Pikes Peak Housing Network’s mission is to foster innovative and collaborative solutions that advance housing affordability, access and production in the Pikes Peak Region.
Executive Director Jill Gaebler shares data and details about her work. Jill is a former member of the Colorado Springs City Council where she served two terms. Prior to that, Jill worked for Greccio Housing and served in the Us Air Force. Jill is also a former board member of Homeward Pikes Peak.
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Homeward Pikes Peak brings you a Place for everyone with interviews on different dimensions of substance abuse, homelessness, and housing. Homeward Pikes Peak empowers individuals and families to access stable housing, increase mental health, increase recovery and achieve economic stability. Learn more at homewardpp.org. You can reach us at (719) 473-5557. Street Outreach, housing, and clinical services are provided.
In response to Jill Gaebler’s 1/24/26 opinion piece in the Gazette on rent control:
I have been involved in real estate for over 50 years, primarily in Austin, Texas, and New York City, as an owner, investor, and manager of rental properties. Most of my experience was in Manhattan where I lived for 25 years, which, as anyone with any awareness of that market knows, is one of the most rent-controlled and rent-stabilized markets in the U.S. To be clear, I am of the progressive persuasion on basically all issues, including affordable housing.
Except for rare occasions when rental restrictions may be temporarily justifiable,, during a pandemic or war,* for example, there is nothing more counter productive to affordable rent than rental increase limitations on property owners. Fixing or limiting either initial rents or increases does not make housing more affordable, it makes it less affordable, because it drives investors and developers out of the market.
It is not necessary to detail all the reasons this happens because it comes back to arguably the most fundamental law of economics. Supply and demand. Governmental control of rents drives prices up for existing rental units because there will be fewer produced due to the disincentivization of development, which leads to fewer available units at the same time demand is increasing. Another fundamental law of many phenomena is that “everything returns tot he mean.” Rent controls create the illusion of cheaper rents for existing units, but it’s the will o’ the wisp, leprechauns and pots of gold. A fairy tale. Whoever controls the availability of a particular housing unit reaps the benefits of the imbalance. In New York City, it was possible to sometimes find, for example, a rent-stabilized 2br-2ba-frpl w/ city views (i.e., the brick wall of the adjacent building an arms length from you kitchen window) for $1,000 when market rate would have been $3,000 per month. The offset was that you had to pay a “key fee” to the super, compensate the lease-holder for moving out, pay attorneys for the landlord, the landlord, and the managing agent an array of fees (more accurately bribes), which could add up to several thousand dollars. So, the below market rentals were always market-rate rentals in disguise. You simply paid the market rate through a “buy-down” or “discount,” much the same way you might pay a 5% discount to get a below-market loan.
There is only one way to truly lower rents: increase supply. To do that, give incentives to investors and developers because, as one I knew put it, “Stay out of our way and we will always overbuild. That’s who we are.”
Trying to create affordable housing by limiting rents or rent increases is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. It has never worked and never will.
(There’s also an equitability and fairness issue, but that’s another discussion).
*These exceptions must be very narrow and limited because they quickly become baked into the calculus. WWII was the primary origin of rent control in New York City. Ending them after war was was impossible.