Affordable Housing in the West

In late July the City of Glenwood Springs hosted a virtual town hall webinar on homelessness. The meeting came about a month after a fire broke out in a rugged gully northeast of Walmart, causing a nearby apartment building to be evacuated. Although the fire lasted less than a day and reached just one and a half acres in size, its proximity to the town and likely origin in a homeless camp caught officials’ attention. The panel included the Glenwood Springs city manager, Chief of Public Safety, Parks and Recreation director, and fire Marshall, District Attorney Ben Sollars, and Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario. Today the KDNK news team invites you to our reporters’ roundtable discussing takeaways from that meeting. News director Marilyn Gleason was joined by Amy Hadden Marsh and Lily Jones. Part 1.

Some politicians in the Mountain West are renewing calls to transfer federal lands to state and local governments as a way to ease the affordable housing crisis. They argue that such transfers could provide much-needed space in fast-growing communities hemmed in by public lands.

KHOL's Will Walkey reports on debates over the future of the Jackson, WY rodeo grounds -- right in the middle of town -- that are heating up amidst a…