No Workforce Housing for Lakewood

Another Lakewood misinformation campaign bites the dust.

For years Lakewood has been pushing high-density growth in the name of “affordable housing”. They market this narrative to schoolteachers and civil servants. See Lakewood’s recent resolution using these exact words. However, a development presentation to the Lakewood Planning Commission introduced a new term that exposes the lie: Workforce housing

Workforce Housing

The consultant Lakewood hired to evaluate blight and Lakewood’s Comprehensive Plan pointed out that there was NO PLAN for increasing workforce housing in Lakewood. Workforce housing is for low and mi

The emphasis on “affordable housing”, despite what Lakewood says, is different from workforce housing. No matter how poorly teachers and civil servants get paid, they get paid more than anyone living on the streets.

Affordable housing in Lakewood will mean a government-run program, similar to what used to be called Section 8. That is not the same as an answer to inflated housing prices for low- to median-income levels.

Think about government-run affordable housing like a scholarship system for school. A person may need the financial assistance, and may not be able to go to college without it, but there are others who need it more and not enough to go around.

For decades, the people most in need are those with extremely low income. Not low. Not middle-low. Not teachers and civil servants. Extremely low income.

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Ann Ricker, of Ricker Cunningham, is Lakewood’s blight consultant. She pointed out there was a gap in the Comprehensive Plan. She said the plan talked about affordable housing, and it talked about single-family housing, but she said there was the missing middle. She suggested removing “single-family” and just using the term “housing”.

Using the general term “housing” would allow more high-density, market rate apartments to be built in an effort to flood the market and lower prices. Lakewood is already proceeding with this plan. There is no guarantee the low-priced condos or townhomes will be built anywhere.

The term “workforce housing” is a more accurate description of how the public perceives the promises from Lakewood. This was an important acknowledgment that “workforce housing” is different than “affordable housing”. The public should be aware of the word games going on, similar to “illegal alien” versus “migrant”.

Watch Ann Ricker discuss the Comprehensive Plan here:

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From Frank Lehnerz, Free State Colorado

“If the government tries to wage war against the laws of the market by price control, it undermines the working of the market mechanism and leads to conditions which, from the point of view of the government itself, are less desirable than the previous state of affairs it intended to alter.”

— Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action (1949)

History has repeatedly shown that price controls—whether on food, housing, or other essentials—create virtually no consumer benefits and only price distortions. By capping what producers or retailers can charge, these controls reduce supply, reduce product or service quality, discourage investment for new, improved, or cheaper products and services, and create market signal distortions.

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