Colorado Zoning Reform Yields Slow Results — For Now

In an article in The Denver Post, Joe Rubino describes the saga of affordable housing policy in Colorado, where a set of zoning reforms passed in 2022 seems to have yielded few new affordable units. “The sweeping package is now working its way back through the legislature in more bite-sized pieces.”

Cities in the state are making their own adjustments to housing policy to boost affordability. In Boulder, “The city increased its demands on market-rate projects in 2018, now mandating developers provide at least 25% of units as affordable housing, pay cash in lieu of construction into the city’s affordable housing fund or provide other offsets.” City officials say the cash payments let them create more affordable units through the local housing authority, which currently has 1,597 permanently affordable units — the majority of which were built with inclusionary housing funds. In Denver, developers submitted two-and-a-half times as many applications in the three months before the new rules took effect as usual, causing a backlog city officials are still working through.

While some new units have been made available for the lowest-income residents, “little housing is available to middle-income earners, driving them to the periphery of town or to other communities they have to commute from.”