With the agency struggling to fill positions and housing costs rising across the state, the Colorado Department of Transportation is taking matters into its own hands.
As housing costs in Colorado’s mountain towns grow increasingly unaffordable, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is hoping a new initiative to build housing for CDOT employees will help the agency attract and retain staff. As Molly Bolan reports in Route Fifty, “About $6.5 million will be used to build 12 to 14 single-family homes in Fairplay and another $4 million in Frisco for 11 apartments.”
According to the agency, CDOT had a 20 percent vacancy rate for its road maintenance positions in November 2022. And while transit agencies face other challenges in hiring new workers—competition from the private sector, remote work, and hazardous conditions, for example—the lack of affordable housing is an important factor in the region.
While CDOT has been offering housing stipends since 2018, the current housing shortage makes it difficult for workers to find any available housing. Bolan adds that simply raising salaries is outside of CDOT’s jurisdiction, while the agency can control other forms of compensation such as hiring bonuses and housing stipends.
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