Why Colorado Is Facing a Senior Housing Crisis
Colorado's population is rapidly aging. Soon, one in five people in the state will be be over 65 years old. Limited housing stock means seniors are stuck in too-large homes that they can’t afford to maintain. In turn, that means there’s fewer large homes for younger families who need them.
Today, Abby is joined by Katy Clagett, an incremental developer originally from Colorado who’s working to develop infill housing options for seniors. They discuss what Colorado’s situation means for communities and how we can reshape housing to be more adaptable to the needs of all age groups.
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Abby Newsham 0:00
Hi, this is Abby, and you are listening to upzoned.
Abby Newsham 0:18
Hi everyone. Thanks for listening to another episode of upzoned, the show where we take a big story from the news each week that touches the strong towns conversation, and we upzone it. We talk about it in depth. I'm Abby Newsham, a planner in Kansas City, and today I am joined by a very special guest, another Kansas Citian who has not been on this show before. Katy Clagget. Katy is that how you pronounce your last name?
Katy Claggett 0:46
Yep, that is!
Abby Newsham 0:46
I feel like I've seen it in writing, but that's how I sound it out in my head. So Katy Clagget, she is super awesome. She's an unconventional, small scale developer. She's been at the strong towns national gathering at least once, but Katy, maybe you can tell the audience a little bit more about yourself.
Katy Claggett 1:08
Yeah, sure. So I'm Katy Claggett. I'm originally from Colorado Springs, which will come in a little bit later when we talk about this article. But I've been in the Kansas City area since college. Essentially, I've worked in real estate for the past 10 years. I currently work as a commercial real estate appraiser. But then outside of work, I spend my time doing kind of weird off the wall, what I call unconventional, small scale development projects. So I've renovated an 1858 house. It's kind of a folk art house with lots of interesting handmade details. I worked on street murals in Lawrence, Kansas. I worked on the renovation of a house to convert it to a community center for a community garden in Kansas City. And then, most recently, I've been working on a paper alley reclamation project in my neighborhood in Kansas City. It's a paper alley that had become completely overgrown over the years. So we brought in sheep. We had something that we called flock party. We had a big community event, and we're trying to get this alley activated, because I love alleys. So that's kind of what I do in my free time. And eventually I want to transition full time into development. And right now I'm particularly interested in infill housing, and specifically infill housing for aging in place. So that's kind of a little bit about me. I really like Kansas City. I've been here for six years total. Really enjoy it, and, yeah, it's kind of where I'm at.
Abby Newsham 2:52
Everybody loves a good alley. I feel like Kansas City, alleys are kind of rare. Only a couple of neighborhoods really have them, and they're so underutilized.
Katy Claggett 3:04
They really are. I'm truly obsessed with alleys. On my first date with my now fiance, I took him on a walk down my favorite alley in Kansas City, and it's just a sign of, I think, how much he liked me, that he was willing to walk down an alley at 10 o'clock with a girl he had just met. And he ended up proposing to me in that same alley last year. So I just love alleys. I think they're so interesting. There's such a unique view of cities.
Abby Newsham 3:36
Yeah, they really are. And you know, they're kind of unconventional public spaces that when they're activated right, they're really lovely. When I was in DC a few months ago, I had the opportunity to take a tour of some alleys. They have a Washington alley project there, and, yeah, just some beautiful work that they've been doing there. And I'd love to see that happen in Kansas City. So it's cool that you've been leading the charge there to kind of reclaim some of these alleys.
Katy Claggett 4:07
Thank you. Yeah, it's a lot of work. We're doing it totally without support of the city, because they don't maintain them. They don't want to, as far as I know, and there are a ton of them in my neighborhood. So there's a lot of really interesting potential there. It just, you know, just takes some time, takes some work.
Abby Newsham 4:24
Definitely. I'll have to invite you back to talk about alleys sometime. Because today we are going to talk about housing. Not just any housing, housing for seniors. So we are covering a feature from the Colorado Sun entitled "as Colorado ages, seniors are colliding with the housing crisis." So this story highlights how Colorado's population is rapidly aging. Soon, one in five people in the state will be over 65 years old, but the housing stock was not built with their needs in mind. Many seniors are stuck in multi level homes that can't be easily modified, and they can't afford to maintain them either, or they can't find accessible single single story homes to downsize into. So as a result, less inventory is entering the market for younger families and low income seniors are basically bearing high costs from taxes, insurance and necessary home repairs, and there aren't a lot of options for them to actually move out of those houses. So today we are going to explore what that means for communities generally, and how we can reshape housing and maybe make it more adaptable and equitable across all age groups, and also exploring kind of how we build, how do we build resilient places that support and don't strangle both older and younger generations. So Katie, I appreciate you bringing this story. It's good timing, because I was having a lot of conversations this week, actually about senior housing, just because of some work that I'm doing, and it's been on my mind. So I'm glad that this was an article that you wanted to talk about. What's been your kind of personal experience with with this story? You said you're from Colorado, is this a story that kind of touches you personally?
Katy Claggett 6:34
So I like this story. It was done by the Colorado sun out of Denver. It's part of a larger series that they're doing right now called aging in Colorado. I think there are like seven articles right now, and I chose it because, for one, I'm exploring different opportunities and options for trying to develop infill housing for seniors in my neighborhood. So I'm really trying to kind of learn more about it, learn more about, you know, what components would need to be in that housing to make them, aging in place-appropriate, that kind of thing. There are a ton of seniors in my neighborhood in Kansas City. So being exposed to so many seniors, it just really makes me want to figure out how to build housing that they could live in. And then the other part is that my mom, Marianne Claggett, she worked as an activity professional. So what that means is she worked in nursing homes, and she planned activities for seniors. So that was what she did right out of college. And then she started a magazine called Creative Forecasting that she edited and wrote, published for over 30 years, and it was geared specifically towards activity professionals who work in nursing homes. So I kind of have this heritage of working with seniors in my life, and I think that, because of my interest in housing and development, this is one of the ways that I might be able to express that heritage. So yeah, it's just really interesting. And you know, my mom said something to me last year, there was, like, the prompt we were talking about it was like, if you had unlimited money, what would you do? And my mom said, I would build a community where there was housing for seniors and kids and people of all ages, where there were trails and animals. And it was just like this lovely, idyllic sounding place. I'm like, that sounds amazing, mom. I want you to be a real estate developer too. So I've just really been been thinking about that too, as part of all of this.
Abby Newsham 8:56
Yeah, it's interesting to think about the needs of seniors and in the housing that we have. You know, in my neighborhood. I just happened to live in a neighborhood where I don't know if it was habitat or another nonprofit housing developer had built several infill, single family houses that are all accessible. So they have little porches, but there's no stair. They're completely wheelchair accessible. And there's like a whole block of them. And they're actually pretty well designed. They're like craftsman style. I don't know what year they were built, but I don't think that they're older than 20 years or so, but, but it's interesting that that's not the norm for infill housing, and we just don't really see a lot of that. And likewise, most of the homes that we do have, even if we want to retrofit them, they just don't really have the ability to be accessible for, I think, a certain type of senior. Not not all seniors need their houses to be 100% accessible. But I think the article mentions that trips and falls become a significant hazard for people, so at least having limited stairs is ideal. What do you think this tells us about our planning and development priorities generally, and why we aren't kind of building in a way that supports all age groups?
Katy Claggett 10:31
I think that mostly we are not, as a society, as a culture, in a habit of thinking towards the long term, right? And that's largely a function of, we live in a capitalist society where profit drives many things, and profit is not derived in 50 years, right? It's derived in five years, 10 years. And so we just haven't been looking towards the future. And you know this article, it interviewed a broker in Denver who just said, "I have been talking to builders trying to get them to at least put a bedroom on the first floor of these townhomes they're building. And I don't understand why they're not. I don't understand why nobody has seen this need coming when the demographics have been very clear for a long time." So I think it's largely a function of our short term thinking. But then there's also the component of I assume that adding in these accessibility features, namely zero entry, single story and wider hallways and wider doorways, those seem to be the kind of main structural things. I imagine that they add some additional cost, but I don't know how much so that probably also factors in. And then I think that, when we think about accessibility, it's kind of an all or nothing thing. But I think the reality is that, if we were to focus more on these three main elements, and we built them into new construction, that house could work for a single person, a family with young kids. It could work for, you know, people in their 50s, and then it could also work for elderly people, disabled people. We just don't think about it like that, how it could be universal in that sense.
Abby Newsham 12:33
And what's unfortunate about that too, is that I mean, as the article spells out, even though these houses were not built for seniors, seniors are still aging in place, largely, and so that's lengthening housing turnover. It's making it harder for young buyers to actually purchase those homes and and utilize them. I think of even my dad, he's in the house that he's been in for 20 years, and he would die if I called him a senior. So if you're listening, you're not a senior. But you know, it's not uncommon that that people who maybe raise their families in these big, suburban houses, they end up kind of stuck there because they don't see a real option, and they don't necessarily want to move, unless they really have to, unless there's a real need to, especially in this market.
Katy Claggett 13:34
Yeah, I think the article talked about a couple of issues. One of those is, there's not a good substitute, right? Some seniors have a lot of equity in their homes, but housing market has changed and is crazy, and it's really hard for them to, even if they're downsizing significantly, find something that they like that fits in with these kind of aging in place parameters. There's that issue, and then there's the issue of, well, if you have a ton of equity in your house and you sell it, that income could actually affect how much Medicare Medicaid you receive, because it's such a boost in income.
Abby Newsham 14:12
Oh interesting.
Katy Claggett 14:12
Yeah, I didn't realize that, either. So that's just like one more kind of thing that might prevent seniors from selling their house and adding it back to the inventory. But you know, three in four seniors want to age in place. And aging in place is, from what I can tell from talking to my mom and from reading articles, it is the best option for seniors, especially if you're able to add on home care option. It's the best option for seniors, as long as seniors are not isolated within their homes. So that's kind of a really big part of it is making sure there's still a strong community around seniors, even if they are still aging in place. But it's just like the housing market in general. It's so complicated, and there are so many different factors that go into it. It's just kind of crazy. But you know, one thing that's clear is that, like all of us, seniors, want more housing options, right? That's just everybody wants, that everybody wants alternatives that are not in the market right now.
Abby Newsham 15:23
Yeah, and it's interesting. I think the article brings up the insight that nearly 37% of seniors spend over 30% of their income on housing, even if they own their house outright, which was interesting, because they they may have a lot of equity in their house, but that that's not liquid cash that they can actually utilize. It's in the house. And it kind of begs the question of, What does it say when owning your house kind of isn't enough? And how can we have more local resilience so that seniors are not, I guess, pushed into precarity.
Katy Claggett 16:08
Yeah, the article was talking about how, you know, some organizations, they have seniors who are literally like camping in their homes, you know, they maybe have turned off the water because they can't afford the bill, you know, and they just aren't able to maintain their properties. It's kind of a scary situation that we're setting ourselves up for here over the next 25 years.
Abby Newsham 16:35
Well, yeah, and, I mean, if it could be even longer, thinking about, you know, if you and I live until we're seniors, like we're all going to be seniors, hopefully one day. And so this is something that I think is is worth thinking about. In a perfect world, you would build all the housing to to be multi generational in some way that it can suit a variety of different age groups. But the reality is that we have a bunch of existing housing stock, and having a variety of housing stock is good because it can meet a variety of different needs, age groups, incomes, etc. But what happens when we have financial instances where people don't actually have the ability to move through the housing market to to align themselves with the housing typology that best suits their needs. It seems like we have a lot of mismatch right now, just because of that lack of fluidity, due to our, you know, financial system, the economy and other other things that are influencing that.
Speaker 1 17:56
Yeah, definitely. It's a huge issue. I also think about, like, in Colorado, you know, I grew up there, and I remember one of the kind of defining features of my memories there is just the sprawl, right? So much sprawl in Colorado. And these are usually, like, you know, two story houses, several 1000 square feet, probably with the basement, and they're far outside the city center. I think about like, if seniors have to stay in those houses, you know, I have a hard time seeing or understanding how they wouldn't become isolated, considering that there's not good transportation options. Obviously, there's still the opportunity to build community, even if you're in kind of a sprawling suburb. But I just imagine it gets harder and harder in those kind of, like, homogenous subdivisions, right? That's where diversity of housing stock, if they had their house and then an ADU behind it, at least there's somebody else that they can kind of create a micro community with, or whatever.
Abby Newsham 19:00
I think that's where this conversation about parked equity comes into play, right? Because equity does mean that there's some opportunity to maybe finance another model, but it has to align with with desire and needs. And I guess when it comes to retrofitting existing housing stock, there's some political will questions behind that. There's been a lot of communities that have allowed accessory dwelling units so people can take that, you know, three car garage that's that's attached to their house, and convert that into an accessible unit and then allow a family to move in. I've actually seen in my neighborhood -- I'm obsessed with this building. There's a house, and it's a pretty stately, nice old house down the street that it's probably worth, I don't know, like, $400,000. And that's high in Kansas City, by the way, for anyone who's listening who is in a different kind of market. So that's, that's high for, you know, Midtown, downtown Kansas City area, I think. But they had a detached garage that became an ADU, and they actually split the lot, and so they were able to sell it for like, $200,000.
Katy Claggett 20:28
Oh!
Abby Newsham 20:28
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Katy Claggett 20:30
I know the one you're talking about.
Abby Newsham 20:31
Of course you do.
Katy Claggett 20:32
I'm like how did they do that? How did they split that and sell it?
Abby Newsham 20:39
Yeah, that's so funny. You're probably the only other person that knows about this house, and I'm not surprised that you know about it.
Katy Claggett 20:47
I'm a little obsessive when it comes to the real estate market.
Abby Newsham 20:50
Me too. So that house is very close to me, and I see it all the time, and I'm so excited that somebody was able to buy a $200,000 house, you know, on a block with $400,000, $600,000 very stately, beautiful homes. It's a nice little cottage now that somebody can live in, and it does seem to be accessible. And I was thinking, this could be a real model for for seniors who maybe just want a little bit of space, and they don't need a lot of room. They just need something accessible, and maybe they want to live in a walkable kind of neighborhood. When it comes to more suburban contexts, I do wonder, though, if that is going to be the direction, or if the direction more so will be to build some kind of type of housing that actually entices seniors to cash out their equity and move, but with high construction costs, I think that's a little bit of a niche market.
Katy Claggett 21:59
Yeah. I think you might be right, but this is where it's like, well, if we just started building starter homes again, right? I know that's like a huge strong towns principle. The starter homes could be lovely housing for seniors. You know, I don't know because I don't see that in Kansas City. I don't see that being built. So it feels a little unproven that that is the kind of, you know, property that seniors might trade in their bigger houses for. But somebody is going to want those, like somebody wanted that, you know, 600 square foot ADU over the garage that we were just talking about. So I don't know, and that's something that I want to figure out if, if it's feasible to try and build those. My neighborhood has a lot of vacant land. They're all really tiny lots, and they just seem perfect for just like little 900 square foot starter homes, you know, or ending homes. That's kind of dark. It's a little dark.
Abby Newsham 22:53
It's your graduation home.
Katy Claggett 23:00
But yeah, I don't know if it's financially feasible in any way.
Abby Newsham 23:05
We'll have to talk more about that, because I've kind of wondered that as well. And if it's feasible to do like cottage court arrangements, but using cottages and starter homes as the housing type within a cottage court. You would think that would be buildable, but I am curious about it. I don't know the answer either, but it seems like that would be something that's perfect for seniors, because there is that communal orientation that that type of housing would be oriented in a neighborhood around open space, common areas, and that could be a desirable option.
Katy Claggett 23:49
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I want to live there. You know, this week, as I've been thinking about this and this article, I've been thinking about, Okay, as I age, what is the environment that I want to live in when I'm a senior? And I want to live in a small house on one plane, single plane living is really appealing to me always, with a tiny little yard close to neighbors, walkable, good transportation, you know? And it's like, that's what I'm gonna want when I'm older. It's also what I want right now.
Abby Newsham 24:26
Exactly. I mean, that's my house. My house, I think, is 900 maybe 1000 square feet. It is one story. It's a little cottage in a walkable area. It's funny, because I have called this my old lady house, just because it's me here alone and my dog and cat are old, and so I'm just like, it's just, you know, us old ladies here. But I when I think about my house, it's really just a box. It's very simple. It's not a complex structure. And so that's why it's been on my mind a lot like, why can't we just build this, this type of house all over the place? It would not just serve seniors, but I think a lot of different needs. But of course, the construction costs issue is a big part of this equation. Because, you know, if seniors want to downsize, maybe they have a 3000, 4000 square foot house. They have equity in it. They'd like to downsize. All of the newly constructed options are very expensive. So where is that incentive for them to actually cash out and move? You know, they may be perfectly okay with cashing out and then putting it all into another house and having maybe a small mortgage on it, but maybe not. I mean, that may not be enough of an incentive unless they truly have to move.
Katy Claggett 25:57
Yeah, it was interesting in the article. Another real estate broker that they interviewed said, you know, my wife and I sold our house, we took the proceeds, we invested it, and then we rented an apartment, and the return on our investment is enough to pay the rent on our apartment each month, and then we're able to live just really freely. I think part of this too, is like it's hard to go from being in your own house to renting an apartment. Even though that's a viable option, it feels like a real downgrade in so many ways. And, you know, seniors might end up having to do that eventually, out of necessity, right? But it's certainly not, I don't think the choice that most seniors are going to make kind of naturally. And then, you know, condos are also a really good option too. But I was reading about in Colorado, there's some really weird like liability laws, or, I guess lack thereof, that have really limited condo development. So this is like a really good housing type for seniors who don't want a garden or a yard, you know, no stairs, but they're not getting built because developers can't get the insurance that they need to build them because of these, the lack of liability laws.
Abby Newsham 27:18
Condos are a tricky housing type, right?
Katy Claggett 27:26
Yeah. But what a great way to get a high density of single, you know, single story properties on one parcel, you know? Better than like a three story kind of townhome that doesn't really go well with aging in place, but it's such a good product type if we didn't have all these insurance issues.
Abby Newsham 27:48
Absolutely. There's just so many issues with, you know, deferred maintenance that come along with condos, but there are some condos that are really well run and so there's a lot of nuance there, but yeah, it is essentially a bunch of one story units that seniors could live in and benefit from. And, you know, I think there's a couple buildings in Kansas City where that's just the case. It's a condo model. And there's quite a few seniors, I think, around the country club plaza area. So I think that we have a little bit of that, but it would be interesting to see kind of new models. It makes me think about there is a kind of a new co-op housing model that I've heard about that kind of addresses this reality that, even if we build new senior friendly homes, that they're going to be pretty expensive, maybe more expensive than existing structures. And while they may be downsizing, they're kind of upscaling financially. And the fact is that some seniors really have a lot of equity in their home, and they have also retirement investments potentially as well. So they may be less concerned about owning a home to build equity, but they still want some kind of ownership model. So in this example that I've seen, they actually have this. It kind of creates an opportunity where the seniors can sell their home and then they put a portion of their equity into kind of a co-op housing model, kind of like a land trust, and then they can put the rest of it in some other investment, if they'd like, or that, you know, allows them to be more liquid. But in the co-op model, they would basically put a portion of their equity into that, and they would own it, kind of like a land trust, and then they would be guaranteed a percentage return whenever they do happen to sell. But they kind of paid just like a monthly fee that's kind of like a rent, but it also covers maintenance and upkeep. And it's maintenance free housing, and it's really intended for seniors. And so the the model, basically, is this quasi ownership model without necessitating seniors to actually buy a new and expensive home, like outright.
Katy Claggett 30:25
Yeah, that's so interesting. I wonder how they're able to guarantee a rate of return. I mean, that has to assume that the market is only going to continue to improve.
Abby Newsham 30:35
I'll send you the example that I found, because it's in our metropolitan area, and it's really, really interesting. And I also have so many questions, yeah. But it sounds really interesting, because it kind of occurred to me when learning about it, that, you know, seniors may not be wanting to buy something just to, like, create a high return on investment, like they've done that with their house, but they don't necessarily all want to rent. So it creates that middle ground potentially. So I think that's kind of interesting.
Katy Claggett 31:11
Yeah, no, that that really is interesting. Yeah, please, send that to me. And I mean, all of this conversation has been kind of focused on, you know, seniors that have that have equity in their homes, right? And seniors that have this kind of financial opportunity. Unfortunately, there's so many seniors that don't have that, you know, and the only option that a lot of them have is to get into a nursing home that accepts Medicare, Medicaid. I was kind of reading about that, and it's so interesting, because in order to qualify for that, you have to expend all of your resources, including any equity that you might have in a home. So you essentially have to have a net worth of zero, really, to qualify for those and the cost to the states are an average at this point of $100,000 a person a year. So in terms of thinking about folks that can't afford aging in place, can't afford retirement communities, I mean, that's a cost that is going to ultimately fall on the states, and that cost is only going to go up. And from what I can tell, we are not prepared for that cost. So it's kind of scary in that regard. And, you know, I don't know what the solution to that is, either, right, political or cultural or, you know, I don't know, but that's kind of the other end of this spectrum that's even scarier.
Abby Newsham 32:48
That's where housing overlaps with the medical system and the insurance system. And that's way over my head, to be honest with you. It's concerning, but I have a lot of curiosity about how that works, and it's alarming to hear that that's how much some of these facilities cost to live in for a year.
Katy Claggett 33:16
Yeah, it's a huge number, kind of wild. But another interesting kind of option that they mentioned in the article was the kind of Monte Anderson, like, what do you call it the apartment house? What's his model?
Abby Newsham 33:35
Yeah, the apartment house. He calls it The Golden Girls house.
Katy Claggett 33:39
There was an article in this series that was talking about, they referenced Golden Girls and how, you know, filling up excess bedrooms is an option for people that have extra room, and there are organizations that are helping to place roommates in seniors homes. There's one in Denver that is doing this. The problem is that it takes, on average, for this organization, 30 hours to find suitable roommates to place in homes at a cost of $6,000. You know, they want to make sure it's a good fit. They want to make sure, you know they're going to get along, that kind of thing. But it's like, not scalable at this point.
Abby Newsham 34:29
I guess it's a point of reference for us all now, to make sure you maintain friends throughout your life, because they might be your roommates one day.
Katy Claggett 34:39
Yeah, exactly.
Abby Newsham 34:42
Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, Monte's model is very fascinating to me because, you know, one time he was telling me statistics about the the percent of the population who will be widowed at at some point. And so there's a lot of, like, single seniors that are needing a place to live. And I think that's a real niche market, and having these arrangements, where you can take maybe these one story ranch houses and make them co-op housing, that's an opportunity, right? I mean, it's a real opportunity. I think about my dad's house as a point of reference for this kind of thing a lot. And I wonder if there's instances where seniors might choose to age in place and add a bedroom on the first floor of their house, and then maybe their kids and their family moves in, and then they live in the house. Of course, you'd have to be okay with living with an in law, but I that's something that I think some families will do. I think ultimately, this all comes down to the fact that people are going to very incrementally respond to these issues in their own way, like there's so many different outcomes, and I think that that's what we'll see. Is a lot of different outcomes here.
Katy Claggett 36:20
Yeah, yeah. I tend to agree, although it scares me, because it feels like the housing shortage in general, this is something that we need, kind of immediately more solutions for. But it's just, how do you get to that point? So the only way that it can kind of happen is incrementally and in response to to a problem.
Abby Newsham 36:48
That's why I think housing adaptability is one of the most important things here. Because while people will come up with models that are unique, that can respond to this through new construction. That certainly will happen. I'm skeptical about the model scaling quickly enough to really respond to this in a meaningful kind of way, and people are just going to respond incrementally. And the extent to which we can allow housing to be adaptable is going to, I think, make or break some people.
Katy Claggett 37:30
Absolutely. I just want to say real quick, AARP is freaking awesome.
Abby Newsham 37:38
Yeah, they are
Katy Claggett 37:40
So awesome. I love AARP and all of the housing advocacy they do for missing middle, ADUs. It's just they're so awesome. You can get a bunch of like, printed books from their website, and I got like, how to build parks for people of all ages, and how to build community gardens for people of all ages. And it's just, they're just so awesome. Shout out to AARP.
Abby Newsham 38:07
Yeah, shout out. I think that when you're like, 32 you qualify for their benefits. Yeah, you don't have to be that old. FYI, yeah. I think it's like in your 30s, you become senior enough for AARP.
Katy Claggett 38:24
Wow. Okay, good to know. Getting a membership stat.
Abby Newsham 38:28
Absolutely, I should look at the age, because I might be old enough.
Katy Claggett 38:35
That's a good birthday present for somebody just turning 30, too. If they have a good sense of humor.
Abby Newsham 38:41
Yeah, I bet they'll love that. I wouldn't do that because then you won't have friends to live with when you're older.
Katy Claggett 38:48
Right. Gotta think in the long term here.
Abby Newsham 38:51
Yeah, you gotta play the long game.
Katy Claggett 38:56
I love that.
Abby Newsham 38:57
Um, okay, well, unless you have any other thoughts, I think we can probably leave it there. I appreciate you joining me today. Before we get done, do you want to do the downzone?
Katy Claggett 39:10
Oh, yeah.
Abby Newsham 39:11
Okay, I wasn't sure if you had one, so I'm glad you do.
Katy Claggett 39:14
Yes, I do. Do you want me to go? Okay, so my fiance and I are planning our wedding in 90 days. We're doing start to finish 90 days. We just started, I don't know, like, three weeks ago, and we're getting married in October. So it's like, a way to keep it as stress free as possible, just by limiting the amount of time that we can spend on the planning. Yeah, it's going really well so far.
Abby Newsham 39:46
That's great. Do you plan to have a big wedding or small wedding?
Katy Claggett 39:51
I think it'll be like 75 people, so kind of as small as as we could we can muster, but it'll be here in Kansas. There's a place called the south Moreland on the plaza. It's a beautiful kind of old inn, you know. Yeah, we're renting out the whole inn, and we're all going to be staying there with our nuclear family, and everything will just happen there, and it'll be very cozy and homey and simple and sweet.
Abby Newsham 40:14
That's lovely. Congratulations. Very exciting. My sister's getting married in October, and it's a larger wedding, and I've been kind of involved in that. And just seeing, you know, just seeing everything that's involved with a bigger wedding, it'll be really fun, but it can be stressful to plan for sure.
Katy Claggett 40:38
Yeah, our whole goal was like, how do we make this something that we're gonna actually just love being at, you know? Yeah, so that's kind of the North Star. We'll see how well we succeed at it when all is said and done.
Abby Newsham 40:52
I'm trying to think of a good downzone. I feel like I've been up to a lot of different things. Right now, I'm actually finishing up a painting that I did as a commission, which was kind of a fun process, so that's probably what I'll be doing this weekend. I've been working on that for the past couple of days. We're kind of in this like dog days of summer period where, you know, I've been working on my house and doing all this stuff, and it's like the past few weeks I've just slowed down. It's like I've hit my seasonal wall in terms of the summer and the heat. The heat broke last week, and I finally felt like, okay it's going to be fall soon. Of course, it's fool's fall but it's exciting. And so I've kind of started to get into some different habits and trying to change my routine. I've been like running in the morning and trying to get back into yoga and that sort of thing, and just like, moving. So that's kind of where I'm at. I feel like I get this way every year in August where I'm just ready for the season to change and I have to, like, you know, start jogging and moving around.
Katy Claggett 42:18
Well, I saw that that is like a term now. I don't know if it's like summer affective disorder, yeah, but it's like the opposite of seasonal affective disorder. But in the summer.
Abby Newsham 42:30
That's really interesting. I get so affected by the weather. I feel silly that I get so affected by the seasons. And I was just talking to someone yesterday about that. It's like, I feel like I don't even experience like four seasons. It's like there's, like 12 seasons in a year, like I'm so affected by the nuances of the season. And every August, I feel like things get so stale because of the longevity of the heat and the humidity, and I myself have to just start doing things until the weather changes.
Katy Claggett 43:16
That's so smart. Well, it's just right around the corner. So hang in there.
Abby Newsham 43:22
I know in January I'll be like, Why was I hoping for it to be cold? I go round and round, I'll do this every year forever. Okay. Well, Katy, thank you so much for joining me today, and I hope that you'll come back. Maybe we can talk about alleys and other fun topics in the future.
Katy Claggett 43:47
I'd love that. That sounds great. Thanks for having me.
Abby Newsham 43:50
Awesome. All right, thanks friend and thanks everyone for listening to another episode of upzoned. Thanks. Katy.
Katy Claggett 43:56
Thanks, bye.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
Hear more from Katy on The Bottom-Up Revolution.
“As Colorado ages, seniors are colliding with the housing crisis” by Brian Eason, The Colorado Sun (June 2025).
Abby Newsham (X/Twitter).
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Abby Newsham is the cohost of the Upzoned podcast. Abby is an urban design and planning consultant at Multistudio in Kansas City, Missouri. In her own community, she works to advance bottom-up strategies that enhance both private development and the public realm, and facilitates the ad-hoc Kansas City chapter of the Incremental Development Alliance. When she’s not geeking out over cities, Abby is an avid urban mountain biker (because: potholes), audiobook and podcast junkie, amateur rock climber, and guitarist. You can connect with Abby on Twitter at @abbykatkc.