With roughly 325,000 new housing units needed to stabilize the market and bring prices down, Colorado is doing everything possible to increase housing in all price ranges, with special emphasis on affordability.
This increase in cost burdened households – spending 30% or more of income on rent – is part of a significant housing crisis affecting the entire country. With more demand for housing than supply, home prices increase. Likewise, with fewer homes for sale, potential home buyers are forced to continue renting, which puts pressure on the rental market resulting in increased prices there as well.
In January, Governor Polis said, “People are being forced out of their neighborhoods with no hope of ever living close to where they work… That means more traffic, lost time and money spent on long commutes, more air pollution, and greater economic and workforce challenges.”
California, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, and Maine have begun paving their own way towards increasing housing and each has a focus on Transit Oriented Developments (TOD). A senior executive at RMI, Ryan Warsing noted TOD developments are, “...a novel way to build unobtrusive new housing, as well as human-scale, car-free communities offering a range of environmental, economic, and social benefits.” Likewise, Minneapolis is leading the way with its 2040 Comprehensive plan which aims to abolish single family home zoning and enables duplexes and triplexes to be built anywhere in the city. Oregon is following right behind, and in fact, Boulder is considering doing the same with an emphasis on affordability.
Boulder has begun working towards establishing those residential zoning changes enabling more duplexes and triplexes (middle housing) to be built in low density areas of the city. Due to the Inclusionary Housing Program in Boulder, 25% of all new construction must be deeded as permanently affordable. With the increasing demand for affordable housing, this would only be a small incremental step.
Perhaps more middle housing construction would create more affordable units than just that 25%. In a meeting in June, Boulder Senior Policy Advisor Karl Guiler explained that affordable housing can be “...housing that is deed-restricted for permanently affordable rental or purchase, ‘attainable’ marketrate housing for which households pay no more than 30% of their income, and modest-sized market-rate housing.”
Similarly, through zoning changes, Boulder is working to make ADU (accessory dwelling unit) construction more easily attained as it will produce a diverse range of housing types and price ranges. ADUs however can’t be sold separately from the primary home on a lot, so this would primarily benefit renters and homeowners who own and rent the ADU. ADUs also provide great multigenerational living options for families.
Between a new program called the Innovative Housing Incentive program - promoting the construction of modular and prefabricated homes, the requirements in proposition 123 – requiring the state to set aside money for affordable housing and related programs, and changes to residential zoning restrictions - allowing for more ADUs, duplexes, and triplexes, we could see a notable uptick in available affordable housing.
Emma Quarterman can be reached at 303-506-5218 or by email at emma@livewestrealty.com. Checkout her website at emmaskycolorado.com/.
