by Osman Parvez
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Here’s a new site worth checking out: Boulder Tomorrow

It’s mission is to “serve members of the Boulder community by providing interesting information and links to issues taking place in and around Boulder. We hope it will encourage you to get involved.”

That sounds admirable. Given the number of issues that crop up around here, if the organizers keep up with it, it should get plenty of traffic.

From the about us page:

That also sounds great. Sign me up!

Finally, here’s a study from the Leeds school of business on affordable housing, cosponsored with the Boulder Area Real Estate Association (BARA): Affordable Housing in Boulder Colorado

For anyone interested in our local real estate market conditions, this report is worth a look. Here’s a couple of interesting bullets from the executive summary:

• In spite of paying significantly higher house prices for owner-occupied housing, nearly one-third of Boulder homeowners own their home without a mortgage (31.8% of City homeowners own their home without a mortgage while 22.8% of Colorado homeowners own their home free of debt)
• The percent of the City‘s homeowners who report paying high housing expense burdens (paying more than 30% of their income on housing) is about the same as it is for homeowners in the State of Colorado (40.1% for City homeowners vs. 38.5% for homeowners in the State of Colorado);
• Only 8% of the City‘s single-family housing stock is ‗affordable‘ to area households earning the Department of Housing and Urban Development‘s (HUDs) established Area Median Income (AMI) for Boulder, Colorado; 75.9% of the single-family stock in Longmont (15.6 miles from the City of Boulder) is affordable; 60.5% in Lafayette (11.1 miles from Boulder); 50.7% in Louisville (10.3 miles from Boulder); 27.6% in Superior (7.8 miles from Boulder); and 56.7% in Erie (14.7 miles from Boulder)
• Market rents in Boulder are driven by household incomes, consequently the monthly rent for apartments in the City are not significantly different from market rents in the rest of the County
• Housing cost burdens for City renters are significantly higher than housing cost burdens for renter-occupied households in the rest of Colorado—over 60% of the City‘s renters report paying more than 30% of their income on rent while about 47% of Colorado‘s renters report burdensome housing expenses

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