Boulder Facebook group helps renters find housing

With the average price of a home in Boulder nearing a million dollars, according to Zillow, residents in the city have built their own solution online: a Facebook group designated for finding open rooms, roommates, and affordable housing.

Boulder Creative Housing has grown to nearly 70,000 members since its start in 2012 and connects people searching for housing in Boulder with renters in the community. Posts searching for two housemates in a house that costs $700 a month per person and college students looking for rooms for rent with budgets below $1,700 a month flood the Facebook group daily.

For Brett Banfe, who has been one of the group’s moderators for the past eight years, the appeal goes beyond finding a cheaper room.

“The decision-making process is easier when it comes to who to live with, and you can also see certain things like information about them. You know, maybe they like to go hiking and camping, because they have pictures of themselves doing those activities.” Banfe said. “It’s important to find someone that you’ll be living with that has some of the same values as you.” 

According to Realtor.com research, one-third of young adults nationwide live at home with their parents, often unable to afford independence until years after college. Young adults in college or just starting their careers in Boulder are the most active on the Boulder Creative Housing Facebook page, according to Banfe. 

The Facebook group offers an alternative middle ground where rather than jumping straight into a 30-year mortgage or staying dependent on their parents’ household, members find one-to-three-year leases with roommates they’ve personally gotten to know online and can trust to split the costs of housing with.

Denver resident Charlotte Swenson is attending law school at the University of Colorado Boulder this fall and used Boulder Creative Housing as a resource to find housing. She heard about the page through friends and even met someone in person from the Facebook group to discuss a potential living situation. 

“It’s nice because it feels like it takes some of the burden off of the person seeking housing,” Swenson said. “So if I put the post on there, then other people who need roommates or people to fill their apartments will reach out to me. It was kind of convenient that I didn’t have to do all the work, and I could connect with people that maybe weren’t (on Zillow) or had cheaper options.”

Although Swenson eventually found housing for herself through Zillow, she still used Boulder Creative Housing as one of her resources and said that Boulder Creative Housing can be “good for people looking for budget-friendly options.” 

According to Banfe, the Boulder Creative Housing Facebook page runs on a “sphere of high trust” where judgment calls are made by moderators. This means moderators volunteer to spend their time weighing which listings are legitimate, which new members are who they say they are, and, occasionally, stepping in when something looks like a scam.

The rules of the page prohibit items for sale, short-term rentals, promotions and spam. Members are also asked to report posts that violate the rules and to be courteous to one another. 

Banfe doesn’t run the page alone. Charla Harvey has been part of the Facebook group for 13 years and was promoted to the admin team when the founder left four years ago. As someone who acknowledges that “it’s hard to find housing”, she has seen firsthand how the group has become a lifeline for people the traditional market leaves behind.

“There’s affordable housing in Boulder,” Harvey said, “but it’s like $2,000 a month, so affordable for who?”

The gap between what’s advertised as affordable and what’s actually attainable has drawn attention from Boulder officials. City estimates found as many as 4,000 of Boulder’s roughly 48,000 housing units sitting vacant.

A group of residents petitioned to put a vacancy tax on the November ballot, proposing a $7,000 annual fee on homes and commercial spaces left vacant for more than half the year. That petition was withdrawn in April after the Boulder City Council agreed to refer its own measure to voters, covering only vacant homes and imposing a lower $2,000 annual tax.

Even if the vacancy home tax passes in November, any policy shift will take time to affect the housing market. For the nearly 70,000 members of Boulder Creative Housing, the group remains the faster, more immediate route to finding a place to live in the city.

“Even with all the efforts that Boulder is taking, it’s still going to just be a drop in the bucket in terms of the actual need that the community has,” Banfe said.

Swenson described the market for housing being “really intense” right now in Boulder and said that Boulder Creative Housing is a stress-reducing alternative that is filling a need for people in Boulder.

“The group provides people some support and comfort knowing that they’re meeting in person and they might be able to secure this in a more casual way than with the traditional realtor brokers,” Swenson said.

That informality is part of the appeal for members, and the “sphere of high trust” built within Boulder Creative Housing relies on volunteers like Harvey and Banfe, who have spent years screening new members and stepping in when something looks off. 

For them, the hours they put into the group are all about bringing people together in Boulder to highlight the available affordable housing options in Boulder.

“I actually really love to help connect people in the community and be able to help people be housed,” Harvey said.