Moab set out 24 affordable housing goals in 2016. It has completed five of them.

This is just based on a first count. I need to review the list with Jenna Whetzel, who I suppose is most in charge of maintaining it. She’s the chair of the Moab Areah Housing Task Force and the program manager for the Housing Authority of Southeastern Utah.

The Moab Area Housing Task Force — a volunteer board that lobbies for fair housing opportunities — tracks these goals. It last updated the list last month.

Raw

Raw: Crash outside Cortez claims life of Moabite

  • Lois Marie Oliver died in the crash, which happened Saturday evening at 7:50 p.m. near mile marker 15 on Highway 184 in Colorado (near Dolores).
  • Head-on, two-vehicle collision. Other driver (27 year-old male from New Mexico) sustained minor injuries but did not go to the hospital. Oliver died on scene.
  • The initial report is that Oliver, as she was driving westbound, drifted into the oncoming lane. Her left front collided with the other vehicle’s left side.
  • Oliver was driving a 2003 Ford pickup; the other driver was in a 2017 Dodge pickup.
  • Source: Josh Lewis, public information officer for Colorado State Patrol

White hearing

I asked the court for the WebEx link. They said they hadn’t made one yet, so they asked for my email to add to the mailing list when they do make it.

The hearing is in less than 48 hours. It’s odd to me that they have not made the link yet.

Raw

Some opinions

  1. The Moab Area Housing Task Force should not be a volunteer board. Somehow, taxpayers or donors (probably donors) need to provide funding to the task force to draw more time and labor to it.

    It needs to maintain its lobbying abilities, so perhaps it shouldn’t be a 501(c)(3) (it’s not; it’s just a group of volunteers.) I think it’s 501(c)(4) that provides for the tax structure of political groups?

    Anyway, it should be lobbying the county and city more directly on housing affordability. Maybe the tact of playing subordinate is working better for them than the alternative?

  2. Someone needs to be on the housing beat in Moab full-time. Right now, nobody is doing that for the city or county. The city has a sustainability director but no housing director.

    The job of implementing the affordable housing plan is an explicit goal laid out in the plan. It’s literally 1.a. It’s since been softented to “consider hiring a staff person explicitly responsible for housing plan implementation” in the task force’s action steps tracker.

  3. The county and city should be spending more money on developing affordable housing and building consensus around breaking down regulatory barriers to housing affordability built into their land use codes. It should increase (or, in the city’s case, establish) property taxes to fund this.

  4. Why the hell are buildings limited to three stories in height? If anything, the height of the rim should be the height limit on buildings.

    Go out to Arches if you want to enjoy the viewshed. Hell, we could just zone the area between the Colorado and the airport for scenic preservation.

    There is no problem with having huge buildings in the middle of a city. That’s what the fuck cities are for.