Study finds 70% of Colorado land zoned for housing prohibits affordable housing options

By Brian Eason | Colorado Sun

In the first comprehensive review of Colorado land use laws, the National Zoning Atlas found that you can build single-family homes almost anywhere. But apartments, condos and townhomes are widely prohibited.

You can build a house almost anywhere in Colorado.

You just can’t build one that most people can afford.

That’s the stark takeaway from a landmark zoning report released last month by the National Zoning Atlas, a group of researchers who have spent the last two years conducting a first-of-its-kind study of land use codes across 334 Colorado cities, towns and unincorporated areas.

The group found that on the vast majority of land, in the vast majority of Colorado communities, it’s not just difficult to build housing the average household can afford — it’s outright illegal.

Local zoning codes in Colorado overwhelmingly prohibit duplexes, townhouses, condominiums and apartment units, as well as single-family homes on small lots, effectively outlawing the types of housing that real estate experts say are most affordable to build.

“Colorado is, sadly, typical of states across the country, which use zoning to thwart the production of housing, and — whether intentionally or not — use zoning to make housing more expensive,” Sara Bronin, the president and CEO of the Zoning Atlas told The Colorado Sun in an interview. “There is a huge affordability gap — in part maybe due to supply, but also in part due to the fact that the places where people would most want housing are the places that are not providing it.”

Land use has dominated Colorado politics over the last three years, as state leaders grasp for solutions to the affordability crisis.

Colorado has the fifth highest home prices and third highest rent in the country, according to a Zoning Atlas analysis of American Community Survey data. Over half the state’s 800,000 renter households spend more than 30% of their income on housing, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. As of 2023, the median household, making $63,000, couldn’t afford the median rent.

Gov. Jared Polis and the Democratic majority in the state legislature have passed a spate of new laws to relax local zoning restrictions and encourage denser housing development — often over the objections of local officials, who view it as an attack on their ability to govern.

But the tug-of-war over who should dictate housing policy in Colorado has largely occurred without a clear understanding of how restrictive local zoning codes actually are.

“Zoning is almost like the plumbing of our housing system,” said Luke Teater, a principal at Thrive Economics who worked with the governor’s office on its housing agenda. “It’s intentionally invisible. You don’t think about it until it breaks, but it kind of shapes everything else that comes out of our housing system. It’s just very obscure and opaque and exclusive.”

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE COLORADO SUN