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The cost of living in Teller County and other rural parts of Colorado’s Seventh Congressional District was at the forefront of a presentation by U.S. representative Brittany Petersen on Oct. 5 at the Ute Pass Cultural Center.

The presentation and subsequent question and answer period were the focus of the “Eggs and Issues” breakfast, sponsored by the Greater Woodland Park Chamber of Commerce.

“When I was campaigning, the No. 1 issue that kept coming up was housing,” said Pettersen, who is one of two freshmen on the House Financial Services Committee. “Our secret is out; Colorado is the best place to live and as soon as those remote working opportunities happened with the pandemic, you all were significantly impacted by people moving here.”

But skyrocketing prices are just the beginning.

Part of the housing crisis along the southern part of her district, which includes Teller and Park counties, is that homeowners are often unable to get insurance due to wildfire risk. Pettersen said she is working on an alternative that would provide a public option for insurance much like what has been done with areas where flood insurance has become prohibitive or unavailable.

“We need to address the long-term impacts of a drier climate and what it means for communities like this,” Pettersen said. “This continues to be more important as we continue to see extreme weather events increase.”

She said that part-time residents have also contributed to the spiraling prices.

“A concern I have is how many people are buying up our stock of housing to go there two weeks out of the year and it sits vacant the rest of the time,” she said.

Pettersen wants to incentivize people to rent out these homes and make the spaces available. She said that the overburdened cost of living is forcing entry-level workers to move away from where they grew up. That creates a cascading problem for business owners who can’t recruit and maintain workforces.

“Places like this, I’ve heard from community members who have said they’ve seen houses over the last couple of years go up threefold,” she said. “I’m working on building bipartisan relationships; working across the aisle, trying to find common ground on how we can increase the housing supply with financial incentives that are necessary to do so.”

Other critical pieces to the cost-of-living puzzle are inflation and high interest rates. She continued to blame the pandemic for inflation, pointing to increased federal spending intended to keep business owners and government programs afloat. She also mentioned the collapse of the supply chain.

She said the rising interest rates are the only tool the Federal Reserve has to try to rein in inflation. She acknowledged that things look bleak at present, but is hopeful the recovery is near.

“We have a lot to be hopeful for,” Pettersen said. “In where we’ve come and the opportunity that we have to move forward in our recovery.”

She thinks immigration reform could a part of that recovery.

Petterson said that many businesses tell her that the No. 1 problem that needs to be solved is providing legal pathways for immigrants to work in the United States.

“Every business owner here, you all know it, you can’t find people to hire; you can’t fill these slots and there are people who want to work here and we don’t provide a pathway for them to do so.

“It makes no sense.”

Pettersen concluded by addressing the recent removal of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the ongoing stalemate on the budget and the need to increase taxes on the wealthy.

She said that the disfunction shown over the removal of McCarthy and the budget has a silver lining.

“The thing that gives me hope every day is that the people you see on TV who are making the news represent a small percentage of people in congress,” she said. “It’s the people who are actually rolling up their sleeves, doing the work that they were elected to do, being the professionals that they were elected to be that give me hope every day. That’s on both sides of the aisle.

“It’s not as bad as it looks although it is pretty bad right now.”