The Colorado legislature is poised to move a collection of marquee land-use reform measures that promise to reshape housing improvement alongside the Entrance Vary, delivering a big win to Gov. Jared Polis and legislative Democrats a 12 months after their first reform try collapsed.
On Tuesday, the penultimate day of the legislative session, the Senate handed Home Invoice 1313. It requires Entrance Vary native governments to set density objectives close to transit-rich areas after which exhibit they’re hitting these targets. The invoice is the centerpiece of the five-part land-use package deal, and — after profitable a swift procedural vote within the Home later within the day — it’s now headed to Polis for full passage into legislation.
“It is a great victory for inexpensive housing in Colorado,” mentioned Rep. Steven Woodrow, a Denver Democrat who was amongst a number of sponsors of the invoice. “We’ve identified for a while that we’d like denser zoning by transit, and this invoice delivers.”
Late Monday evening, 12 hours earlier than the transit density invoice handed, the Senate additionally gave remaining approval to Home Invoice 1152, which usually permits for accessory-dwelling models like storage residences and granny flats to be constructed on single-family properties in Entrance Vary cities. That measure awaited a procedural vote earlier than shifting to the governor’s desk.
Polis has already signed Home Invoice 1007, which bans native residential occupancy limits that aren’t security associated. He’s additionally anticipated to signal Home Invoice 1304, which limits how a lot parking native governments can require for developments close to sure public transit corridors and routes.
The ultimate piece of the land-use package deal is a invoice requiring native governments to undertake common housing research. It’s nonetheless shifting via the Home, although that measure, too, was anticipated to clear the legislature earlier than the session ends Wednesday evening.
This 12 months’s laws nonetheless confronted a wringer because the payments moved via the Home and Senate. However whereas vocal opponents didn’t again down, they weren’t capable of preserve the payments from passing.
Kevin Bommer, the manager director of the Colorado Municipal League — which has broadly opposed many of the reforms — mentioned in a press release Tuesday that he was grateful the density invoice was pared again. Nevertheless it “stays to be seen,” he mentioned, “how this system will really work and the way municipalities select to reply” to the payments.
Polis, zoning reform advocates and environmental teams have backed state-level land use intervention as a broad-spectrum antibiotic for a number of the state’s current and future ills: Extra housing inventory, they argue, will convey down rents and costs. Pairing density with transit ideally will minimize down on automotive use and air air pollution.
And denser improvement, they argue, will maximize water and utility utilization in a state that’s anticipated to proceed rising.
“The truth is,” Polis mentioned in a press release, “that constructing extra housing close to transit, giving owners the liberty to construct an ADU on their property, eliminating expensive parking necessities above and past what folks need, and making certain that each neighborhood is planning for the long run and dealing collectively will scale back housing prices so extra Coloradans can afford to reside the place they need.”
The package deal’s impending passage comes virtually precisely a 12 months after a broader first try to reform the state’s native land-use insurance policies fell aside on the ultimate day of the 2023 session.
That was a significant blow for Polis. He’d eschewed extra progressive interventions for the housing disaster in favor of a supply-side strategy that was centered on circumventing native zoning guidelines to kickstart denser, quicker improvement.
After the primary try collapsed, lawmakers and the coalition of inexpensive housing and environmental teams broke the insurance policies into separate payments this 12 months. They did so to extend the probabilities that no less than some would survive and in order that they may debate every measure independently.
Additionally they had been extra clear with the payments’ contents for months earlier than the session started. They usually scaled again the package deal’s breadth and paired it with transit reforms and funding.
To make sure assist from inexpensive housing teams and progressive lawmakers, the transit-centric density invoice additionally requires native governments to pick affordability and anti-displacement methods — reminiscent of incentivizing backed housing models or bigger condominium models — to make sure present communities aren’t displaced when their city corridors all of a sudden grow to be profitable targets for improvement.
Native governments, legislative Republicans and a corps of average Democrats opposed the package deal as infringing on land-use selections that lengthy have been managed by metropolis councils, county commissions and planning boards.
That opposition scuttled final 12 months’s effort, and the package deal’s passage this 12 months was not assured.
Legislative debates resulted in concessions: Probably the most sweeping of the provisions apply solely to the Entrance Vary. The parking measure was scaled again. To make sure the density invoice’s passage within the Senate, tens of millions in tax credit had been pulled and moved elsewhere.
That invoice was additionally stripped of its sharpest enamel: a provision that might have withheld tax cash from native governments that resisted implementing the invoice, plus language saying {that a} state company may sue those self same intransigent municipalities.
However even with out these provisions, the state nonetheless may pursue authorized motion in opposition to native governments that refuse to conform within the coming years.
As a result of the land-use package deal usually seeks to bolster improvement, its full results will seemingly take years to set in. Nonetheless, supporters hailed its passage, notably after final 12 months’s failures.
“It’s a step ahead. It’s not excellent, however little or no that comes out of this constructing is,” mentioned Kinsey Hasstedt, the director of state and native coverage for Enterprise Neighborhood Companions. “It’s an actual step ahead with significant affordability and displacement mitigation for Colorado.”
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