AURORA | Aurorans and area residents shared their anxieties about the cost of living, accessibility and equity at the first stop on Gov. Jared Polis’ statewide listening tour Thursday.
More than 100 people — including several of Polis’ cabinet members, local officials, educators, servicemembers and others from the community — gathered at the Aurora Public School Professional Learning and Conference Center to discuss challenges regarding transportation, water, small business and workforce development.
Polis later said the specific topics for the event were chosen because all four issues impact Coloradans’ ability to succeed and encompass most major issues facing residents.
Overwhelmingly, attendees expressed concerns and made suggestions regarding how the state might protect the access of poor and working-class residents to high-quality careers, natural resources and housing.
The group was specifically asked to discuss: what the headlines would be if Aurora was on the cover of TIME Magazine in 2026 in relation with each of the topics; which challenges Aurora residents are currently facing and how they want the state to address these issues; and what things are going well in Aurora.
Attendees rotated between stations that were moderated by Polis’ cabinet members. The rising cost of living across the metro area came up in virtually all of the groups.
When asked what his administration hoped to do to make housing in particular more affordable, Polis brought up efforts such as the failed land-use reform bill sponsored by Rep. Iman Jodeh and other state legislators that would have promoted the construction of denser housing.
“I know she and others from the Aurora delegation are very interested in legislation that makes it easier to build homes, especially homes that are $200,000 or $300,000, homes that are very hard to find in today’s market,” Polis said.
He rejected the suggestions by some present that legislators consider opening the door for rent control in Colorado, saying that “a lucky few” would benefit from the policy but that it could raise rents overall.
Aurora, like other metro-area communities, is grappling with a shortage of affordable housing. City of Aurora spokesman Michael Brannen said at the end of last month that the city estimates it needs at least 7,500 more units of affordable housing to meet the current demand.
In discussions moderated by Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera, attendees said they wanted to see Aurora continue to grow its inventory of affordable homes, accommodating the city’s middle class while providing housing solutions for the city’s homeless population.
To accomplish this, speakers called for the government to invest directly in housing as well as implement interventions such as rent control. A bill that would have overturned the state’s prohibition on local rent control rules died in committee earlier this year. Groups also talked about the need for supportive housing to serve the homeless specifically.
While speakers said Aurora is generally better than Denver at providing affordable homes, they also said it can be difficult to find information about applying for programs that do exist. One attendee, Manige Blackburn-Giles, praised local programs for preventing foreclosures and evictions but said
“The money is there, and it’s pretty easy to access, but nobody knows it’s there,” she said. “One of the things we’re working on with our neighbors is that they’re going to lose their house. They lost their jobs in the pandemic. They don’t know there’s money available.”
The breakout discussions on workforce were moderated by Joe Garcia, chancellor for the Colorado Community College System, and Joe Barela, executive director for the Department of Labor and Employment.
The attendees that sat during these 20 minute discussions wrote responses to the discussion questions on adhesive notes, which were then read aloud by Garcia and Barela.
Attendees hoped that by 2026, Aurora would be known for having a livable wage, having a strong diverse workforce, being the first in the country for equitable teacher pay and having the lowest unemployment rate per capita in the country.
Some of the many issues that attendees raised included raising the minimum wage, having a diverse workforce, supporting additional education and training for workers and keeping Aurora residents working in the city.
Conor Cahill, the governor’s press secretary, said the itinerary for upcoming listening tour sessions was being finalized, but that in 2019, similar sessions were held in Grand Junction, Greeley, Jefferson County and Pueblo.
The affordable housing problem is a simple matter of supply and demand. After the Great Recession, Colorado’s state legislature and governors went on a massive promotion campaign to convince people to move to the state and especially the Front Range, and encouraged immigration to the state from outside the US, and concurrently passed drug legalization that made the area a magnet for drug addicts. At the same time, they completely failed to incentivize the development of mid-tier multi-unit housing to handle the influx of hundreds of thousands of new residents; in fact, they actually disincentivized it with a draconian liability law that didn’t get reformed until 2017, and resulted in developers focusing on high-end condos and single-family subdivisions all the way out to the exurbs.
Rent control isn’t going to fix this. Neither is any other proposal that the technocrats and activists are proposing. The only things that will fix this are 1) stop encouraging everyone to move to the state; and 2) creating real, actual incentives for localities to support, and developers to build, the kind of multi-unit construction needed to house the ones who are in the state and especially the Front Range. That shouldn’t require holding a figurative gun to the heads of small towns and the suburbs to accomplish this.
Agree with your statements but I sure would like specific examples of what you mean by “actual incentives.”
I would guess it would mean anything that reduced the cost to the builder while protecting their profit: relaxation regarding zoning, building inspections, safety requirements, parking, landscaping, safety, construction materials, services, eviction, taxes, and fees.