Rural Homes

Rural Homes: For Sale, For Locals is a pilot project that is currently building new workforce housing in rural Colorado. By integrating donated land, off-site factory-built construction, and low-cost construction finance into a toolkit, we are restructuring the way rural homes can be financed affordably for our region’s essential workforce: teachers, medical professionals, immigrants and federal employees that earn under 120% of Area Median Income (AMI). Our ambition is to inform and refine a model that minimizes the cost of building single-family homes so that it can be replicated and scaled across rural Colorado. By adding new building stock to a housing market that is saturated with old and dilapidated homes or inflated by vacation markets, we are addressing – head on – key determinants of public health and long-term economic sustainability in the region.

Example of the Problem: Teacher Salaries

There is a major gap between what a teacher earns, the purchasing power of that teacher and the prices of homes that are available in the market (see graph below). Teachers are not alone, countless essential workers across Colorado face this dilemma. Click here to view an interactive affordability map of Homeownership for Teachers across Colorado.