In High Country communities that represent the epicenter of Colorado’s affordability crisis, few issues are as salient for voters as the cost of housing. 

In the race to represent House District 13 — which spans Chaffee, Grand, Jackson, Lake, Park and Summit counties — in the state legislature, dueling candidates have presented opposing philosophies on the state government’s role in tackling housing challenges. Yet despite their differences, neither candidate has laid out a plan to usher in sweeping changes within the district, with both largely in favor of leaving those decisions in the hands of local officials. 

Incumbent Rep. Julie McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat and current speaker of the House, points to a legislative record that she says shows commitment to bringing more affordable housing supply to her district. But McCluskie has also walked a tightrope in recent legislative sessions on how involved the state should be on an issue that has historically been dealt with at the local level. 

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This year, she supported legislation that upended that precedent in-part by loosening restrictive land-use codes and incentivizing higher-density builds near transit centers. But those policies, hailed by pro-density and development groups as a legislative breakthrough, were focused exclusively on the Front Range. In mountain communities, McCluskie and other lawmakers have been hesitant to enact such sweeping measures amid broad opposition from local officials. 

Her opponent, Buena Vista businessman and Chaffee County Republicans Chair Dave Williams, has criticized most forms of government intervention in the housing industry that he says have made housing more expensive, such as clean energy requirements in local building codes. 

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Williams wants to distance the state’s involvement in housing and trusts the private market to fix itself. Unlike McCluskie, Williams, whose website only contains six sentences explaining his policy platform, has never held elected office and has no legislative background. 

“I don’t really think that’s an issue,” Williams said. “My background is in the private sector, and I still believe that the absolute best qualifications for holding office is having lived and worked and run a business under the laws that have been passed.” 

While housing is likely to be a top-of-mind issue for voters this election, the district typically votes for Democrats and favors McCluskie. The district voted for U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colorado) in 2020 by a 7.7-point margin over Republican incumbent Cory Gardner. In McCluskie’s last race in 2022, she beat her Republican opponent with 56% of the vote share — a difference of 5,472 votes. 

According to campaign filings as of Sept. 30, McCluskie’s campaign started with $24,702 and has since raised $99,652 — with $90,088 on hand. Williams began his campaign without any funds. He has raised $15,033, with $4,314 on hand. 

Still, the margins have tightened for McCluskie since redistricting in 2021. Prior to that, she won her 2020 and 2018 races with more than 60% of the vote. Williams believes that gives him a chance for an upset victory this November. 

“If we considered there to be no hope, then I wouldn’t have invested the time,” Williams said. “It’s not so much about being a Democratic or Republican district, but I think this race is more about issues and what’s going on at the state level.” 

McCluskie’s speakership has also faced controversy in recent sessions, including being hit with a lawsuit over open meetings law violations and subsequent efforts by legislative leaders to restrict how those rules affect state lawmakers. 

But Williams has faced his own legal problems over his private business dealings in the housing sector.

Housing a top concern 

In an informal survey of Colorado voters compiled by Summit Daily News in partnership with news organizations across the state, many listed housing or cost of living as one of their top concerns. That includes dozens of District 13 voters who expressed a range of views on housing — from the lack of supply for local workers to ongoing debates around short-term rentals. 

McCluskie said housing continues to be the No. 1 issue she hears about from constituents, adding that she has already helped drive hundreds of millions of state dollars towards local initiatives. 

That includes efforts like House Bill 21-1271, which created three new grant programs under the Department of Local Affairs, and House Bill 23-1304, which expanded rural resort communities’ abilities to tap into dollars from the voter-approved housing fund created by Proposition 123. 

McCluskie said local projects supported by those dollars are “starting to come to fruition,” but that it “takes time for implementation — it takes time for those dollars to translate to sticks in the ground.” 

Examples in her district include funding for Habitat for Humanity to construct two dozen for-sale homes in Granby and support for the town of Frisco to purchase the land underneath a multistory building that officials plan to redevelop into workforce housing. 

State funds that have subsidized housing projects at the local level are usually tied to affordability requirements that target low- and middle-income earners. That includes income limits for rental properties and capping the appreciation of for-sale homes through deed restrictions. 

Williams, who says he has multiple decades of experience in the housing development sector as a private contractor, believes those government initiatives are “probably the only answer to getting a roof over people’s heads right now” but still criticized the efforts for not translating to wealth-building opportunities.

“We have a whole generation of Coloradans right now that will never have any clue what it’s like to own your own home,” Williams said. 

Williams said his housing strategy would be to “move more and more towards the free market” in the belief that “at some point the (prices) are going to start coming down.” 

Williams said incentivizing private development will help reverse that. His plan to do so would involve gutting government requirements, such as around energy building codes, to cut homebuilders’ costs which he believes would make housing more attainable. 

What should the state’s role in housing be?

Officials in High Country communities have long argued that providing more market-rate homes won’t solve the affordability challenges facing residents. 

As of August, median single-family home prices in every single county in the district — aside from Jackson — were higher than the statewide median of $405,000, according to data from the Colorado Association of Realtors. Over the past decade, home prices on average in most of the district have consistently climbed. 

Part of that is due to the unique nature of mountain town markets, which see high demand for vacation homes from wealthier out-of-town buyers. Upwards of 50% of all transactions in areas like Summit County, where the median home price is above $2 million, are in cash, for example. 

That was the impetus for mountain officials’ backlash to proposed state legislation last year that sought to spur more home development by overhauling land-use codes. The sweeping bill, proposed by Gov. Jared Polis, faced intense pushback from municipal and state leaders, especially in mountain resort towns who said it lacked guardrails to ensure new development in their communities would be truly affordable. The bill ultimately died. 

State lawmakers this year resurrected the issue and mustered the votes to pass a slimmed down version that mainly targets populus Front Range cities. Mountain towns, however, were exempt from the provisions, which included boosting housing density near transit corridors, eliminating parking space minimums and removing bans on building accessory dwelling units. 

McCluskie, who was a cosponsor on the three key housing reform bills that passed this year, called those policies “a much more concerted effort to try incentive-based policy versus (a) mandate, or punishment, approach.”

One of the only major housing bills to pass that does affect the High Country — which McCluskie also supported — is SB 24-174. It requires nearly all local governments to complete housing needs assessments before 2027 and develop a plan to address those needs by 2028. Communities with plans that fail to meet minimum requirements set by the state would be unlikely to receive housing-related funding. 

McCluskie said “there are ways that our mountain and resort communities could better take advantage” of some of the strategies that have been asked of Front Range areas, such as building denser housing near transit centers. But she stopped short of calling for those mandates in the High Country, saying that transportation infrastructure, for example, is not at the level it needs to be to support requirements for new housing. 

Williams said he opposes any state plan to overhaul local zoning laws, adding, “I think it should absolutely be left to the communities. I don’t think a top-down approach works for anything.” 

He compared the recent legislation to the state requirements around energy codes, which he said has made it more expensive to build housing and, in turn, passes those costs onto homebuyers. 

Short-term rentals and second homes

To address the lack of year-round housing for local workers, some communities have turned their attention to short-term rentals in a bid to curb their impact on the housing stock. 

In some House District 13 communities, 1 in every 3 homes is used as a short-term rental. The available housing supply is further eroded by vacation-home owners whose properties may sit vacant several months of the year. According to state redistricting data as of 2021, half of District 13’s more than 70,000 homes are unoccupied. 

At the capitol this year, lawmakers fielded fierce debate over twin bills that would have quadrupled property taxes on vacation rentals by reclassifying those homes as lodging properties rather than residences. 

McCluskie opposed the efforts and said she would prefer to leave short-term rental regulations in the hands of local officials.

While new legislation — such as a proposal to allow local governments to institute a vacancy tax on homes — is likely to be proposed when the statehouse reconvenes next year, McCluskie has not committed to supporting any measures. 

“I do believe that municipalities and counties have worked hard to strike the right balance,” McCluskie said. “At this point, I really defer to those local leaders because they are in touch with their communities to try and craft something that is community specific.” 

Williams said he would “never support anything from the state level” that targets short-term rentals or second homes, adding that an increase in taxes would only hurt the viability of vacation rentals which are intrinsically tied to local economies. 

He said he doesn’t believe taxation or regulation would make second-home or short-term rental properties more accessible for local workers. 

“I don’t see any way that government getting involved in that could possibly make it better,” Williams said. 

Property taxes

Recent property tax reform is one of the few areas where state lawmakers have had a direct impact on Western Slope housing costs, albeit for those who already own homes. 

The surge in home valuations in 2023 led to sticker shock for homeowners across the state this year when they received their property tax bills. House District 13 communities with some of the highest property values, like Summit County, saw an average property tax bill increase of around 30% to 40% from 2023 to 2024. In most cases, that translated to hundreds or thousands of dollars in additional taxes for homeowners. 

Aiming to blunt the increase, particularly for lower-income households and retirees, state lawmakers have passed three series of property tax cuts since last year. 

McCluskie hailed the most recent effort that came out of an August special session in which state lawmakers passed bipartisan property tax relief in order to stave off two ballot measures being pushed by conservative groups that sought far deeper cuts. Had those measures passed, McCluskie said the effects would have decimated the state budget and jeopardized the ability for local entities, like fire and school districts, to provide essential services. 

“While I was frustrated at how we arrived at the solution that we did … I believed it was good governance for me to step up and do the responsible thing in the moment and make sure that we did not let those ballot initiatives move forward,” McCluskie said.

Ultimately, the cuts provided between the special session and another law passed this year will shave an average of $460 off a homeowner’s property taxes in 2025, according to an analysis from the Colorado Fiscal Institute. 

While Williams supports the legislation that was passed during the special session, in his eyes it was because state lawmakers were forced too rather than being “something the Democrats voluntarily stepped forward to do.” 

He added that the property tax relief that’s already been passed may not be enough and said it’s “absolutely possible” that he may support a call for additional cuts. Still, Williams said any cuts must be balanced with the needs of local districts that rely heavily on property tax revenue. 

Voter trust 

Beyond policy differences, Williams is hoping McCluskie’s more recent controversies as House speaker, from limiting debate for the first time in at least a decade to sponsoring a bill that shields state lawmakers from aspects of open meetings law, will be enough to sway centrist voters looking for change. 

Defending her speakership, McCluskie said she’s worked to “make sure that every member feels they get a fair shake,” that every bill receives a fair hearing and that “I am not making any power plays as speaker.” 

Regarding the changes to open meetings law — which narrows the definition of a public meeting between lawmakers by exempting certain text and email messages — McCluskie said the measure was intended to “modernize” the law to accommodate for how lawmakers communicate digitally. She gave the example of sending an email to every member of the legislature which, under previous rules, would have been considered an open meeting that required public notice. 

“And of course, that’s absurd. That is not what we believe the purpose of the open meetings law intended,” McCluskie said. “I think we did a fair job in trying to make those things work.” 

McCluskie added, “I do not assume that elected officials are automatically working to craft some sort of deal in the dark … and I want to assert that I approach this work with the best of intentions.” 

Williams too has faced complaints over how he conducts business. 

A lawsuit was filed in 2020 against Williams and his home building company, La Paloma Properties Inc, on behalf of a Chaffee County couple who contracted with Williams to build them a single-family home. 

The lawsuit alleges that Williams broke contract, raised costs beyond what was forecast without providing invoices and failed to adequately complete work that caused a litany of issues with the property — including “microbial contamination.”

The lawsuit was eventually settled out of court.

Asked why voters should trust that Williams has the experience to take on the state’s housing challenges in light of the claims against him as a housing contractor, Williams said, “I don’t have any reason to defend that whatsoever. 

“I’m comfortable with the fact that I’ve designed and built over 200 homes throughout central Colorado,” he added. “And if someone can match my employee satisfaction rate, good luck with that.” 

Representing a moderate district 

Campaigning in a blue-leaning district, Williams described himself as a “moderate, center-of-the-right” Republican. 

He has disavowed the divisive, far-right state Republican Party chair who shares the same name — with Williams voting for the state chair’s ouster earlier this year. And he said if given the chance to serve in the legislature, he would be a “pragmatic” lawmaker who values “policy, not personality.”

He has embraced some conservative talking points, particularly around education. In a statement announcing his candidacy, Williams criticized what he described as the “social indoctrination of diversity, equity and inclusion.” 

McCluskie, too, has made pragmatism a staple of her image as a lawmaker, seeking to garner Republican sponsors on several of her key bills and calling for more civility in the state House at a time when tensions are high and partisan divides have never been more apparent. Like Williams, she has angered some of those within her own party for sometimes taking more moderate positions. 

McCluskie looks to the legislature’s most recent special session on property taxes as an example of producing bipartisan agreements that she said “serves the greater good in the state of Colorado” even if it may not be seen “as a political win.” 

“The folks that hired me are the ones that tell me what my priorities should be,” McCluskie said. “I believe in compromise, I believe there is honor in compromise and most of the people that I talk to in this district are looking for solutions and are very open to how we solve the problems.”

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5. Ballots will be mailed to voters beginning Friday, Oct. 11.