Opinion: ‘Housing Boulder’ more hype than progress


The name “Housing Boulder” should give you pause. It’s hard to imagine a city project name that could be more of an overreach. And the project reflects just that — lots of hype, but not much solid analysis.
One of Housing Boulder’s original goals was, “Create diverse housing choices in every neighborhood: Facilitate the creation of a variety of housing options in every part of the city, including existing single-family neighborhoods.” But it’s not possible to build even an affordable four-plex on a lot that costs $800,000 to $1 million, as many do in the neighborhoods west of Broadway and in other parts of town; that’s $200,000-$250,000 per unit for the land alone.
The only place this form of densification has a chance of working, even in the short term, is where housing prices haven’t yet skyrocketed. This means in the neighborhoods that are still relatively affordable. So the Housing Boulder goal is tantamount to identifying these areas as sacrifice zones.
OAUs (“owner accessory units” — detached units on a single family lot) and ADUs (“accessory dwelling units” — separate units inside existing houses) have high construction costs because these units require retrofitting and are done one unit at a time. The only reason they work financially for the current owners is because the owners have already bought the land, main building, and possibly the outbuilding, so the marginal cost to add such a unit is lower.
OAUs or ADUs may help the current owners’ financial situation, but only if they rent at near-market rates. However, when the property sells, its price will increase to reflect this additional cash flow, making it again relatively unaffordable. And, of course, only some homes are suitable for this approach.
Co-ops and units with increased occupancy will also be priced at the market rate relative to location. So they will only provide better affordability if they are less desirable because of the more crowded living conditions. That is an acceptable tradeoff for some, so I’m not arguing that they won’t work.
But preventing spillover impacts on their neighbors means that the conditions under which these are permitted need to be very carefully crafted. Otherwise, they become a forced transfer of value from the neighbors to the new folks. Unsurprisingly, many residents are upset about this possibility.
After many complaints, this Housing Boulder goal was amended some months into the project by adding, “…while preserving neighborhood character.” This is somewhat contradictory, because the character of a neighborhood is inextricably linked to its housing.
The council and staff should have carefully studied all these issues before the Housing Boulder project was started. Then the planning staff should have gone out to talk to neighbors to find out under what conditions, if any, they might be OK with more density in whatever form. But the Housing Boulder goals were set before any such vetting was done, and their overreaching nature justifiably angered people.
Other planning projects, like “Envision East Arapahoe,” also contributed to the concerns of neighborhood residents, as has the city’s unwillingness to match zoning regulations to the Comprehensive Plan’s land-use map, leading to controversies such as over Baseline Zero. So for the first time in many years, citizen initiatives are focusing on granting more power to defined areas of town.
The council would do well to accelerate its current shift toward asking Boulderites, “…what is right (or not) for individual neighborhoods,” to quote a recent city flier. Had Housing Boulder begun in this way, these initiatives might never have started.
Another inadequacy in Boulder’s housing planning is the proposed $9.53-per-square-foot commercial linkage fee to fund affordable housing for lower-income employees. For example, the Google building is about 300,000 square feet and up to 1,500 employees. Suppose one in five employees needs affordable housing. That’s one per 1,000 square feet, equivalent to $9,530. The city’s current cost to subsidize an affordable unit is $69,500 (per a recent council packet), over seven times as much. And this cost has been escalating rapidly, and is likely to continue to do so. Even if only one in 10 employees qualifies, this linkage fee is still just a fraction of what’s required. By having delayed full implementation of this fee since 2011, city staff estimates that $7 million to $8 million has been left on the table (or in developers’ pockets). If Boulder had set linkage fees at the real cost, and done so in the late ’90s, when linkage fees were being implemented in progressive cities elsewhere, think how far ahead we’d be.


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