gdp's Comments

Daily Camera.com: : Greg Wilkerson: Profiteering developers behind opposition - Boulder Daily Camera

Sat, 26 Sep 2015 03:21:24 +0000

And the neighborhoods they'll target - like Martin Acres - have already sacrificed plenty (we have 2 affordable housing developments and a halfway house and lost baseball fields and the Hi-Mar pool) for more "affordable" townhouses and quadplexes (ignoring the fact that the land alone will be over $2 million an acre to acquire the existing houses). The real NIMBY here is that they won't do it on Mapleton, in Newlands, Whittier etc. They'll just target the middle class neighborhoods. Heaven forbid that we in Martin Acres insist they look elsewhere - feeling we have made sufficient sacrifices already "for the good of Boulder".

Daily Camera.com: : Robert Porath: Prop 300 ensures neighborhood involvement - Boulder Daily Camera

Sat, 26 Sep 2015 03:07:27 +0000

Not all neighborhoods have been targeted like Martin Acres either. The baseball fields sit under Alvarado Village Low Income Housing. The Hi-Mar neighborhood pool was bulldozed to build Hi-Mar low income Senior Housing. Across the street is the 48 bed dormitory style half house that just opened. All on Moorhead. We've been targeted for historic preservation, a "character area", and city council candidates have proposed "special restrictions" for the neighborhood. Bear Creek flooded and many homes took water in the basement - despite calls to the city - they then claimed they weren't aware of "significant flooding" in area. We've had a lot of insult and injury to pull together over. So Bruce wanting to remove all neighborhood serving retail from a BC2 zoning (neighborhood serving retail and offices) to build an obscenely big office building and hotel on a residential access street (there will be "Zero" access from Baseline) was only the latest thing hurled at the neighborhood. And upzoning - sounds like targeting and redlining to me - (see It Takes A Hero about the fight in NYC to spread affordable housing throughout the city) when they codespeak "certain areas" aka not Mapleton, Newlands, Whittier etc. Strangely BVSD believes in Martin Acres. They're going to replace the old Creekside elementary with a brand new building in recognition of all the young families with children in MA who wanted single family houses with yards and school w/in walking distance. Of course to buy them they have to compete with investors who want to rent to 4-6 adults vs. 2 parents and kids. After over a decade of being targeted I'm absolutely voting for 300 because I bought a single family house in a single family neighborhood and if the house next door goes quad - I will literally lose all my solar access - which figured into my decision to buy this house. And wasn't that part of what we fought over during the whole Compatible Development Process? Here's what's happened in Denver. I sure as hell didn't spend all the years commuting from Jeffco and saving to buy a house in Boulder to end up living next to a monster like that. <img src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2015/0206/20150206__20150208_K1_BZ08SCRAPES~p2.jpg">

Daily Camera.com: : Boulder council candidates pledge to listen to voters - Boulder Daily Camera

Sun, 20 Sep 2015 12:47:56 +0000

Yes! The Mother Jones article was the one I was thinking of but couldn't recall where I had read it. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/01/black... At one point 70% of homes for sale in the Tampa area were being bought by large rental firms. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/wa... Southern California http://www.sgvtribune.com/business/20150628/repor... These huge rental firms are of concern - the vast majority of us can't compete with them. And the idea of rentals being a derivatives driven product - that's just begging for a massive meltdown with cascading evictions at some future point in time. Or they decide the returns aren't high enough and start dumping houses on the market driving values way down and putting people who did manage to buy upside down on their mortgages. That will benefit new buyers trying to get into the market but potentially devastate a bunch of other families in the process. The statewide tenants-rights organization found that renters of single-family homes from the three biggest corporate landlords in the state—Blackstone/Invitation Homes, Waypoint Homes and Colony American Homes—“pay higher rents than their neighbors and face challenges getting repairs.” Doug Henwood, an economics journalist and author of Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom, says investor-driven home purchases follow the general model of private-equity deals. “They are in it for the short-term, the medium-term,” says Henwood. “They are not in it for the long haul. The incentive is to screw the tenants over completely, minimize repairs and maximize rents.” http://www.gtweekly.com/index.php/santa-cruz-news... These large national companies don't care about the communities where they own properties. They don't live there. They aren't vested in things like school quality and local infrastructure. But it's another mechanism to transfer what little wealth there is below up the chain......

Daily Camera.com: : Boulder council candidates pledge to listen to voters - Boulder Daily Camera

Sun, 20 Sep 2015 12:25:50 +0000

They're doing exactly what was done in the mortgage market - bundling, securitizing, and packaging rentals as a product to sell to investors on the stock market. Driving home prices and rents up in the process and essentially shutting people out of fixer upper starter homes. Real Estate "Flopping" The New Corporate Screw Job http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/14/1255423/... I was reading about a family trying to buy a house and being constantly outbid - not by other families but by rental firms snapping up properties as they came on the market. Since the investors were all cash offers vs a mortgage they couldn't really compete - that's a part of why you're seeing personal letters from people asking if you want to sell your house and telling you all about themselves and their family. I've received several of them this summer. Blackstone has other subsidiaries like Invitation Homes that owns 45, 000 rental properties http://therealdeal.com/miami/blog/2015/09/14/texa... "Institutional landlords led by Blackstone have spent more than $25 billion since 2012 buying single-family homes to rent, professionalizing an industry that was previously dominated by mom-and-pop landlords. They’ve accessed public markets, used bank-arranged credit lines and sold bonds to finance purchases." http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-19... The fact that Blackstone is paying attention to what Boulder is doing is troubling. (And I'm guessing the other big names Waypoint, American Residential, and Colony are watching) http://www.wsj.com/articles/racing-to-buy-homes-s... Finally - AirBNB just poached the CFO from Blackstone Laurence Tosi.....

Daily Camera.com: : Pieter Van Winkle: Occupancy enforcement push shows lack of vision - Boulder Daily Camera

Sun, 13 Sep 2015 16:44:44 +0000

The renters are often only as good as the landlord. I've lived next to good tenants who were students, and bad tenants who weren't students. And the owners are absolutely who needs to be held ultimately accountable if their property turns into a repeat nuisance. If they can't keep the property under control or make money under the regulations in place then they need to get out of the rental business. The renters next door to me are not students(the owner doesn't rent to students which isn't legal either). This property has been problematic for years. The surrounding houses with new kids (a mini baby boom on my block) have had to deal with rats from open compost, noise, semi-feral cats, a dog that barks non-stop when left home alone, weeds, parking issues, people coming and going loudly at all hours of the day and night, and a revolving door of tenants - I can't tell who all is actually living there at the moment but there are 4-6 vehicles parked every night in front of their and the neighbors houses. Add to that the new rental across the street with 4-5 vehicles every night - there are times I can barely get turned in and out of my driveway they've parked so close. They're not as bad as a group of renters in the same house a few years back that the neighbors finally forced out through repeated noise complaints over time, but the current renters are not as good as the family that lived there before them and took care of the yard and house, kept regular hours and were quiet. The landlord's response to each request to deal with his renters is "just talk to them" - he ought to pay us 10% of the rent for being his defacto property manager all these years. Repeated issues with the same property over many years and different tenants - it's absolutely the landlord at fault. And when all the renters are unrelated it's amazing how often no one is in charge or responsible for the issue you're trying to get addressed. At least with a family there is usually a parent/individual who functions as the head of household you can talk to about issues. And it's the rare family that has 4-6 adults with 4-6 cars. Another rental by me - occupied by students who mow and weed the lawn, are quiet, park in front of their own house and are never an issue. The landlord is strict and upfront - no over occupancy and it's a quiet family neighborhood. He visits the property several times a year and has done a lot of improvements(even installed a sprinkler system) over the years. Not once in 10 plus years has there been an issue with the different renters (usually students) living there. The next door rental - the owner admitted to me that he hadn't visited it in years and was only there because the license was up for renewal, and to get it - he let tenants from his other properties do most of the energy upgrade work in exchange for free rent. I can only imagine how much worse it could get if he could legally rent it to more than 3 people and we'd lose what little leverage we currently have. So no I don't feel this is an unjust risk to the property owners. I've been a landlord and while you can get bamboozled by a tenant and a bad one can do a lot of property damage - chronic property issues are absolutely the responsibility of the owner. If you can't make it work then you need to get into a different business.

Daily Camera.com: : Doug Williams: Growth is not paying its way - Boulder Daily Camera

Sun, 13 Sep 2015 13:32:39 +0000

Boulder is not a particularly family friendly town these days. Boulder bulldozed the walking distance neighborhood Hi-Mar pool in Martin Acres to build the Hi-Mar low income senior housing. BVSD though is going to replace the old Creekside Elementary school with a brand new building; recognizing that Martin Acres is a neighborhood with lots of young families with kids. Lifting occupancy limits would make it even harder for families (with one or 2 incomes) to compete for housing against 4-6 pooled salary groups for rentals and investors for purchasing. Majestic Heights got an alzheimers facility on the old National Guard site (a stones throw from Hi-Mar Senior Housing across Table Mesa). Upzoning - investors will snap up those units, which won't come close to be a high enough number built to lessen housing demand and will in no way lower housing costs(at over $2 million per acre simply to acquire existing houses). And families want nearby schools for kids to walk to and yards for kids to play in, you can't simply send young kids to the trailheads or parks (if you're lucky enough to have one w/in walking distance) unsupervised. Boulder's own housing survey showed relatively few families with children want to live in condo's and townhomes without yards. Austin, New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco etc. all see outflows of people in the getting married and having kids age group for the reasons mentioned above. I simply don't understand why city council believes that won't be the case here as millennials hit these milestones. There's research easily findable via google showing that reproducing millennials are moving to the burbs for houses, yards, and schools just like the generations before them. City Council has suddenly discovered the middle class but has no clue what they really need and that affordability is the total cost of living not just the cost of housing. It's the death of a thousand extra higher costs. Boulder works if you're young and single or a retired senior citizen but for those in between it's much harder.

Daily Camera.com: : Boulder considers tools for enforcing occupancy limit - Boulder Daily Camera

Fri, 4 Sep 2015 11:52:17 +0000

The bulk of residential areas in Boulder are in RL - 3 person occupancy zoning - Table Mesa, Martin Acres, Majestic Heights, Highland Park , etc. are all in 3 person zoned areas. What's interesting is to note the different categories of 3 person occupancy - RE - residential estate - and RR residential rural (colors are so close I can't tell which is which on map) A -Agriculture - not much around P- Public (CU, NCAR, NIST etc) Definitions here: https://www.municode.com/library/co/boulder/codes... Residential - Rural 1, Residential - Rural 2, Residential - Estate, and Residential - Low 1: Single-family detached residential dwelling units at low to very low residential densities. Residential - Low 2, and Residential - Medium 2: Medium density residential areas primarily used for small-lot residential development, including without limitation, duplexes, triplexes, or townhouses, where each unit generally has direct access at ground level. Map of Zoning - http://gisweb.ci.boulder.co.us/agswebsites/pds/pd... (2)Up to three persons in P, A, RR, RE, and RL zones; (3)Up to four persons in MU, RM, RMX, RH, BT, BC, BMS, BR, DT, IS, IG, IM, and IMS zones; or (4)Two persons and any of their children by blood, marriage, guardianship, including foster children, or adoption.

Daily Camera.com: : Boulder considers tools for enforcing occupancy limit - Boulder Daily Camera

Wed, 2 Sep 2015 12:02:57 +0000

And can we prevent the legal lease renters from AirBnB'ing any extra rooms? I suspect that's what a nearby house is doing given the everchanging stream of cars that show up for a day or three and are never seen again, along with the sudden increase in middle of the night noise etc.

Daily Camera.com: : Deal reached to avoid forced landmark status for Boulder home - Boulder Daily Camera

Wed, 2 Sep 2015 11:57:41 +0000

"Councilmen Andrew Shoemaker and Tim Plass also said they were concerned about the potential of setting a precedent and said other neighbors might not be so supportive of increasing density in an existing community" Please remember this later when they try to upzone your neighborhood so the single family ranch house next door can be bulldozed and replaced with a quadplex. All neighborhoods are equal - some are just more equal than others.......

Daily Camera.com: : Lucky\'s Market opening south Boulder location in former Savers space - Boulder Daily Camera

Thu, 30 Jul 2015 17:09:48 +0000

I've been commenting for years and never been flagged or gotten that message. I don't have a history of inappropriate comments. It was a really weird thing and I was able to post the followup comment immediately after.......

Daily Camera.com: : Lucky\'s Market opening south Boulder location in former Savers space - Boulder Daily Camera

Wed, 29 Jul 2015 02:09:37 +0000

Why in the world is a comment asking how Lucky's compares to Kings/Pharmaca/Walgreens on wages/health insurance/union attitudes requiring admin approval? That's alot of similar services for one shopping center. Can they all survive?

Daily Camera.com: : Lucky\'s Market opening south Boulder location in former Savers space - Boulder Daily Camera

Wed, 29 Jul 2015 02:08:45 +0000

With Pharmaca and King Soopers in the same shopping center with Lucky's (which the article doesn't mention)and Walgreen's Pharmacy being built there as well that seems like a lot of similar services very close together... What kind of wages does Lucky's pay vs Kings/Pharmaca/Walgreens? Do they provide health insurance to employees? Are they union/anti-union? etc. I'm genuinely curious to understand how the business' compare.

Daily Camera.com: : Boulder comp plan process opens amid growth debate - Boulder Daily Camera

Sun, 26 Jul 2015 13:54:04 +0000

"Cowles, who has been a supporter of denser development in support of goals like walkable neighborhoods with a lower environmental footprint, reflected the common belief of many Boulder officials, that some people who oppose that kind of development don't understand its benefits." Remember when Macon said something similar on the radio during the Compatible Housing Development process? That it was "too complicated" for us to understand. This is code speak - translated -" for the good of all of Boulder". Yet it is always the same areas of town asked to sacrifice "for the good of Boulder" - it's never spread around equally. And "gentle in-fill" is an oxymoron when it's tearing down existing homes and transforming neighborhoods (just read the Denver Post about the upheavals in the bungalow neighborhoods). What I understand is that it won't happen in Mapleton, Chautauqua, Whittier, Devil's Thumb etc neighborhoods. It's most likely to happen in neighborhoods like Majestic Heights, Table Mesa, Martin Acres. Neighborhoods that unlike most of Boulder ;have seen an increase, not a decrease, of families with kids moving in. What we won't see is having these developments on city council member blocks or selling their houses to move into them. It will be the neighborhoods that have already lost their recreation fields and swimming pool for affordable housing developments. The neighborhoods that get discussed as "renewable" resources rather than recognized as the real communities they are that actually support families and know each other ( http://www.newgeography.com/content/003863-the-ch... ) . Where every time we turn around we are fending off the latest social engineering attempt from the city. I understand that despite all the talk about "walkable" neighborhoods we're most likely end up looking like 20th St. across from CU (apt/condo. buildings and wall to wall parked cars) or Cherry Creek North (wall to wall high end townhomes that used to be 50's era ranch houses) with no real increase in services and no yards for families with kids who don't have $1 million plus to spend as single family houses are razed and the value of the remaining one's skyrocket. And what's built to replace them won't be terribly affordable as the market compensates (see New York, San Francisco, Palo Alto, San Diego, etc. etc. etc.). Boulder cannot build enough units to satisfy enough market demand to relive the price pressure. The affordable housing programs squeeze out the middle class - make too much to qualify - the remaining housing is even more expensive for paying the affordable housing subsidiy. http://www.peoplepowermedia.net/housing/Definitiv... I also understand that as mellenials age and start families - they want houses, yards, and move out of urban cores to afford it if they aren't trapped in urban jobs by student debt and employment opportunities. http://www.wsj.com/articles/more-young-adults-sta... " we can follow the first group of millennials who are now entering their 30s, and it turns out that they are beginning, like preceding generations, to move to the suburbs." "Young adults trapped in cities by lack of jobs and high student debt"
http://www.wsj.com/articles/millennials-prefer-si...
http://www.newgeography.com/content/004084-the-ge...
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/think-millenni...
http://grist.org/cities/are-millennials-really-ju...
"Our analyses of cities around the world have shown definitively that people with children tend to avoid urban cores, even in the most gentrified environments. Manhattan, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Seattle tend to have the lowest numbers of children per capita." http://www.newgeography.com/content/003863-the-ch... I understand those of us that are really middle class will struggle to not end up pushed out of Boulder as our blocks are converted (because developers won't be content with just the ends of blocks to redevelop - just take a look at what's happening in Denver), and we won't be able to afford another house in town so our choice will be a condo/townhome or leave when we throw in the towel and we sell our houses to escape the increased neighborhood noise and traffic from redevelopment (because of course there won't be enough parking). Oh, I understand the "benefits"......

Daily Camera.com: : Boulder discusses changes to neighborhood parking restrictions - Boulder Daily Camera

Sun, 19 Jul 2015 14:59:41 +0000

The Table Mesa Park-n-Ride is a multi-level parking garage that's been expanded once. I doubt they're going to spend millions of $$$$ to expand it again - assuming that the foundation can take more levels being added. Tantra Lake is a surface lot between a church and a senior housing complex - there's no where to expand to. Broadway and 27th is a surface lot between an apartment complex, 27th way, and Broadway. Ditto - no where to go. That leaves South Campus - the city has fought development of the site for years. It was originally designated to be open space when CU bought it out from under the city. The entrance sits right at US 36 E on-ramp and has become a defacto vehicle drop off zone for the bus stops on the on-ramp. Creating a large volume of traffic in/out of there is going to create a monumental snarl at a location where traffic is already problematic(on and off ramp traffic between US 36, Table Mesa P-n-R and Foothills Pkwy) and create new parking and noise issues for the neighborhood and housing adjacent to the location. And if I were CU I would only agree to its use for remote parking in exchange for Boulder dropping opposition to later development plans. So it's still just relocating the problem to a different neighborhood.

Daily Camera.com: : Boulder discusses changes to neighborhood parking restrictions - Boulder Daily Camera

Fri, 17 Jul 2015 11:35:03 +0000

"Parking Services Manager Kurt Matthews said the city is considering a number of potential satellite lots, including at the Table Mesa Park-n-Ride and — should the university be open to it — at the CU-South campus off of U.S. 36." The Table Mesa, Tantra Lake, and Broadway/27th Park-n-Ride's are often already full. We're already seeing people parking in neighborhoods along Table Mesa and S. Broadway near RTD stops to take the bus to CU and their jobs in downtown or catch the bus to DIA and avoid RTD parking fees. And I'm sure the townhouses, Majestic Heights, and the office/retail complex will love the parking and noise problems they're going to get if CU agrees to using South Campus. Maybe they'll have to get parking permit zones as well (it's been discussed in Martin Acres because of a number of parking issues). So yes, let's just continue push the noise and parking problems into other neighborhoods.....

Daily Camera.com: : Boulder voters may see \'head tax\' to offset job impacts - Boulder Daily Camera

Wed, 15 Jul 2015 20:40:12 +0000

True - there's a case that made that determination. People living in El Paso TX were commuting to White Sands in New Mexico to work (the city limits of El Paso is the state line). New Mexico contended that because they worked in NM they had to pay income tax. Plaintiffs filed that because they lived in El Paso they did not. New Mexico prevailed. Lung v. O'Cheskey, 94 N.M. 802, 617 P.2d 1317 (1980), appeal dismissed, 450 U.S. 961(1981)

Daily Camera.com: : Boulder voters may see \'head tax\' to offset job impacts - Boulder Daily Camera

Wed, 15 Jul 2015 20:29:53 +0000

I missed the 50/50 split when it I read it at 5 this morning pre-coffee. "likely" is not the same as "will exempt", that's a wait and see as far I'm concerned. So companies will pick up half the cost - then how much they care will depend on high the tax is set and how many employees they can slide under the income limit if one is set. And for larger companies considering relocation here they'll definitely try to negotiate not paying it. They may even try to negotiate collecting it but getting to retain it. Happens with sales tax, property tax, and even the occasional state income negotiated tax incentive (though I believe that's not something Colorado does). And I'm wondering if they'll try to apply to CU, Federal and State employee's as well. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

Daily Camera.com: : Boulder voters may see \'head tax\' to offset job impacts - Boulder Daily Camera

Wed, 15 Jul 2015 12:21:31 +0000

Here's the thing - companies won't pay this - employees will. I've worked in Denver for different companies and each time there was a line item deduction on my paycheck for the headtax. Companies won't care because the cost will be passed on. Depending on how big the tax is - it will affect most those that can't afford it - minimum wage workers.

Daily Camera.com: : Boulder\'s purchase of BCH campus moves forward - Boulder Daily Camera

Wed, 15 Jul 2015 12:09:39 +0000

Boulder should buy the land and fill it with dense high rise housing. Oh wait - they don't want that near where "they" live? They want to upzone our neighborhoods instead? As per Costco - so they blocked Costco coming to Boulder and now everyone drives to Superior. They welcome Whole Foods with open arms when Costco is a much better corporate citizen (pays a living wage, 90% of employees have health insurance, average wage is over $17 per hour, average tenure is 8 years, etc. etc. etc) and the CEO of Whole Foods makes insulting comments about providing healthcare (calls the ACA fascism), says climate change is "perfectly natural" , promoted WF stock online under an alias, etc. .http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/business/12foods.html?_r=0

Daily Camera.com: : Phyllis White: Boulder should look at Charlottesville - Boulder Daily Camera

Thu, 25 Jun 2015 16:43:26 +0000

CDOT illegally (they did not follow their own rules) raised the speed limit on US 36 over a decade ago. After years of complaints and wrangling they lowered it 5mph. http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_14796372