The Gunnison Valley Regional Housing Authority’s deed restriction program has been described as a “black box:” a complex system that has not been consistently monitored. But a new software platform, coming online this year, is expected to create a culture of compliance for homeowners — preserving affordable housing for the workforce long-term.
More than 500 properties across Gunnison County are deed restricted. These legal documents outline what a homeowner can and cannot do with a property. In the valley, deed restrictions, which do not expire and bind existing and future homeowners, are primarily used to create and preserve affordable housing stock.
Most filter potential buyers according to their income at the time of an application, and place an appreciation cap on the home. In most cases, buyers are required to live and work within the county. In the case of an accessory dwelling unit or guest house, some restrictions control who the owner may rent the space out to, and for how long.
But each deed restriction is different, and can come with a tangle of legal documents that are sometimes not well understood by property owners, or even the realtors tasked with reselling the homes. And while the Gunnison Valley has continued to add to its portfolio of deed-restricted properties — one answer to the ongoing housing shortage — what happens after the paperwork is finished is not always clear.
Due to the Housing Authority’s limited capacity, monitoring has fallen by the wayside. Without it, housing managers fear the integrity of the deed-restriction program, which has cost millions to put into place, will fall apart.
Most of the compliance issues involve how a unit is occupied, rather than how they are being resold. It’s possible that some property owners use their deed-restricted guest houses as vacation rentals, for example. Others may sit empty and are used as a workspace when the homeowner visits the valley for a month or two in the summer. Some property owners may leave town for the majority of the year, and treat their property like a second home.
But with no clear system in place to check if homeowners are following the rules, it’s nearly impossible to know how each deed-restricted property is being used.
“Compliance is also something that we should look at in terms of preservation,” said Erin Ganser, housing director for the Town of Crested Butte. “If these units aren't monitored, they can be serving people that they weren't intended to be serving, used in ways they weren't intended to be used or they can be lost to the free market.”
But this dysfunctional system is about to change. Earlier this year, the Housing Authority began launching a new software platform called “Quickbase.” The platform will store the valley’s deed restriction data in one central place and help automate routine compliance checks, reducing the organization's administrative workload.
In August, the Housing Authority staff gave its board a review of the shortcomings and successes of its “ownership program.” Run by Lauren Woodyard, it manages the entire life cycle of a deed-restricted home, from construction and buyer lotteries to resale and homebuyer education.
Woodyard said she believed the Housing Authority makes the most impact at the time of the initial purchase of a deed-restricted home. If the organization and the buyer establish a good relationship in the beginning, the homeowner tends to understand the program and works harder to abide by the rules of the deed restriction.
But after the sale is complete, deed-restriction monitoring and subsequent enforcement are where the Housing Authority is falling short, she said. During the meeting, Woodyard gave this part of the program a 5-10% “effectiveness” rating, mostly due to the shortage of manpower.
“If I had all the time in the world to be able to do everything at an A-level, it would be about 80 hours a week … it's all differently managed, so having good deed restrictions is kind of impossible right now,” she told the board.
As the number of deed-restricted properties in Gunnison and Crested Butte have grown, the number of people managing them has not. Currently, Woodyard tracks the more than 500 deed restrictions across the valley. This number is only expected to rise.
Routine compliance has taken different forms over the years. In the past, housing managers relied on “snail mail,” and sent out a postcard asking homeowners in Crested Butte to check a box that stated they were in compliance with their deed restriction. In 2021 a larger, valleywide effort was attempted, which required all of the supporting documents to be notarized. But this method still relies heavily on an honor system.
The Town of Crested Butte, home to the highest concentration of deed-restricted properties in the valley, turned monitoring over to the Housing Authority roughly five years ago. Now, as the managing organization, the Housing Authority is tasked with finding the rule breakers. But the organization has since issued only one full round of compliance checks.
“At least we're making contact,” Ganser told the Times. “But you don't really know if somebody is willing to flout the rules, or doesn’t know how to interpret their own rules. They are probably also likely to sign the postcard and send it back to you.”
To add to the confusion, each deed restriction has its own set of guidelines. While a deed restriction will set a buyer’s income range, a maximum sales price and an appreciation cap, the associated guidelines can more easily be updated over time to reflect changes within the community or the wider housing industry. The city and county use the same guidelines as the Housing Authority. Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte have their own.
The Housing Authority does not have clear expectations on who’s responsible for enforcing deed restrictions, said Executive Director Melissa LaMonica. At the meeting, board members were hesitant to assume the role — a responsibility it believed is better left to the legal teams of the jurisdictions it serves. In certain cases, violations can result in the forced resale of a unit to a qualified buyer. If the owner disagrees with the allegations, the cases can eventually end up in court.
The Housing Authority would have to pay for legal resources if these situations arose. And in the end, what’s at stake is an individual's housing security.
“This is a political hand grenade, and it could put us into a very bad situation,” said board secretary Chris Haver.
So far, the Housing Authority has learned about deed-restriction violations through word of mouth, Woodyard told the Times. During their first monitoring cycle, most of the responses she received were compliant, but 44% of property owners didn’t respond. The owners were already in violation by not reporting, but at the time, the Housing Authority didn’t have the bandwidth to follow up.
To date, no one has ever collected the valley’s deed-restriction data in one place. This spring, Woodyard began building an online database that will store records of each of the valley’s deed restrictions. From there, the Housing Authority will be able to more easily request documentation that proves homeowners and tenants meeting their guidelines.
The Town of Crested Butte paid $56,000 for the Quickbase program, under the agreement that the Housing Authority would focus its energy in town first. As the Housing Authority rolls out compliance schedules for the remainder of the valley, other local governments will be eventually expected to split the cost of managing the system — proportional to the amount of deed-restricted properties present in each area.
In 2025, the Housing Authority plans to run a compliance cycle for deed-restricted homes in Crested Butte. The initial instructions will be sent out through the mail. Afterward, compliance forms will be sent over email, unless otherwise requested. The intention is to monitor on an annual basis moving forward. The Housing Authority has plans to hire another full-time employee to help Woodyard manage the program as early as this year.
The longevity of the growing deed-restriction can be harmed when it’s easy to bend the rules. To make the new program work, jurisdictions must also be willing to enforce deed restrictions, Ganser said. This comes with its own set of challenges in a small town when it can involve exchanges between neighbors, and exceptions to the rules.
“That's a really messy place … but we have to be willing to make those hard decisions to protect the integrity of the program, and also be willing to identify where flexibility is appropriate,” she said.
(Bella Biondini can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or bella@gunnisontimes.com.)
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