A program that provides grant incentives for owners of short-term rental properties to convert to long-term leases is set to end this year after Summit County officials decided against changing the model to support businesses. 

Since 2021, Lease to Locals, which began as a partnership between Summit County and the town of Breckenridge governments, has provided grants meant to give homeowners the ability to offer below-market-rate leases while still generating revenue similar to what they would get if they short-term rented. 

Last year, commissioners approved their final round of funding for the program in unincorporated areas of the county. While they extended funding into 2024 in order to prevent existing tenants from being displaced, the program did stop accepting new applicants. 

Officials had been considering a proposal from Placemate, the company that runs the program in Summit County as well as in other resort communities across the U.S., that would have shifted subsidies from homeowners to businesses through the creation of a master leasing program. The idea was to create more opportunities for employers to provide housing to their employees by tapping into county funds to help pay for the cost of a lease. Units would then be sublet to individual workers, with the potential of even sharing spaces between employees of different businesses. 

But in an update to officials during a May 7 Summit Board of County Commissioners meeting, Placemate founder and Chief Executive Officer Colin Frolich said he was not recommending the proposal at this time given a number of challenges. 

“Unlike Lease to Locals, we felt like the mismatch between property availability — start-date, location, size and property desire — would be a big barrier,” Frolich said. “That was, I think, the first red flag: Would we have the right units available at the right time for the businesses when they needed them, and how would we play match-maker there.'” 

Frolich continued, “With Lease to Locals, we were able to bridge that gap because we didn’t go out and select tenants. The landlords found them … (so) having to be the bridge between the employers and ultimately the employee really gave us pause.” 

That issue was one of several identified by consultant Emily Vitas, who was contracted by Placemate to study the feasibility of rolling out a master leasing program. 

Vitas, the former executive director for the Truckee Tahoe Workforce Housing Agency in California, helped create a master leasing pilot program in Tahoe, which she looked at as an example for Summit County. 

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While the Tahoe program was successful at housing 20 local workers, Vitas said those were residents who were using it only as transitional housing before finding a more long-term option. She said this proved to be a great recruitment tool for businesses in the area but may not meet the needs of Summit County, which is focusing more on workforce retention. 

Another program in Winter Park, which has been active for two years and is currently sunsetting, also saw success with 40 total rooms provided to workers of 14 businesses. But like the Tahoe program, it served more as a recruitment tactic rather than a long-term housing solution, Vitas said. 

In the case of Winter Park, getting more businesses involved in the program proved to be challenging as some were deterred by the master leasing model, which places more work and responsibility on the shoulders of employers, Vitas said.

“There’s just a lot of concern around the master leasing model because of the capacity and resources required to effectively administer it,” Vitas said. “Asking an employer or a business to effectively run a business but then also act as a landlord … is a lot to ask.”

In a poll of Summit County employers that included Arapahoe Basin Ski Area, Copper Mountain Resort and St. Anthony Summit Hospital, most showed little to no interest in being part of a master leasing program. 

“Both of the (ski) resorts have actually moved away from master leasing because it no longer fits their model,” Vitas said. “They’re looking at development. They’re looking at larger blocks of apartment units, and that really benefits their model with the seasonal employees.” 

St. Anthony Summit Hospital, while currently master leasing around 10 units, sees most of those used by traveling professionals, with most of the units sitting empty half of the time, Vitas said.

Frolich said that by only being able to provide the master leasing program to unincorporated areas, it significantly limits the pool of businesses that could participate. He added that, given the burden on employers, the program would have needed to secure help from a property management company, but a suitable organization couldn’t be identified. 

Commissioner Nina Waters asked if pursuing a master leasing program would still be worth it given that “business owners have been saying to us for a long time that they’re needing housing for their employees.” 

Commissioner Eric Mamula said that businesses will continue to need housing for employees, but that the program’s structure as proposed creates too many headaches for small business owners. Those include dealing with situations where an employee who is also a tenant moves out early, damages a property, takes a new job or is fired by their employer. 

“It’s one thing for the bigger businesses. … They have different avenues to solve their own problems,” Mamula said. “I appreciate all the work that’s been done on this, but I’m good on putting this thing to bed and finding other alternatives as time goes on.”

Commissioner Tamara Pogue said she agreed the model would be too complicated for small businesses. Instead, Pogue proposed using an authority granted by the state legislature that allows counties to issue property tax rebates as a way to support businesses that are already providing some form of employee housing. 

“I know we’ve been talking about tax credits primarily for folks who long-term lease, but I would like for us to explore how we could provide tax credits to businesses,” Pogue said.