With mile-high housing costs rising and a growing number of people without homes, we desperately need more affordable housing. We also need to protect the rights of homeowners who scrimp and save to buy affordable homes from builders who use shoddy materials and cut corners in construction.
As a local official – 13 years as an Aurora Planning and Zoning Commissioner, but earlier a Brighton Housing Authority Commissioner, Broomfield County Commissioner and Broomfield City Councilmember – I know we need public policy solutions to Colorado’s affordable housing crisis.
And growing up in a south Denver family business – Gaiser Development and Construction – I know that decades ago, builders stood by their work. On the rare occasion something turned out wrong, they made it right. I remember helping my dad do the hard work of repairing a home, shoveling dirt out the basement windows.
From serving in all these roles, I know developing well-built, affordable housing is possible. But today’s builders are trying to blame construction defect laws for their own decision to not build affordable homes and condos. There’s just one solution to construction defects – and that is for development/construction companies to build homes right the first time.
The problem is that some builders skimp on adequate materials and skilled labor to maximize their profit. Rather than take responsibility for their own mistakes, builders have lobbied for a number of laws that clearly stack the deck in their favor while homeowners have one of the shortest legal time frames in the country to get adequate repairs. These anti-consumer laws require homeowners to jump through many procedural hoops and often find out too late that language builders hid in purchase contracts denies them access to the courts. Plus, Colorado doesn’t mandate standard construction insurance coverage, nor that builders carry any construction insurance at all to cover building problems.
Unfortunately, I know all this first-hand. I was excited to buy my brand-new Aurora home but quickly found out my complex had a lot of serious water intrusion problems: water streaming down interior drywall, water leaking in windows and doors, not to mention water forming around the building foundations. Roads and sidewalks started sinking and heaving. Alarmingly, we found several dangerous mistakes: firewalls were completely inadequate and the gas meter slab wasn’t properly poured and risked breaking the pipes.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Recognizing that homeowners should be able to hold builders accountable, the Legislature is considering The Homeowners Protection Act/HB 1230. Among other things, the bill would extend the time period a homeowner has to find and notify a builder about a construction defect to the national standard of 10 years. It would increase the likelihood of homeowners recovering the full cost of repairs; and protect home buyers from illegal language in purchasing contracts that mislead them into thinking they have no recourse if they find construction defects in their home. This is an important step forward for everyday homeowners.
On the other hand, a bill to strip homeowners of the few rights they do have has also been introduced. Most disturbingly, SB 106 would require that claims dealing with “life, health and safety” problems, those would have to be “imminent” – so in my case, the firewall wouldn’t be a problem unless there was an active fire spreading in the building. It would give builders the right to force unwanted repairs on homeowners – even band-aid fixes that would just cover up the real problem – and would prevent homeowners from pursuing a claim on the underlying defect after such a repair. In most cases, homeowners couldn’t join together, they would have to file claims individually, which is much more expensive and difficult.
Buying a home is the biggest investment most people ever make – they deserve well-built housing and the right to be able to hold builders accountable for major construction problems regardless of their income level or zip code. Our state needs to promote access to affordable housing but not at the expense of the health and safety of our residents. I urge our state officials to protect homeowners by voting yes on HB 1230 and no on SB 106.
Bob Gaiser is an Aurora Planning and Zoning Commissioner, an Aurora homeowner and a member of Build Our Homes Right, a coalition of homeowners and legal advocates dedicated to protecting homeowner rights and opposing attempts to weaken legal protections for consumers who buy a defective home.
Would you recommend any local home builders at all? Or at least ones to definitely steer clear of?
As a homebuyer in Aurora who has battled with Public Works over the city’s shoddy, bone-breaking drainage code — a code that intentionally causes hazardous black ice to form on otherwise dry sidewalks — I fully support HB 1230.
The root cause here is the manner in which our duopolistic political system permits the homebuilders to routinely buy votes dirt cheap with campaign donations — both on city council and at the state Capitol. Because of this, HB 1230 will most likely fail.
Colorado is ruled by oligarch-developers empowered by our two-party system and we homeowners routinely suffer.