Originally Posted by
alpinevibes
Oh man, that blew up. I read her piece on Monday morning and started laughing. Chatted with my coworker (whose husband writes for the ADN) and we just thought it was so sad, but now I'm seeing both the TGR ire and I read through the [mostly terrible, pointless and inaccurate] FB comments. Anyways, she's a classic entitled newcomer who doesn't know how the [complex APCHA] system works and got dealt a bad hand.
APCHA has both APCHA-managed rentals (which would filter this situation out) and private-managed rentals that fall under their rules. The problem here is that private rentals don't have much oversite, beyond the renter qualifying. The fault here is on the idiot property manager for letting her in and not knowing the steps. I know a few other people here who have walked up to the PM office at one of these privately-managed complexes and ended up getting a rental, that day/week, solely because they were there at the right time, or they were nice, or pretty, or whatever. There's poor management and no effective waitlist/process for some of them - which allows the ignorants/newcomers to end up in a lucky or unfortunate situation, both at the detriment of someone whose arguably in greater need. That said, I don't have much sympathy for her - especially with the letter she wrote, her social media presence, the GoFundMe, "forever home" etc etc .
Not at all but when some of the privately-managed rental units turn over, the management seems to do a poor job lining up a tenant that actually has time/commitment here and likely understands the process better than someone like this girl. She was in the lowest category of rental units, based on her $54k combined income cap for two people - she should never have been allowed into that without a roomate already ready, nor without APCHA approval. There aren't a ton of these Cat 1 rentals out there, but there are plenty of people in the service industry who could qualify into them.
In a vacuum, yes, but the original design of the program (40+ years ago) was to provide affordable housing for both rentals and ownership units - that would allow people to stairstep into other ownership/living situation. Obviously the housing market here has skyrocketed well past that being a possibility in most cases, but the momentum and framework continues. FWIW, APCHA has ~1100 long-term rentals, 275 seasonal rentals and 1700 ownership units, so it's not solely lucky winners (like me) that make up the model.
It sounds like she didn't qualify, initially, but the dumb dumb PM allowed her to move in and sign the lease, solely by checking off that her income was low enough. Once APCHA got involved, they likely said no to her having the 2bd as a solo person. If she was in a Cat 1 1bd, i think she would qualify to be in there. Either way, the PM should have pointed her to APCHA first, to qualify and get blessed to be able to apply for a unit.
While entitled and cringey about her reaction to her situation, she's not entirely at fault. But the fact that other people cheat the system or own other properties (fully allowed outside the Aspen region), or whatever doesn't really change her situation. I think most of the people living in APCHA housing are more-or-less legit, with some number fudging, etc. And I think the system will continue to improve and get cleaned up as they implement a lot of new initiatives and audits that were totally absent for decades prior. APCHA needs new employees and new energy, but it's not as corrupt as outsiders and butthurt non-winners like to project.