Workforce & Affordable Housing

The Frisco community and Frisco Town Council have made affordable workforce housing a strategic priority, and the Town now has its own comprehensive housing plan, which incorporates multiple strategies to insure employees are able to live where they work.

Why is workforce housing a challenge?

Mountain communities, like Frisco, are great places to visit, and their popularity as vacation destinations commonly results in a shortage of affordable workforce housing because of the prevalence of vacation homes and vacation rentals and the lack of affordable for rent and for sale homes that are inherent in a community with limited buildable land. Couple this with a tourism based economy, which primarily produces lower paying service jobs, and housing the local workforce becomes challenging.

The 2023 Summit County Housing Needs Assessment provided valuable insight into housing needs across Summit County.

Finding Housing Solutions

While the 2023 Summit County Housing Needs Assessment provided really useful information about Summit County as a whole, Frisco Town Council believed that Frisco would benefit with a deeper dive into Frisco’s unique housing needs. Subsequently, Frisco recognized the need for a Frisco focused Strategic Housing Plan to responsibly invest future community resources to better support Frisco’s community members and businesses.

In October 2024, Town Council approved the Frisco Strategic Housing Plan, which grew out of a year-long, comprehensive, community-driven process to create the first community-wide strategic plan focused on housing. The plan identified the need for an additional 329 workforce units (151 ownership and 178 rental) over the next 10 years. These 329 units are in addition to the workforce units already in the pipeline for or in construction. The plan identifies 18 priority sites to meet these goals, which would require partnerships and public and private efforts for an approximate investment of $188 million in the next 10 years; these 18 sites may be identified in the plan as potential locations but there is no definitive plan to purchase or develop these sites at this time.

The goals of Frisco’s strategic housing planning process were:

• To build off the 2023 Summit County Housing Needs Assessment by specifically pulling data from this report as it applies to Frisco. Utilizing this data and gaining further insight specific to Frisco to identify housing needs and gaps within the Town, identifying needed product types for new construction or conversions, and propose strategies for addressing the identified needs.
• To evaluate the goal of having 50% of the housing units in Frisco occupied by year-round residents. This goal of 50% may need to be adjusted based on the findings of this study.
• To evaluate the impacts of housing production on Frisco’s economy.
• To provide a blueprint for the creation of effective policy and programs to support housing, maintain a healthy economy, provide effective community services, and maintain a high quality of life for our residents. To answer the question: “How do we plan and manage for residential growth in Frisco?” Through scenario planning, financial analysis, and an interactive buildout model supplied by the Strategic Housing Plan, the Town will have a focused road map on how to advance housing solutions based on current and future needs.

Workforce Housing Funding

• In November of 2006 the voters authorized a County-wide 0.125% sales tax and a development impact fee for affordable housing purposes. This was renewed by voters in 2015 into perpetuity.
• A new construction fund (5A) .6% tax was approved by Summit County voters in November of 2016 and was extended in 2021 by voters to extend until 2047.
• In April 2022, Frisco voters approved a 5% excise tax on short-term rentals (STRs) to address workforce housing needs. This tax does not apply to traditional lodging, such as hotels and motels.