Opinion: Another legislative attempt to resolve the ‘housing crisis’ – and push more growth

The Denver Post recently carried an opinion column by state Senators Barbara Kirkmeyer and Rachel Zenzinger discussing their “response to Colorado’s housing crisis.” Their commendable bi-partisan effort put in more thought than much of the discussion to date. But they ran into the same problems that others have: What is the source of the problem? How big is it? What should we require to be done? How do you respond to Coloradans who don’t want a lot more growth?

Their draft Bill hinges on how to define “housing needs.” The problem is that the various legitimate possible definitions are very far apart numerically. For example, per a Forbes survey, 17% of respondents nationwide said that the Denver area would be their first choice to move to. That’s around 57 million people. Even if only one in ten of them had the resources to do it, they would about double Colorado’s population. Should we immediately double our housing supply?

Colorado’s births over deaths statistics paint a much different picture. In 2021 (the most recent data I could find), there were almost 63,000 live births and over 48,000 deaths. That increases our population by about 14-15,000 per year. Colorado’s 2021 population was around 5.7 million. Dividing, this yields a growth rate of around 0.25% per year or a bit more. Is this tiny growth rate what we are calling the “housing need”? It’s miniscule, at least compared to the doubling number above.

Apparently recognizing this difficulty, the bill hands the responsibility of deciding how to define “need” to the state Department of Local Affairs, but without clarifying how they should choose within this huge range. Since the DOLA director works for Governor Polis, he would be the ultimate decider. But trust in Polis is rather weak after his “land grab” bill last year.

The bill’s required local “housing action plans” completely depend on this “needs” assessment. Thus, it’s critical to be clear as to what is really intended. (Boulder’s council also directed that such ill-defined assessments take place; they face the same vagueness as to what needs to be accomplished.)

The bill then attempts to define this “need” as related to “elevated risk” of “displacement.” But even this depends on how such terms are applied. There are no quantitative tests, no clarity regarding how to adjust the response to the “risk” level, and no list of other factors to be considered. 

What the bill is clearly missing are policy requirements that produce real results, appropriately allocate costs, prevent future problems and don’t require this sort of planners’ hand-waving. Instead, the bill continues the current economic structure, which provides excess profits to the developers and expanding businesses while putting the burden on residents and taxpayers.

Here are examples of such results-oriented policies. The bill should make these mandatory because they do what all the ill-defined approaches don’t do — they straighten out the economics, and so help prevent future “housing crises”:

• Jobs-housing linkage fees: These require new job developments to pay for the housing needed by the new workers who otherwise could not live in the area. (Boulder’s are set way too low, at about 20-25% of what is necessary.)

• Inclusionary housing requirements: These force housing developers to commit a percentage of new housing developments to be price- or rent-controlled at levels that would reasonably maintain the current population’s economic distribution. (Boulder’s current requirement is 25%. At this rate, we’ll get the affordable housing stock to 15% by the 2060s, but our need will be at 50% or likely way more.)

• Development impact fees: These pay for the new water rights and facilities, transportation infrastructure, parks and rec centers, etc., needed because of growth. They should cover 100% of infrastructure needs, so existing residents do not have to pay the costs imposed by new development to maintain levels of service. (Boulder does not require growth to pay its own way for transportation, nor do our water tap fees enhance supply, which we will need when our Colorado River water shrinks further.)

• Zoning requirements: These should ensure that planned growth is balanced between housing, employment, public facilities, etc. (We should have done this in the ‘70s, but we didn’t.)

By far the biggest issue with the Legislature’s efforts to date is that they pay no attention to what those of us already here actually want. I believe, and polls I’ve read support, that most Coloradans would rather live with the ill-defined “housing crisis” than have massive growth destroy their quality of life and natural environment.

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