Opinion: The co-op discussion — avoiding another ‘right-sizing’


Last summer the previous council pushed for reducing lanes on Folsom and other streets to solve some ill-defined bicycling problems by making some untested roadway improvements. The result was a public relations disaster, ending in total reversal.
The notion of allowing a large number of cooperative living units in single-family neighborhoods has equivalent potential for disaster, because it could create a high level of uncertainty and negative impacts for existing Boulder residents. The good news is that the council is actually asking for hard information first; the bad news is that there is far more research to be done and understood if the benefits are to be realized without most of the downsides.
I’m not opposed to co-ops. In the early ’70s, I lived in a single-family house, owned by a friend, who allowed a number of his friends to live there. We called it a commune, in the style of the time. It worked well for a number of years, mostly because we maintained pretty good relations with the neighbors in spite of the parties and rather unusual style of living.
The first missing piece I see in the current effort is a market analysis. How many Boulderites want to live in a co-op? Is it enough for five co-ops? Fifty? Five hundred? The number makes a big difference in how they are regulated. Are these well-formed groups of friends ready to take action, or are they mostly individuals looking for others? Do they want a semi-permanent arrangement, or is this a glorified rooming house where the individuals come and go? Is their real goal an extended family, or is it just cheaper rent? The answers to these and similar questions should make a big difference in how co-ops are legally structured, and how their neighbors will react.
Then there are the economics. Clearly, living in tight quarters is not everyone’s thing, so individual rents are likely to be cheaper than with more typical quarters. But, on the other hand, putting 10-12 people in what was formerly a single-family house will raise the total rent, especially compared with the three or four unrelated people that are allowed in a standard rental. Will this lead to fake co-ops becoming the norm for certain parts of Boulder, for example where student rentals are popular, and with a few landlords getting all the benefit? If so, what will be done to avoid this? Or is this what is wanted?
Assuming that the number of co-ops in a neighborhood is limited, as has been discussed, how will this be managed? One way would be for groups of people to bid for the right to have a co-op, using some evaluation criteria. But if so, presumably they would bid for a specific location, and so would need to get a contingent purchase/lease contract on the property. Or it could be a random drawing, in which case neither the groups nor the neighbors will be able to do any planning.
This brings up the whole disbursal question. The current thinking appears to be to disburse the few co-ops (people are talking about 5-10 per year) among all of Boulder’s single-family neighborhoods. But that creates vast uncertainty and insecurity. Neighbors may start wondering whether the large house next door is going to become a co-op, and whether they should begin discussions about writing neighborhood covenants to protect themselves. So perhaps the council should consider concentrating co-ops in a very few limited areas, and simply rezone these for co-ops. It would hugely reduce the uncertainty, make the whole process a lot simpler, and potentially reduce the windfall profits otherwise resulting from the additional entitlement.
But this brings up the larger, politically loaded question: What is the real objective here? Is it to put in place some rules so that currently illegal co-ops can be legalized? Is it to create the opportunity for people to lower their housing costs? Or is it to finally insert denser housing in single-family neighborhoods, after the council’s disastrous Housing Boulder project of last year failed to win any support? I sometimes get the feeling that a “we know better than you do” attitude underlies a lot of what happens.
All this brings us back around to the need to paint a more nuanced picture for this project. We need a clear and complete problem statement, and a comprehensive picture of the demand, opportunities, impacts, and trade-offs. Without this, another polarizing fight could easily occur, with people forced to take sides, and another “right-sizing” debacle occurs.


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