Eagle County’s proposed regional housing authority takes its first steps

Eagle County’s long-awaited regional housing authority is starting to get off the ground.

Avon and Eagle County earlier this year invested in Government Performance Solutions, a Colorado-based consultant that specializes on developing strategies and engagement work in the public sector, to explore the regional housing authority with local groups.

Brian Pool, a partner with Government Performance Solutions, presented the first in a series of community workshops on the regional housing authority to the Avon Town Council on Tuesday, Oct. 14.

“Our goal here is to use some deep listening and a collaborative approach, engaging with various staff and the public as we move through this process, to get a very good understanding of what are the palatable solutions, where is the desire, what is the appetite to address the challenges we have around housing in the valley,” Pool said.

Housing needs in Eagle County

To start the process, Pool’s team looked at a compilation of studies and assessments of Eagle County’s housing scene over the last decade. 

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“Home prices, essentially, have doubled across the valley between 2015 and 2023,” Pool said. “That’s just unsustainable.”

In 2023, the median sale price for a home in Vail, Avon, Minturn and Edwards exceeded $1 million.

“A household would need 5.2 people earning the median wage in Eagle County ($53,000 to be able to afford a median priced home in the county in 2022. In the same year, it would take 2.3 median wage earners to afford a median-priced two-bedroom rental, at $3,000 per month.

“Year after year, housing stands out as the number one concern for residents and business owners … since 2018,” Pool said.

The Valley Home Store, operated by the Eagle County Housing and Development Authority, has a waitlist of 1,500 buyers.

The Eagle County Regional Housing Needs Assessment, conducted in 2025, shows that the county needs more than 6,300 units over the next 10 years. Fifty percent of that need is in Vail and the Avon/Beaver Creek area.

What is currently being done to address housing needs?

Over the past five years, Vail, Avon and the county have created or conserved 1,500 units of community housing.

Eagle County alone has invested $65 million over four years to create or preserve nearly 750 units.

“There is progress, but it is inefficient,” Pool said. “We’re missing some centralized execution, the ability of a unified board, for example, some more strategic coordination and the ability to scale across the region.”

Countywide, $8 million in funds is currently dedicated to housing.

Forming a regional housing authority

A regional housing authority, with a voter-approved revenue stream like a tax or a fee exclusively dedicated to housing, might be able to generate significantly more funds, and use them in a unified direction.

An investment of $25 million per year could preserve or create 167 units per year, while an investment of $40 million per year could preserve or create 267 units, according to Pool’s presentation.

By statute, counties and municipalities can work together through a multijurisdictional housing authority formed through an intergovernmental agreement. The authority is not required to include the entirety of the participating jurisdictions, and the people that sit on the governing board can be appointees, staff or elected officials.

But to be successful, the authority needs funding, said Avon Town Manager Eric Heil.

“If there isn’t an adequate dedicated revenue source … it’s easy to form a government, it’s hard for the government to do much that’s meaningful in housing,” Heil said. “I think we probably, between us and Eagle County, need to get a dedicated funding source that is between $10 and $15 million.”

Under state statute, fund sources could include a sales tax up to 1%, a use tax up to 1%, a property tax up to 5 mills or an excise tax up to $2 per square foot.

Any funding source would require voter approval.

“In 2016, there was a half-cent sales tax countywide that didn’t pass,” Heil said. “What’s different now is we have a very developed track record of successfully building housing and successfully implementing these deed restriction purchase programs, and so we can show what can be done with a certain amount of dollars, and then we can extrapolate.”

The consultant team will be presenting an orientation to Eagle County’s housing needs to a series of local governments and other potential partners through early 2026, while saving the organizations most involved in housing for a later round.

Solution-oriented planning, including identifying possible funding sources with partners that have worked on housing for years, will begin later in 2026.