DENVER — The unprecedented housing crisis in Colorado will soon see an equally extraordinary flood of cash. In Colorado’s high country, where affordable housing is a decades-long issue that exploded into a catastrophe last year, an army of developers on the front lines of a complex campaign to build workforce housing are ready to help guide the sudden influx of funding.

Their first tip: hurry.

“As a developer of affordable and workforce housing we are feeling the intensity of the timing here,” said Kimball Crangle, the Colorado market president of Gorman & Co., which is building neighborhoods in Summit and Routt counties. “We know if we can’t get it done right now, in two years the opportunity is likely to be gone. If we don’t get housing created and set aside for the workforce of these towns, the lights will be on but nobody will be home. These are going to become ghost towns.”

State and federal money is coming soon. House Bill 1271 would provide $13 million to communities that adopt rules that promote affordable housing projects. The legislation would create three grant programs for housing development, planning and a “affordable housing guided toolkit” for communities, all managed by the Division of Local Government in the Department of Local Affairs.

The federal American Rescue Plan Act directs $3.8 billion to Colorado. The state’s Democratic lawmakers have identified affordable housing as a priority for that money with $150 million funneled toward housing projects in the coming weeks and much more in the 2022 legislative session. Details on how that money will be spent on housing are scant.

Read more at ColoradoSun.com.