HOUSE BROKE: Legislators stepping in to increase high-density housing, attempting to lower costs

AURORA | State legislators from the Aurora area brought forward a pair of bills that could make it easier to build affordable housing and remove other barriers to shared living arrangements last week via a controversial overhaul of the state’s land use code.

Endorsed by Gov. Jared Polis and state Democrats, the changes would compel cities to allow the construction of multifamily housing, including more “missing middle” products like townhomes and duplexes.

“We need more homes for rent and for purchase near where jobs are, not further and further out with more cars on the road, more traffic and more air quality problems.,” Polis told the Sentinel last week. “In California, there are cities with average home prices above a million dollars, and there are 16-lane freeways that are bumper-to-bumper for eight hours a day. We want to avoid that fate.”

While many progressives have applauded the bill as a potential path toward more affordable housing, others have characterized it as misguided and an affront to Colorado’s history of leaving zoning decisions in the hands of local governments.

“I strongly believe that we need greater density in housing to make it more affordable, so I agree with the direction that the Governor wants to go, but I think it should be through (providing) incentives to local governments instead of a mandate that usurps local control,” Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman said in a statement.

The Senate bill would require larger cities, including Aurora, and “rural resort job centers” such as Aspen and Breckenridge to accommodate middle housing products, and would eliminate occupancy caps that distinguish between related and unrelated co-tenants. A sister bill in the House would do away with caps on housing development, including the growth caps introduced by Boulder, Lakewood and Golden.

State Rep. Iman Jodeh, a Democratic Aurora legislator and  House prime sponsor of the Senate bill, said the measure would protect workforce housing in Aurora as well as various housing options for people in different stages of life.

She told the story of an elderly woman in her district suffering from arthritis who wanted to sell her multi-story home but couldn’t find a single-story housing unit close to her mosque.

“This speaks to being in the communities that we want to live in. But the stock is so low for main-floor living, and what is there is completely unaffordable,” Jodeh said. “I think this bill is what’s going to maintain the integrity and vibrancy of Aurora.”

Both bills have been introduced in their respective chambers and are awaiting further action.

Like many Colorado communities, Aurora is grappling with a shortage of affordable housing. Housing prices across the Denver metropolitan area have crept upward since the early 2010s, threatening to undermine Aurora’s status as a diverse, working-class community.

In late 2020, a report on Aurora’s housing market commissioned by the city indicated residents needed an income of more than $50,000 per year to afford the average rent,

which was about $10,000 more than the average renter actually made.

The same report said the city would need more than 10,200 units of affordable housing to meet the needs of households earning less than $20,000 per year, in light of the pandemic. But the problem predated the pandemic — in 2017, the city was found to be short about 7,500 units for renters earning less than $25,000 per year.

Several hundred people are also believed to be homeless in the city, with the 2022 point-in-time survey undertaken on behalf of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development pegging the number at 612. The point-in-time survey is generally believed to be an undercount.

Though Aurora is more densely developed than many Colorado cities, the 2020 report identified an unmet need for “missing middle” housing in the city. Missing middle housing includes development such as townhomes, row houses and courtyard apartments, which are denser than single-family homes but are perceived as belonging in low-density neighborhoods.

Small-lot homes, defined as lots covering fewer than 5,000 square feet, are another middle housing product. Compared to the entire Denver metro area, Aurora had fewer small-lot homes for sale between 2016 and 2017, with those units making up just 8% of all homes for sale compared to 11% of homes for sale in the region overall and 26% of homes for sale in Denver.

Promoting the development of middle housing is one of the goals of Senate Bill 23-213. The state would be directed to draft a model code that would clear the way for middle housing to be built wherever single-family homes are allowed in large cities such as Aurora and in rural resort job centers.

Even if one of those communities decides not to adopt the model code, they would still be expected to stay out of the way of builders. The community would have to allow middle housing as a use by right in certain areas and not enforce local laws that restrict middle housing more aggressively than single-family detached homes. The changes would not apply to counties.

Related to the topic of middle housing are so-called Accessory Dwelling Units — smaller, independent dwellings located on the same property as a single-family home. The measure would also require the state to draft a model ADU code allowing the units wherever single-family homes are allowed, and municipalities would have to either adopt the code or equivalent zoning rules.

Other parts of the bill would promote multifamily housing along key transit corridors in large cities such as Aurora and rural resort job centers, and cities like Aurora would be required to allow multifamily housing within a half-mile of train stations.

The bill also prohibits the enforcement of occupancy limits that differ based on the relationship between co-tenants, which means Aurora may be blocked from enforcing its rule that no more than four unrelated people may share a housing unit.

A slim majority of council members rejected a proposal to temporarily raise the limit to six in 2020, when Gov. Jared Polis asked cities to loosen their rules in an attempt to reduce the number of evictions and ease the economic burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cities would also be expected to put together a housing-needs plan that would include strategies for preserving and promoting affordable housing. As a larger city with a rail station, Aurora would be expected to commit to at least three strategies approved by the state to address the creation and preservation of affordable housing. $15 million in state funds would be set aside during the upcoming fiscal year to help with planning statewide.

A related piece of legislation, House Bill 23-1255, would strike down artificial limits imposed by cities such as Boulder, Lakewood and Golden on how much residential construction can take place. In Boulder, the expansion of the city’s housing stock is limited to 1% per year.

Aurora Councilmember Juan Marcano said he believed sprawling development was one of the dangers facing Aurora and said he supported the bill as a way of welcoming the construction of denser, missing middle housing.

“It’s just a much wiser land use strategy overall,” he said. “And it’s not just us, but a general, major flaw in contemporary North American urban planning is the sprawl and the car-dependent pattern of suburban development.”

He said that Aurora was in a better position than many cities because it has a housing strategy and because city staffers are already working on cleaning up parts of the Unified Development Ordinance in a way that is “in harmony” with the Senate bill.

Marcano argued that less dense development uses up more water, contributes to the city’s infrastructure backlog and drives air pollution by requiring residents drive from place to place. Jodeh, too, said she believed the bill would have an impact beyond more people being housed.

“This is more than just a Band-Aid on something that hasn’t been addressed since the ’70s,” Jodeh said. “It’s not just a housing bill. It’s about conservation. It’s about making sure people are healthy. It’s about making sure we have access to affordable, quality, equitable housing.”

Others were less enthusiastic about the state’s pivot away from giving local governments the final say in zoning choices. Aurora’s mayor questioned in a statement why the governor and the legislature weren’t waiting so they could fully gauge the effects of Proposition 123, which will steer statewide tax money toward affordable housing.

“I think that there is a value to having residents being able to give input to their locally elected officials on planning and zoning matters,” Coffman said. “Again, I agree we have a problem with housing affordability, and I put forward a proposal for Aurora to opt into (Proposition) 123, and we are the first city to do so.”

CEO Ted Leighty of the Colorado Association of Home Builders said his organization thought the roadmap included in the bill for making more multifamily projects use-by-right included good ideas.

He said the organization also plans to advocate for amendments that would lighten the burden of report-drafting for local governments and prevent cities from blocking developments that don’t adhere to granular design guidelines.

But Leighty argued that the viability of multifamily housing and the success of the bill will be limited as long as Colorado maintains its construction defect laws, which developers say make it too risky to build condominiums in the state.

“It’ll never achieve its full potential without also further reforming construction litigation and liability issues, where everyone from design to finishing and in between can be potentially sued,” he said.

In terms of how the zoning landscape limits development currently, he described how fitting a multifamily project into a neighborhood of single-family homes can pose major challenges for developers, who have to manage opposition from so-called NIMBYs and wade through development processes that may take years.

“It’s a huge problem to try to get a zoning change, for sure. We’ve got places like Westminster, where it took one developer five years to entitle a piece of dirt, because others thought they had their own right to this existing empty space, where they like to watch the sunset,” Leighty said.

“That’s what this bill is trying to get at, in some regards, is how do we remove these obstacles for local governments … to be able to approve good uses of land for good housing opportunities for all Coloradans to be able to share in.”

Though his organization has yet to take a formal position on the changes to growth caps, he said he was tentatively encouraged by the news.

Kevin Bommer — executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, an advocacy group representing 270 municipalities across the state — referred to the land use changes as a “breathtaking power grab” in a news release.

The release said inflation and workforce shortages were major contributors to the housing problem, and Bonner further dismissed the proposed system of the state promulgating model codes and cities having to adopt the codes or at least follow some of the minimum requirements identified in those codes as a “California-style, top-down approach.”

“Unlike California or Oregon, Colorado has (a) rich tradition of local control and constitutional home rule, the latter of which cannot be legislated away,” Bommer said.

“If either of those foundational principles still mean anything to legislators, we expect they will reject this legislation and throw their support behind partnering with the bill’s proponents and local governments to tackle affordability issues together.”

When asked about the bill eroding local control over zoning decisions, Jodeh said Colorado’s current development patterns were causing problems of their own, and arguing that it was “time for a change.”

“We have seen unbelievable unsustainable sprawl in Colorado that has affected not only the cost of housing but also the lack of access to transportation, the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink,” she said.

“The status quo is not working.”