Dear Editor,

I’ve been a Senior housing advocate in Nederland for 15+ years. I’m in my 70s. While Boulder County is building affordable housing for low-income families, the workforce, and the “missing middle,” no public rental housing is being built for seniors.

40 years ago, 6 senior housing units were built in Nederland. By most of today’s standards they are substandard (small, dark, non-ADA compliant). The building is unable to be renovated because of the small plot of land it is on. Now for the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey use to say....

40 years later we now have a senior housing crisis with a typical waitlist of 5-7 years, and an anecdotal need for approximately 18-24 senior housing units. However, since there’s no return on investment in building public senior housing, there’s no County interest nor investor incentives (I’ve been told off the record) to build them. As I’ve been saying for years, a private-nonprofit partnership is the only option to our P2P senior housing crisis.

Atashnaa Medicineshield Werner

Greater Nederland area