The Denver City Council recently adopted the “Expanding Housing Affordability” policy.
The Denver City Council earlier this month approved a mandatory inclusionary zoning ordinance that requires developers to include income-restricted housing for all developments of more than ten total units.
The city needs more than 50,000 units of affordable housing to address its housing shortage, according to the Denver Housing Authority.
“The Expanding Housing Affordability policy will mandate that developers building multifamily projects with ten or more units create income-restricted housing for households making between 60% and 90% of the area median income — currently, between $56,592 and $84,888 for a family of three,” reports Kyle Harris for Denverite. “Those projects will be required to maintain between 8% and 15% of the units as income-restricted for 99 years. Those percentages will be slightly higher in downtown, Cherry Creek, and other high-cost parts of the city.”
Developers can also pay a fee to avoid the affordable housing requirement, according to Harris. The city has been working on the Expanding Housing Affordability policy since 2020, but a state law approved in 2021 enabled the City Council’s approval of the new law.
More news coverage and insight into the debate about Denver’s new mandatory inclusionary zoning policy ca be found in a separate article in the Denver Post.
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