Mountain Housing Assistance exists because our workforce, care providers, educators, public service people, volunteers, elders, and residents of our small mountain town cannot keep showing up if the town has no place left for us to live. We were founded on that simple fact, and have been working on the long answer to it ever since.
MHA's founding work centered on what would become the Bobcat Ridge project — an 18-acre site at the edge of Nederland, sponsored by longtime ranch owner Kayla Evans because she believed mountain towns owe their working families a place to call home.
From that beginning, MHA has grown into a three-entity housing organization capable of carrying a project from raw land through entitlement, financing, construction, and long-term resident services. Since 2013, we have spent more than thirteen years building relationships with Boulder County, the Town of Nederland, Boulder County Housing & Human Services, the Colorado Housing & Finance Authority, and the residents of Nederland themselves.
We do this work slowly, deliberately, and in public.
Nederland looking west — the school, the valley, and the Bobcat Ridge property in fall.
Affordable and workforce housing demands three very different skills — developing the building, operating the building, and capitalizing the building. MHA does not try to do all three from a single vehicle.
The development company. MHA, LLC is the entity that holds land, carries entitlements, contracts with architects and consultants, and structures construction financing for completed projects.
MHA, LLC is the listing party in real-estate transactions involving its projects and the counterparty that municipal and county partners engage with on land-use matters.
MHAP is the property and resident-services arm. It operates completed buildings with a social-services orientation — long-term tenancy, income certification, resident support, and stewardship of place — not transactional property management.
MHAP is structured to meet the standards of Boulder County HHS, CHFA, and other regulatory partners whose programs require mission-aligned operators.
MHAT holds capital. It is the patient-money vehicle that funds pre-development work — the studies, plans, surveys, entitlements, and engagement that have to happen long before any vertical construction is possible.
MHAT is also how MHA aligns long-horizon, mission-aligned investors with long-horizon housing outcomes — capital that expects to wait, for buildings designed to last.
Projects are shaped with the towns they sit in. The plan for Bobcat Ridge was built through years of Community Heart & Soul engagement, county hearings, and resident input.
We design for long-term affordability — through LIHTC, housing-assistance partnerships, and ownership structures that don't quietly expire. Affordable on day one and affordable in year twenty.
Mountain land is finite and old-growth forest is irreplaceable. Our designs concentrate development, preserve forest, and treat the natural site as infrastructure.
Studies, plans, and our project history are open to our municipal partners. We expect rigorous review and welcome it.
Creating and integrating mixed-income properties and philosophies with existing communities takes vision, patience, and detailed attention to understanding localized values. Our team consists of lead principals with more than 30 years each working as professionals in the areas of construction, real estate, and finance in mountain areas, primarily in Colorado.
Chairman of CREA Real Estate and a Colorado Principal Broker of more than 30 years. Engineering Physics, CU Boulder. Founded Alpine West Homes; co-founded Cornerstone Group Holdings; former Managing Director of KW Commercial for the Rocky Mountain region. Leads MHA's real-estate strategy and municipal engagement.
Swiss-born founder and CEO of The Symmetry Companies, with more than 30 years spanning architecture, engineering, and project management. Henry leads MHA's construction and delivery — translating entitled plans into built communities and carrying projects through design coordination, contracting, and vertical construction alongside the real-estate and finance teams.
Director of Finance for MHA and Board Director at SCB Bank. Maria brings institutional banking discipline to the trust's capital structure and oversees financial modeling, capital partnerships, and lender relationships across the MHA entities.
Owner of the historic Arapahoe Ranch near Nederland — a collection of fifteen rustic cabins she rents as a lodging property within the larger 650-acre Arapaho Ranch — and the founding land sponsor for Bobcat Ridge. Her commitment to the working families of the high country set MHA's first project, and the organization itself, in motion.
The Bobcat Ridge page walks through the property, the six-parcel plan, and the pre-development work already on file. The Town Partnership page sets out what we are asking of Nederland.