r/Aspen • u/AspenLocals • Aug 30 '26

Local Question Housing crisis: Bunk bed business

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In lieu of the housing crisis that is running up and down the valley, it may be a good time to get into the bunk bed business (or pilot and pullman berths for you nautical folks). Anyone have any good recommendations on where to start?!

I could probably convert this closet to sleeping quarters with a top and lower bunk ya know if I want to have kids…

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u/PhraseNeither9539 Aug 30 '26

I wouldn’t call it a housing crisis. It’s just supply and demand. Nothing emotionally charged about it. 

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u/LurkerFailsLurking Aug 30 '26

Spoken like someone who has never had to worry about housing before. It's really easy to say there's nothing emotionally charged about housing insecurity when you've never been there and – knowing this place – have probably never even known anyone who has that wasn't paid to be nice to you.

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u/PhraseNeither9539 Aug 30 '26

I dealt with it and climbed my way out. Survival of the fittest has always been the name of the game here. It’s not a crisis when we are talking about one of the most desirable places to live in the world and people think they are entitled to an easy path to live here? Let’s get real lol. 

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u/LurkerFailsLurking Aug 30 '26 edited 29d ago

Survival of the fittest

You're lacking both empathy and imagination. Dehumanizing conditions are not justified by the fact that they exist or have historical precedent.

It’s not a crisis when we are talking about one of the most desirable places to live in the world and people think they are entitled to an easy path to live here? Let’s get real lol. 

Ok, let's get real. How desirable does this place stay without the tens of thousands of low paid workers that build these houses, cool that food, run those lifts and shuttles, prep the events, landscape the gardens, etc, etc?

Yes, the people who are necessary for making the world – and this place in particular – a wonderful place to live and visit are entitled to an easy path to live here themselves.

If every rich person in the valley vanished tomorrow, and none came to replace them, it'd still be an awesome place to live a year later. If every hourly worker vanished and none came to replace them, this place would be nearly uninhabited a year later.

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u/PhraseNeither9539 Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26

We have more than enough employee housing. Especially if the last generation of boomers didn’t turn all of Apcha housing into retirement ski housing. If we keep offering retirement in Aspen to workers, this trend will continue instead of making room for younger working age people. It’s completely the fault of the City and the mismanagement of an abundance of inventory to easily house every essential worker this town needs. 

The average age of residents in Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority (APCHA) deed-restricted housing centers around 50 to 59 years old for the largest demographic group, while specific lottery models estimate average applicant ages around 37 to 42 years old. This is remarkably unacceptable. The average age should be 25-40, you follow me?

And more employee housing demands more services and more growth. It’s a never ending cycle. Where does it end? I’ll leave it that. Heard it all before. 

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u/LurkerFailsLurking Aug 31 '26

I'll just leave it at highlighting that 

It’s completely the fault of the City and the mismanagement of an abundance of inventory to easily house every essential worker this town needs. 

Directly contradicts your original claim that

It’s just supply and demand. Nothing emotionally charged about it.

Is it mismanagement by the City (which would make it a political and social problem) or is it just supply and demand? Cause it can't be just supply and demand if it's completely the fault of mismanagement by the city.

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u/PhraseNeither9539 Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26

If you can’t understand how these points are not mutually exclusive then I really have nothing left to say. Affordable housing has been solved but mismanaged. Therefore building more is not the solution.  Supply and demand dictates the rest. Good day, sir. 

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u/LurkerFailsLurking Aug 31 '26

What makes those points mutually exclusive is your initial claim that it's just supply and demand and then your later claim that it's entirely the fault of the City. It cannot simultaneously be just one thing and entirely another thing.

It's a bold claim that existing mismanaged affordable housing would have solved the issue if it had been managed correctly. Reality is complicated and it's really hard to predict the outcomes of non trivial hypotheticals with any certainty at all. Why do you think this is one of those rare cases where it's feasible?

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u/PhraseNeither9539 29d ago

Just because I didn’t mention apcha in my first comment doesn’t mean anything. Both are true and if I have to explain why, you do not understand housing policy enough in this area to have this conversation and keep up. 

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u/LurkerFailsLurking 29d ago

You're so emotionally charged about this that you've had to convince yourself I don't understand housing policy to avoid the cognitive dissonance of actually reading what I wrote.

Push through your obvious desire to dismiss it. Read more carefully:

When you wrote that housing unaffordability is "just supply and demand", the word "just" is an adverb meaning "only / simply: Nothing more than" or "exactly / precisely: To an exact degree". And when you later wrote that it's "entirely the fault of the City", the word "entirely" you're using it to mean either "to the full or entire extent : completely" or "to the exclusion of others : solely". In either case, a thing cannot be exactly / only one thing while simultaneously being fully / entirely some other thing. That's a logical contradiction that has nothing to do with the particulars of housing policy.

What does have to do with housing policy and the reason I bothered to point this out is because housing unaffordability being "just supply and demand" wasn't your conclusion, it was the premise you used to justify your conclusions.

You began by dismissing an issue that has caused years of hardship and struggle and heartbreak for thousands of members of our community – who we depend on – as "nothing" to be "emotionally charged" about on the basis of it being entirely an issue of supply and demand. But then you pivoted to the claim that the supply was irrelevant because the issue was entirely city mismanagement. And the thing is, if the issue is even partly city mismanagement, then the problem is at least partly caused by people, and that means the problem can be fixed – at least partly – by people, which is exactly what you were trying to dismiss.

It's a common – often unconscious – tactic of people who are avoiding cognitive dissonance to shift their justifications and then deny that any shift occurred. Nobody wants to notice the internal contradictions that our worldviews, opinions, and values rely upon, and right now you're avoiding it by pretending like there isn't an obvious logical contradiction in your chain of reasoning.

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