The 40-member Deliberation and Stewardship Team, a key component of the broader initiative to reevaluate the viability of Brown Ranch, gathered for its third monthly meeting on Wednesday to weigh whether the long-stalled affordable housing project still has a future.

In March 2024, Steamboat voters rejected the Brown Ranch annexation proposal required to move the project forward. The defeat paused development and prompted city leaders and housing advocates to seek new ways to engage the public and find consensus on the feasibility of Brown Ranch, prompting creation of the DST as well as a project collaboration team bridging the city and the Yampa Valley Housing Authority. 

From the outset, the atmosphere in the DST’s third meeting reflected both the urgency of the housing crisis and the complexity of finding a solution that the community could support. 

Kale McMonagle, collaboration director for The Civic Canopy, the community-based nonprofit hired to co-facilitate DST meetings, opened by summarizing the themes from the Brown Ranch community workshop on May 8. 

“Participants, by and large, agreed that in Brown Ranch, there’s an opportunity to provide quality affordable housing that helps to address a growing economic disparity to ensure current and future generations can call this place home,” said McMonagle.

“We started to get into disagreement when it came to specific policy or design choices that could be enacted to achieve our goal … and who Brown Ranch should be for, and a variety of different identity groups that could find a home there,” she added.

McMonagle mentioned the recent development of a “developability inquiry team” to have in-depth, virtual discussions on some of the more complex topics within the Brown Ranch debate — most notably on a soils report commissioned by the housing authority and completed by Northwest Colorado Consultants Inc. in January 2024 that had not previously been shared with the YVHA board or the broader public.

Bill Fulton, founder and co-executive director of The Civic Canopy, then took a “temperature check” of the DST members, precipitating a 30-minute discussion on trust, communication and transparency. 

Several attendees voiced concerns about the process itself, referring to a lack of streamlined correspondence, as well as confusion as to how the DST works in tandem with the community workshops and the joint YVHA-city council Project Collaboration Team. 

There were also repeated comments about YVHA’s role in the process, with some participants feeling that the presence of YVHA staff or board members at the DST meetings implied a lack of trust in the DST, and that the outcome of Brown Ranch is “predetermined.”

Halie Cunningham, one of the younger DST members and program manager of the Routt County Wildfire Mitigation Council, spoke about “internal trust” issues between members of the DST itself and the challenge of keeping track of the various committees and workshops that are part of the Brown Ranch process.

The heart of the meeting was an hour-long presentation by Economic and Planning Systems, a Denver-based consulting firm hired to provide an objective analysis of the Routt County housing market.

Brian Duffany, principal at EPS, painted a stark picture of the current housing situation. According to their preliminary findings, home prices in Routt County have increased 20% per year since 2019. By the end of last year, the median home price in the county was about $1.15 million, putting homeownership out of reach for most local residents.

Duffany said that to put those numbers in perspective, 1 square foot of living area is equivalent to $849 in Steamboat.

Rents for new or renovated two-bedroom apartments in the county averaged $2,900 per month, said Duffany, and more than half of local renters are considered “cost-burdened,” paying more than 30% of their income on housing.

Duffany explained that since the pandemic, the area has seen a “tremendous tide of wealth and vacation homes” as remote workers and retirees have moved in, driving up prices and reducing availability of housing for local workers.

The EPS presentation also noted that the local population is aging and becoming more affluent, with a growing share of income coming from investments and retirement rather than wages, exacerbating the affordability gap.

The mismatch between incomes and housing prices is so severe that three-quarters of homes are only affordable to those earning 200% of AMI, or about $200,000 per year.

After the presentation, participants broke into small groups to discuss the findings and their implications for the Brown Ranch project.

“We need housing for normal people,” said Cunningham.

Others, like Charlie MacArthur, president at Native Excavating Inc., urged the group to “look wider,” suggesting that Brown Ranch should not be the only solution and that regional approaches should also be considered.

The DST then delved into case studies from three other Colorado communities: Miller Ranch in Edwards, completed in 2006; the Haymeadow development in Eagle County, under construction; and Pikes Peak Park in Pueblo West, also under construction. 

Facilitators discussed key lessons from these developments, their physical and financial constraints, and how they balanced affordability, feasibility and a sense of place. The three projects offered a range of models, from shared equity and phased infrastructure investments to unbundled parking and electrification. 

Following the review of the case studies, the group participated in a small-group “sticky note” exercise to capture ideas from the review that might be applicable to the future of Brown Ranch.

Some DST members questioned the relevance of these examples to Steamboat Springs, however, arguing that the local context is unique and requires tailored solutions. One participant dismissed the case studies outright and said they “don’t apply” to Steamboat, expressing a lack of interest in lessons from other communities.

Andrew Beckler, founder of Steamboat-based ski-pole company Grass Sticks, asked the consultants whether any of the three projects from the case studies had required a public vote, to which the consultants responded that they “didn’t think so” — a nod to the failed annexation effort that looms large in the community’s memory.

The results of the full housing demand and affordability study are expected to be available by July 8, and additional community workshops are planned to broaden participation and gather more input.

Throughout the meeting, the tension between the need for urgent action and the desire for a more inclusive, transparent process was evident. 

Beckler expressed frustration with the pace and direction of the DST, questioning whether the process was making meaningful progress. Facilitator Clark Anderson of Community Builders pushed back, emphasizing the importance of building shared understanding before moving to concrete decisions.

Looking ahead, said Fulton, the facilitators plan to conduct a “straw poll viability check” of the DST at the end of their July 22 meeting, which will serve as an initial, non-binding assessment of whether the project should move forward to a more detailed planning phase before the final DST meeting in August.