Co-Living at Aurum Makes Living in Golden Affordable

Colorado is in a housing crisis and needs innovative solutions to solve it. Co-living is one means of providing more people with affordable housing.

A recent Common Sense Institute report that found that Colorado is 195,000 units short of every housing type needed to meet the current demand. Add this to the necessity of building new housing to meet future demand, and you can see that housing affordability is a problem that’s only going to get worse.

Confluence Companies sees co-living as part of the answer. We recently opened our Aurum Living co-living development in Golden and have found that it’s a residential model that’s both affordable and appealing to people who want to live in a place that’s part of a community.

Aurum is designed to appeal to a wide demographic, including students at the Colorado School of Mines, young professionals, digital nomads, empty nesters, and Golden’s workforce.

Co-living is a trend that’s catching hold nationwide and could help with housing affordability. Cushman & Wakefield recently reported that the number of co-housing bedrooms available or in development across the U.S. rose 20% to 74,000 in 2022, up from about 62,000 in 2020.

By their nature, co-living communities foster connections as residents share common areas such as kitchens, dining areas and community rooms.

The apartments don’t have ranges, so residents mingle in the kitchens, living and dining areas in the complex’s three community rooms. Aurum also features a “laundrocade” — a laundry rooms with an arcade built into it — as well as a gym and outdoor patio space. To fulfill the need for a growing remote workforce, Aurum also has dedicated work-from-home offices and conference rooms.

Not including features like washers and dryers and ranges allowed us to build smaller units, which contributes to our ability to keep rents affordable. We also developed the project without public subsidies or mandates to include a percentage of affordable units.

Aurum’s 165 units are 96% leased with an average rent that is affordable to those making between 75% to 82% of the Area Median Income (AMI). Rents started at $1,339 for a Studio, $1,570 for 1-bedroom and $1,610 for a furnished unit.

Tim Walsh is founder and president of Confluence Companies, a Golden-based real estate development, construction, investment and property management company with more than $2 billion worth of development projects.