Changemaker: Amy Johnson

A concerned mom turned community organizer and developer, Amy Johnson did not expect she would become a housing expert. Growing up on the East Coast, she also never imagined she’d live and work on a cattle ranch, which is where she landed when she married Toby Johnson in 1995, moving to the family’s ranch just outside Kit Carson. A small town on Colorado’s Eastern Plains, Kit Carson is home to about 250 people.

“When our three kids approached school age, it became clear, due to declining class sizes, businesses closing, and various other factors, that our community was in a lot of trouble,” Amy recalled.

In response, in early 2005, Amy and a group of concerned citizens gathered and decided to reinstate a then-dormant nonprofit organization called Kit Carson Rural Development (KCRD), originally founded in 1993 through a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Following its reinstatement, Amy assumed the role of Treasurer of KCRD, and after a few years became its Executive Director. KCRD quickly got to work on small community improvement efforts including town cleanup projects, installing a welcome sign on the west end of town, landscaping a previously barren area of Main Street, and building a local park with a Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) grant. One of the group’s focus areas soon became housing.

“In the late 2000s, the superintendent of the town’s K-12 school approached KCRD and informed us that they needed to hire new teachers, but there was nowhere for them to live,” said Amy. “Our group took a look around and realized our community was facing a housing crisis. Teachers won’t come here if there is nowhere to live, and if we can’t hire new teachers, the school will be in trouble. If we lose the school, we lose the community.”

Faced with a complete lack of vacant and habitable homes, KCRD partnered with Prairie Development Corporation to renovate and remodel three formerly abandoned housing units. They then hired a local resident to help manage the units.

In 2010, KCRD was awarded a $1 million Hope VI Main Street grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for a project that ultimately created five new, low-income, single family homes for rent, and leveraged more than $300,000 in additional funds and in-kind work. A local property owner donated one of the sites, and a farmer donated his equipment and services for the demolition of dilapidated homes that sat on the lots. In the ensuing years, KCRD received additional grants from funders including HUD, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) and Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) to build and renovate more homes. This included an innovative development comprised of five new, modular single family homes purchased from Fading West, a modular housing manufacturer in Buena Vista.

“To date, we’ve built 13 homes and renovated another four homes, and all of them have been filled since their completion,” Amy said. “Our vision is not to own property. Our vision is to create opportunity. We currently own and rent five homes, and all the rest of the homes have been sold over the years. We are also proud to report that more than 20 percent of our K-12 population has lived in the homes that our organization has helped develop.”

As it has catalyzed housing opportunities, KCRD has simultaneously undertaken several commercial projects to spur local economic activity. In 2017, the organization purchased and renovated a vacant building that has been home to several local businesses. In 2023, a grant from CHFA enabled KCRD to hire Some Girls and a Mural to paint a mural on the front of the building, adding a welcoming facade to the structure. That same year, KCRD opened a commercial space called The Hub, which offers more than 4,200-square-feet of space for local businesses, including a shared workspace that is open to the community. One of the businesses renting space at The Hub is a grocery store called Katie’s Korner. Amy is quick to point out that the challenges that many communities in rural Colorado face might look different than the needs faced by more populous and expensive areas of the state.

“In rural Colorado, many communities were built along the railroads at the turn of the last century,” Amy explained. “Many of those houses built in the early 1900s were renovated in the 50s or 60s when asbestos was a common ingredient in building materials. Since then, many property owners have moved away. There is no incentive for them to fix up their houses to rent or sell, as rental rates and housing prices are so low. Low property taxes compound the problem, so these properties, filled with asbestos, just sit and continue to deteriorate.”

“Another issue we have is Kit Carson is an inverted housing market,” she continued. “The cost to build is more than we could sell for. As an organization, we have sold houses for half of what they cost us to build. The market is slowly getting better, but we are never going to attract a developer in this area. We rely on grants and other forms of assistance to get this work done.”

She also identified lack of capacity as a significant challenge that rural communities grapple with as they seek to address housing and community development needs.

“Kit Carson has one city worker and one clerk,” she said. “We not only need capacity to apply for grants (which are often complex), but once funding is awarded, we also have to find the capacity to administer this funding and track the program requirements, including ongoing affordability restrictions, many of which we already meet with our tenants and market prices.”

“Rural America just needs houses,” she continued. “There aren’t many funding opportunities that are geared directly toward small, rural communities with inverted housing markets. It would be amazing to see more programs specifically designed to help communities like ours.”

Under Amy’s leadership, KCRD continues its dedicated work to increase housing and economic opportunity, and to ensure that Kit Carson remains a great place to live and work.

“I got started doing this work to make sure that there would always be a school for my kids,” Amy explained. “Now all my kids have graduated, but there’s still so much work to do. Kit Carson is a great community full of wonderful people, and I don’t want to see it just survive, I want to see it thrive.”