachon Bell said.
"Those are individuals that depending on how you look at it, and family size, can earn a relatively high wage for this area but are still unable to pay the market rents that exist in the community," Dominguez said.
In general, Dominguez said, rent is going up for a number of reasons including inflation, cost of building and interest rates. That's creating an affordable housing gap in communities like Longmont.
"Our city council has allocated a million dollars a year in the budget to go to affordable housing, and they also began allocating a million dollars per year to go to attainable housing," he said. "We have two housing funds that we utilize to help with these projects."
These new affordable units in Longmont are the first step for the city, as they look to create more affordable and attainable housing in the area, Dominguez said. The goal is to have 5,400 affordable units by 2035. The city said its already about halfway to that goal.
Millions of Americans can't afford their rent, according to the Harvard Joint Center for housing Studies.
Their study released in January, found a record high of 22.4 million renter households or half of renters across the country, were spending more than 30% of the income on rent in 2022, according to The Associated Press.
In Colorado, the Community Economic Defense Project said we're on pace to see up to 70,000 eviction filings this year. There were roughly 55,000 in 2023.
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