CSU employees will start moving into workforce housing at new apartment complex next month

Sophie Hughes is a college graduate, just getting started in what she hopes will be a long and satisfying career in early childhood education.

She doesn’t really want to live with roommates or in the basement of someone else’s home, where her kitchen consists of a hot plate and microwave oven. And, as a classroom teacher at Colorado State University’s Early Childhood Center, she doesn’t earn enough money to qualify, let alone actually afford, to rent a place of her own in Fort Collins.

“I just don’t meet the income requirements for most places here, and the ones I do are not very appealing places to live,” she said. “The rest are completely out of my budget. I’d be paying 60, 70 to 80% of the money I’m making monthly just for housing, which is not sustainable.”

So, Hughes felt like she had won the lottery when she learned her application had been approved for one of CSU’s 57 below-market-rate units at the new Rendezvous Trail Apartments.

The first of eight buildings in the 180-unit apartment complex — built through a partnership between CSU, Timberline Church and Tetrad Real Estate — is opening in January off Timberline Road just south of the church. Hughes will move into her one-bedroom apartment in mid-February, she said.

Additional buildings in the complex will open in phases over the next several months, CSU officials said.

CSU and Timberline Church entered into the project in an effort to address Fort Collins’ growing need for affordable housing.

CSU had originally hoped to include a substantial amount of affordable housing at the site of the former Hughes Stadium, but a citizen-led ballot initiative approved by voters in April 2021 blocked that plan and forced the city of Fort Collins to rezone the 164-acre tract as “public open lands” and attempt to acquire the property from CSU for uses such as “parks, recreation, and open lands, natural areas, and wildlife rescue and restoration,” according to an informational page on the city’s website. City Council rezoned the property in May 2021 and purchased it for $12.5 million on June 30, 2023.

“We were hoping to utilize the Hughes site to address some of our affordability challenges with housing,” Anderson said, “and, as that looked less likely, we then started to look for alternatives and started having discussions with the church, and it really became apparent that we all wanted to try to solve the problem.”

Knowing increasing housing costs were a growing concern among its employees, CSU began searching for other options. Its five-acre piece of land fronting Timberline Road just south of the church wouldn’t accommodate a large-scale apartment project. But an adjacent 10-acre plot owned by the church just might. So, CSU and the church agreed to swap properties, and CSU immediately sold the larger piece of land to Tetrad so it could build the apartments there, said Brett Anderson, a special assistant to the CSU president and chancellor who shepherded through the zoning, permitting and development-approval process.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held Sept. 28, 2022, and residents will be able to move into the first completed units Jan 8, 2024.

“Once we got the approval, they’ve moved quickly, because we wanted to try to make this available to our employees as soon as we could,” Anderson said during a tour of the apartment complex last week.

About 100 CSU employees have started the online process to apply for one of the 57 rent-controlled units available to them at Rendezvous Trail, Anderson said. He expects more to apply as people begin moving in and additional units become available over the next six months.

The units CSU controls will go to qualifying employees earning 60%, 80% or 100% of the average median income for Larimer County, based on U.S. Housing and Urban Development guidelines. Three one-bedroom and three two-bedroom units are being made available to Hughes and others earning below 60% of the AMI, based on their family size. Sixteen one-bedroom, 23 two-bedroom and six three-bedroom units will be available to CSU employees earning below 80% of the AMI. Those earning 100% or less of the AMI will have access to three one-bedroom and three two-bedroom apartments.

The AMI for Larimer County is $79,600 annually for one person and $113,600 for a family of four under the latest HUD guidelines. So, 60% AMI for one person is $47,760 and $68,160 for a family of four, and 80% AMI is $63,680 for one person and $90,880 for a family of four.

Projected rental rates for those qualifying at 60% AMI were $1,145 a month for a one-bedroom and $1,372 for a two-bedroom, well below market rates of $1,628 to $1,661, depending on location, for a one-bedroom and $1,529 to $1,589 for a two-bedroom, according to the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority.

One-bedroom units at Rendezvous Trail range in size from 560 to 665 square feet. The two-bedroom units are 891 to 974 square feet, and the three-bedroom units are 1,104 square feet, according to a breakdown provided by the university. The six three-bedroom apartments in the complex are only available to CSU employees who fall into the 80% AMI or less category.

CSU selects eligible employees through an application process that includes income verification for spouses, partners or others who will be living in the unit. Once approved, employees then lease their units through Tetrad at the discounted rate, Anderson said.

Hughes said her one-bedroom unit at Rendezvous Trail will actually cost her a bit more in rent each month than she pays now for the basement unit without a true kitchen in a home in south Fort Collins. But she’ll more than make up the difference, she said, in convenience.

A King Soopers grocery store and several fast-casual restaurants are just two blocks from the complex, a bus stop for a route that runs directly to CSU is one block away and the Power Trail that connects with Stuart Street for a bicycle-, scooter- or skateboard-friendly route to CSU is easily accessible just across Timberline Road.

The location and accessibility to CSU, Anderson said, were important factors in selecting the site for this particular affordable-housing partnership.

“It’s a really awesome location,” Hughes said. “Being able to walk and pick things up at the grocery store and the convenience of that and the other businesses nearby was a really big part of my decision to apply for an apartment there. A lot of other apartment complexes in Fort Collins are not in ideal locations, tucked back somewhere where you can’t get anywhere as easily. Convenience is part of what made the apartments appeal to me.”

Timberline Church’s three units — two one-bedroom apartments and one two-bedroom — are all set aside for those earning 80% or less of the AMI. Tetrad will lease the other 120 units at market rates.

Those contracts require Tetrad to make that number of units available to both CSU and the church for 20 years and are deed restricted, so that obligation would transfer to a new owner if Tetrad were to sell the complex.

The number of units available for CSU and Timberline Church will remain the same throughout the 20-year contract, Anderson said, but the individual apartments are not designated. So, a CSU employee who wants to remain in their unit beyond the three-year maximum could still do so but would have to switch to a market-based rate. Tetrad would then make a different unit available to a CSU employee at the affordable-housing rates.

CSU is discussing a similar workforce housing project within the proposed Strauss Lakes development at Horsetooth and Ziegler roads, the university said in a written statement.

Other efforts CSU has launched to address employee housing needs include partnerships with builders to provide discounts or free amenities with new-home purchases, reduced broker fees in real estate transactions and discounts on closing costs and mortgage rates, including one that eliminates the need to buy mortgage insurance for lower down payment amounts that would otherwise require it. The university also provides help in finding rental units for students, faculty and staff through its off-campus housing program.

CSU, of course, is not alone in its efforts to find affordable housing for its workforce.

“It’s a communitywide issue,” said Mike Hooker, the university’s director of community affairs and engagement. “We need to get people closer to their child care and their employer and reduce transit distances."

“It’s a very complicated equation," Hooker added. "We’re excited to be providing a piece of the solution, but it’s a complicated, communitywide discussion with a lot of different pieces to it.”

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Colorado State workforce housing near Timberline Church set to open