Solving a community problem doesn’t happen without some bravery. After all, it’s not enough to come forward with a detailed solution — you need to be the best advocate you can be for your proposal and make it easy for others to invest in your vision.

That’s easier said than done, but it is just what Habitat for Humanity of the Roaring Fork Valley is accomplishing with its proposal to build a modular home production facility in Rifle. Just this month, Rifle City Council voted unanimously to lease Habitat for Humanity a 10-acre parcel of land to habitat for one dollar. Both the amount of the lease and the unanimous vote show just how much opportunity Rifle City Council sees in the proposal.

If constructed, the benefits of such a facility would be numerous. The facility would produce roughly 100 homes a year, which would be sold for below Garfield County’s median sale price. Both one- and two-story homes would be made at the facility, and Habitat is partnering with Colorado Mountain College to help make sure the facility provides much-needed workforce training for an expected 30-50 students each year. Finally, the facility is expecting to create 27 full-time jobs with the project.

To recap, the facility helps produce much-needed housing stock, provides critical training for our region’s workforce needs and creates jobs. Talk about a win-win-win.

It comes at a time when our housing woes continue to worsen — a 2017 housing needs study showed 4,000 units were needed for our region from Aspen to Parachute (and including Gypsum and Dotsero). That need has since increased to 6,800. Some might say this is just an Aspen problem, but Garfield County is by no means a collection of bedroom communities. We have our own businesses and industries, many of which continue to struggle hiring and retaining workers because of a lack of affordable housing.

As obvious as it seems to us, however, we know it has still taken considerable effort by Habitat for Humanity of the Roaring Fork Valley to get to this point. It’s not the only project Habitat is working on (they’re also building units in Glenwood Springs and Rifle), but the production facility brings such vision to our community’s greatest challenge. 

Imparting that vision takes so much effort, and Habitat for Humanity has done so much more to get to this point. Director Gail Schwartz is no stranger at numerous governmental meetings and has also made significant effort to connect to state and federal resources.

That hard work is how the project has also gotten Gov. Jared Polis to put his support behind the project and seek $3 million in federal funding from Congress — an ask that already has significant support from our state’s U.S. senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper.

To see it all coming together is exciting and makes us incredibly hopeful we’ll see the ground break on the modular home production facility in Rifle soon. This is an excellent example of different entities uniting to bring innovative ideas to tangible results. There’s more work to be done, for sure, but we’re confident that Habitat for Humanity is more than up to the task.

The Post Independent editorial board members are Publisher/Editor Peter Baumann and community representatives John Stroud, Mark Fishbein and Amy Connerton.