The Stapleton Development Plan created a vision for Stapleton to be an integrated community and the affordable housing plan ordinance agreed to by Forest City provides a blueprint for achieving housing diversity consistent with that vision. However, construction to date has been so far off of the goals of the affordable housing plan that it may be time to ask: Is it even possible for Stapleton to fulfill its vision of an integrated community?
As we discussed in our last post, the City of Denver entered into a specific agreement with Stapleton's master developer, Forest City to achieve specific goals for ensuring a diversity of housing options in 80238. The following graph shows the specific targets for housing in Stapleton outlined in that plan:
However, as of the end of 2014 the actual distribution looks like this:
It is pretty clear that Stapleton is well behind its projected goals for rental housing and affordable housing in the affordable housing plan. When you combine the current distribution of housing with the fact that over 60% of new construction of for sale units are for homes over $400,000, it is easy to see why Stapleton is in the top 1% of zipcodes in the nation in terms of education and median income.
The market rate for sale vs. affordable and market rate rental housing distribution is important because it provides middle income and lower income families the opportunity to live in Stapleton.
So why hasn't SDC and Forest City not kept up with the goals? It's not because of a lack of demand for rental housing. The current rental vacancy rate in Denver is at near historic lows. According to the Denver Post, Denver has a rental vacancy rate of only 3.9%. Consequently, rents are shooting up with the average monthly rent at $1145.00. At that rate, a household with an annual income of $50,000 per year will need to dedicate somewhere between 35% and 40% of their take home pay to housing.
These numbers beg a pretty serious question - Can Stapleton even achieve the goals for rental housing and affordable housing? One thing is for sure - if Stapleton is to reach the goals, new construction is going to have to change drastically.
According to The Big Picture document on StapletonDenver.com the overall plan is for a grand total of 12,000 homes - both for sale and rental in Stapleton. With a little over 7,000 homes completed, Stapleton is about 60% of the way to reaching their target.
If Stapleton is to achieve the goals of the Affordable Housing Plan - future construction will need to look something like this:
56% of new construction has to be rental units and 33% market rate for sale if Stapleton is to achieve the housing diversity goals. Given current trends, it is hard to believe that this is going to happen.
There is clearly money to be made building apartments and it goes without saying that there is plenty of demand for affordable for sale and affordable rental. So the question is, why hasn't SDC and Forest City worked to meet this demand? It may be time to ask if SDC and Forest City can achieve the vision for integrated housing in the Stapleton Development Plan or is it time to declare failure and consider a new goal?
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