Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

The wide gap between our high resort area cost of living (especially for housing) and actual wages makes it difficult to recruit and retain teachers, and essential personnel within our community‚Äîall who hold jobs that are key to the well-being of our children and community, but cannot afford to live close to where they work. This need is what brought about an extraordinary collaboration with the Roaring Fork School District, Pitkin County and the Town of Basalt to build the Basalt Vista Housing Partnership‚Äîlocated behind Basalt High School‚Äîwhich will provide 27 affordable, energy-efficient homes for teachers and others in our local workforce. Through this effort, we hope to create a model that can be adopted in communities throughout Colorado and across the country.
At Habitat we are not only concerned with housing, but also all aspects that accompany the success of our family, post purchase. The Roaring Fork Valley is a very expensive place to live. In addition to having some of the highest housing prices outside of a major metropolitan area, Roaring Fork Valley residents experience non housing expenses that are 20%-30% higher than the rest of the country. Transportation costs are also high, due to long commutes. A 2018 regional housing study found that 63% of commuters do not live where they work because housing is unaffordable. The cost savings from energy efficiency will help offset higher costs in other parts of our families‚ lives. 
Basalt Vista is the first net zero housing project in rural Colorado.

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Habitat for Humanity as a global organization dedicated to providing homes for underserved families and first time homeowners. Nearly 40% of the homes at Basalt Vista will be owned by Latinex families, a population regionally underrepresented in homeownership. Also, with the project incorporating Net Zero energy objectives, these families would typically lack access to energy efficient homes and the technology supporting energy efficiency. As a bilingual community, they will learn to operate their homes and maintain their relationships with the local energy provider.
The young working families of Basalt Vista are leading the community by living in an all electric community and demonstrate their ability to manage the integration of solar generation with energy efficient appliances, battery backup systems, car charging, and state of the art heat pump HVAC systems . This is true leadership by these families. as they are spokespersons for Net Zero living. They also reap the benefit of $14/month utility bills after managing the net metering of the solar generation, which contributes to true long term affordability.

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