SNOWMASS VILLAGE — About three-quarters of Snowmass Village households probably need some kind of help to be able to afford housing in this increasingly expensive resort town, a recent survey found.

RRC Associates of Boulder, which has done housing studies for Aspen and Pitkin County as well, presented its findings from a recent survey to Snowmass Village Town Council on Monday. The council wants to update its code requirements pertaining to employee housing to reflect current and future realities.

Snowmass Village currently requires that developers house 45 percent of the employees they generate, while the town’s soon-to-be-updated comprehensive plan calls for housing 60 percent of the work force. (The housing mitigation rate was dropped from 60 percent to 45 percent during the Base Village land-use approval process a few years ago.)

Town staffers are considering recommending a 65 percent mitigation rate, and some council members are calling for numbers north of that. One of the main items factoring into any future increase in required housing is the employee generation rate — how many jobs are created from various types of business — which RRC’s work has found might be too low in some of the town’s calculations.

RRC’s Chris Cares presented statistics showing Pitkin County’s median income for a family of three is $87,800, or for a family of four, $97,600. About 20 percent of Snowmass households make half or less of the area median income. About 36 percent of them make anywhere from 20 percent under to 20 percent over the area median income, and one-quarter make more than 140 percent of the median income.

But even for a family in that upper bracket, making 40 percent more than the median income, would only be able to afford a $440,000 home, noted Cares, which is unheard of in Pitkin County.

Though the high cost of living is nothing new to the council, the figures presented highlighted the issue more starkly. Councilwoman Sally Sparhawk noted that a family would probably have to make twice the area median income to afford anything on the free market. And Councilman Arnie Mordkin said, “It’s kind of shocking, that most of our people can hardly afford to live here.”

To determine how many more workers to house, RRC has been trying to determine how many commuting employees want to live in Snowmass and would accept some of the restrictions that employee housing brings, such as limited appreciation and strict pet policies. The figure that it’s come up with is another 10 percent or so of the year-round work force.

Snowmass currently houses about half of its year-round employees. RRC found that there were 2,300 year-round jobs in Snowmass, and about 1,450 people who live in town and are employed.

Mordkin pointed out that a similar 2003 housing study found approximately the same number of commuting employees as this year’s survey, even though the commute is arguably worse and there’s more competition for downvalley jobs.

But the future doesn’t look good for the housing picture, it was pointed out. With the economy worsening even as real estate prices continue to rise, current workers retire in their housing and more and more “affordable” free market places become out of reach for the average employee, Snowmass will almost certainly need more housing. Not to mention that it’s still playing catch-up for its affordable housing deficit.

“I personally think it needs to raise from 45 percent to 80 percent,” said Planning and Zoning Commissioner Bill Boineau. “I still believe we need more housing with the economy changing. And I think we need a lot more than the 60 percent we’re talking about here.”

(Boineau, a former town councilman, is contesting Mordkin for the mayor’s seat in the November election.)

Sparhawk agreed.

“My concern is that employers here are struggling to keep employees; there’s not enough to keep workers that are here,” she said. “And the new stuff that’s coming on; they can afford a higher [wage]. So they’re gonna suck out of the existing business, and our current businesses are going to tank. So I don’t think 65 percent is enough.”

Council members expressed some support of imposing employee housing mitigation on residential projects. The RRC study found that larger single-family homes do tend to employ more people, up to 2.32 employees for homes larger than 8,500 square feet.

“The community has made a mistake in that we haven’t had impact mitigation by single-family neighborhoods, and they use all our services,” said Mayor Doug “Merc” Mercatoris. “We haven’t addressed this in our community where we have with commercial and multi-family.”

Further housing discussions will tackle downsizing and retiring in employee housing, how dependents and pets fit into the equation, payment-in-lieu fees, and whether to treat seasonal housing mitigation different from year-round housing.

The town’s Planning Commission is also currently reviewing housing policies.

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