Colorado residents have some of the highest mountains and home prices in the country, and while the state’s legislature was able to increase the general public’s access to its peaks, it has had more trouble helping residents access its housing market.
According to Redfin, Colorado has the fourth-highest median home sale price at $607,000, behind only California, Hawaii and Massachusetts. While the problem is multi-faceted, one issue facing would-be homebuyers is a lack of housing inventory, both along the front range and in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.
In the Denver region, a draft report released in July 2024 as part of the Denver Regional Council of Governments Regional Housing Needs Assessment estimated the current need of housing units as 52,000, with an estimated need of more than 500,000 units by 2050.
Deeper into the mountains, from Telluride to Steamboat Springs, long-time residents and even high earning professionals have found it difficult to buy or rent housing.
One effort to battle this housing inventory issue across the state was a law passed in 2023 that prohibited local governments from enforcing existing anti-growth laws or enacting new ones. Democratic Rep. Rebekah Stewart brought forth a bill to expand that law, and this week it cleared the General Assembly.
She said that the bill expands on the anti-growth law already on the books, amending it to cover antigrowth practices, such as decreasing the permitted residential density or other zoning restrictions, that she said is happening in some communities in Colorado.
“This bill explicitly asks that when residential density or use of land is decreased to less density or use than is actually allowed for in its zoning usage, that an equal and opposite increase elsewhere in another parcel, depending on the extent of the decrease in usage, or another zoning district be equally increased,” Stewart added. “Because we have a housing affordability crisis in Colorado, and especially along the front range.”
She noted that the bill only applies to urban areas as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The second part of the bill would expand local control of jurisdictions, according to Stewart. She explained that the bill would give a jurisdiction legal recourse when a citizen ordinance or something similar restricts or limits development or use of land.
“This bill allows them to be able to seek a legal review and kind of pause the process to see if the land use policy conflicts in any way with current law or the constitution,” Stewart said.
She added that the bill came out of her experience dealing with anti-growth policies while she was a member of the Lakewood City Council. Republican Rep. Carlos Barron asked Stewart if the bill would have solved the problems she faced during that time, and Stewart said that it would have. In between the bill’s committee hearing and second reading, Barron joined the bill as a co-prime sponsor.
Bev Staples, testifying on behalf of the Colorado Municipal League, said that the CML opposed the bill for three reasons.
“First and most critically, initiating ordinances is a constitutional right, and municipalities have only two options when presented with an initiated ordinance, either pass the law or schedule an election for voters to approve or reject it,” Staples said. “If the ordinance is approved, municipalities bear the cost of defending the ordinance from claims that it is unlawful. Municipalities already have the authority to request judicial determination as to the legality of a proposed land use ordinance, but often courts do not want to weigh in. The bill does not reduce the financial risk for municipalities or provide any more certainty for developers.”
Staples also said CML had issues with the bill’s broad and ambiguous language, which she said would undermine and threaten to disrupt local planning activities and local laws. She told lawmakers that the league would continue to oppose efforts to interfere with issues of planning and zoning.
The bill did garner supporters in its committee hearings, including from the Colorado Apartment Association and Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.
The bill passed out of committee with near unanimity, with all Republicans in the chamber aside from Rep. Dan Woog joining their Democratic colleagues in advancing the bill.
The bill received three further amendments in the upper chamber on its way to passage. Democratic Sen. Matt Ball in the bill’s second committee hearing said that the amendment presented in the committee hearing clarified that the bill’s focus was on residential density and set a benchmark date for July 1.
The bill received opposition again in the Senate hearing. A representative from Colorado Counties Inc., Reagan Shane, said that the organization was opposed to the bill as it believed that local governments were best equipped to respond to density and housing challenges. A representative from the municipal league also appeared to express its continued opposition to the measure.
In an amend position was Jon Holst from Western Resource Advocates, who said that the organization hoped to support the bill with an amendment to help preserve wildlife movement in Colorado. An amendment to the bill protecting wildlife crossings was passed in its second reading in the Senate.
Outside of a small technical fix on the wording of the bill, that was the final change before it cleared the Senate and was shipped off to Gov. Jared Polis’s desk.