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Tag: Affordable housing

$6 billion wish list, $800 million budget: Denver’s bond scramble is heating up
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Denverite, Local

$6 billion wish list, $800 million budget: Denver’s bond scramble is heating up

By Paolo Zialcita | Denverite Everyone wants a piece of the Vibrant Denver Bond pie. Denver has a rare opportunity to fund $800 million of capital projects in one fell swoop later this year — and everyone is clamoring for a piece of the pie.  If voters approve the measure this November the city will take out debt for a wide range of capital projects. But while $800 million may sound like a lot, it isn’t nearly enough to pay for everything city officials and residents want to build.  More than 220 projects appeared on an initial list the city is considering. Building all those projects would cost $6 billion, far more than what the city can afford. And whittling down the list hasn’t been easy.   The city’s cultural institutions — like the Boettcher Con...
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Priced out, packed in: Colorado renters squeezed by costs, policy gridlock and population growth
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Approved, Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Priced out, packed in: Colorado renters squeezed by costs, policy gridlock and population growth

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado’s affordable housing crunch – especially in the rental sector – has been building for years. Reports from the Common Sense Institute and Bell Policy Center trace the tipping point to around 2015, when demand consistently began outpacing supply. The last decade has seen rising home prices, stagnant wages and insufficient new construction which has made the situation worse due to recent immigration pressures and allegations of resource allocation issues. Origins and escalation of the crisis Bell Policy Center noted a statewide rental rate increase from 30.9% in 2009 to 34.8% by 2022, with urban counties like Denver reaching 50.1%.  In just a year, Colorado slipped further down the affordability scale, now rank...
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Gazette editorial board: Colorado’s green agenda is pricing out homeowners
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Approved, Commentary, denvergazette.com, State

Gazette editorial board: Colorado’s green agenda is pricing out homeowners

The Gazette editorial board | Denver Gazette Colorado’s governor and Legislature may claim they want more affordable housing — but they aren’t about to let it stand in the way of their headlong rush toward green energy. Their zero-emissions-at-any-cost dogma seems to trump all other policy priorities. Which helps explain why the state’s Energy Code Board is poised to impose extreme energy standards — even more stringent than those already in effect — on new home construction. The pending rules would turn the screws on wide-ranging aspects of the building code — and are projected to add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of a new home in Colorado. That’s right — it’ll add $25,000 to $35,000, by one estimate, in what is already the most expensive state for housing that is not ...
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Condo reform bill becomes law–after years of lawsuits, delays and rising insurance costs
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Approved, Colorado Politics, State

Condo reform bill becomes law–after years of lawsuits, delays and rising insurance costs

By Marianne Goodland | Colorado Politics Gov. Jared Polis on Monday signed the first major bill of his administration that sponsors hope would unclog the state's longstanding logjam regarding the construction of affordable, middle-market multi-family housing, specifically condos and townhomes, and, thereby directly promote home ownership. Past efforts by the governor had mostly focused on rental housing and zoning.  This year, House Bill 1272 aims to jumpstart the affordable condo market, which backers say has died off in Colorado due to "construction defects" litigation.  This bill puts Colorado more in line with other states that see condo construction and protects homeowners from legitimate defects, Polis said. "There's no silver bullet" for dealing wi...
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Denver rent down $65, but rising costs leave renters struggling
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Approved, Denverite, Local

Denver rent down $65, but rising costs leave renters struggling

By Kyle Harris | Denverite When Cassie Welch Rubin moved to Denver in 2022, she paid $1,400 a month for a bug-infested, rundown studio apartment in University Hills, a neighborhood she hated. To get to her job, she took a two-hour bus ride each way.   This year, Rubin left her University Hills studio for a one-bedroom in Capitol Hill. She’s still paying $1,400 – but for a larger place in a central Denver neighborhood. “I’m really happy with the location,” she said.  Trees line the blocks. She’s close to museums, the botanic gardens and the zoo. She wakes up long before dawn for her 3 a.m. shift as a produce manager at King Soopers. But now she’s a short walk — not a two hour-long bus ride — away from her job. Like many other renters in Denver, Rubin has found ...
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“YIGBY” bill to let churches build housing on their land fails without Senate support
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Approved, Colorado Politics, State

“YIGBY” bill to let churches build housing on their land fails without Senate support

By Marianne Goodland | Colorado Politics The campaign known as "YIGBY" - "Yes in God's Backyard" - to allow churches, school districts, colleges, and universities to build affordable housing on their land failed in the waning days of the Colorado legislative session.  House Bill 1169 would have required local governments to allow residential development on land owned by those institutions. The bill has sat in the state Senate, awaiting debate, since it cleared the Senate's Local Government and Housing Committee on March 27.  On Monday, its sponsors, Sens. Tony Exum, D-Colorado Springs, and Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, acknowledged the bill didn't have the votes to pass and asked that it be laid over to May 8, the day after the session's end, which effectively would kill ...
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Treta: Denver’s broken permitting system is driving up housing costs—and it’s time to fix it
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Commentary, Local, Rocky Mountain Voice, Top Stories

Treta: Denver’s broken permitting system is driving up housing costs—and it’s time to fix it

By Robert Treta | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice I’ve been designing and building homes in Denver for 28 years. I pulled my first permit in 1997—for a small room addition on a house. It took one day. One. That kind of efficiency used to be the norm. Permitting was straightforward, business-friendly, and a basic example of how local government should work. But over the past two decades, I’ve watched the city’s permit approval process become increasingly bloated, inefficient, and damaging—not just to builders like me, but to every Denverite who rents or buys a home. This problem isn’t new. Denver’s permit delays became a real issue as far back as 2007, when the wait time for a standard permit grew to four months. Now, in 2024, the average wait time is 385 days. That’s more t...
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Colorado Senate committee approves bill aimed at boosting condo construction
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Approved, coloradopolitics.com, State

Colorado Senate committee approves bill aimed at boosting condo construction

By Marianne Goodland | Colorado Politics The bill that backers hope will breathe new life into Colorado's condo construction market won a solid 6-1 vote from a Senate committee. But will the bill do what backers hope — lead to a resurgence in condo construction? It depends on who gives the answer. The condo market all but died in 2010 after changes to property and casualty insurance drove those insurers out of the Colorado condo market. That has led to insurance costs of up to $40,000 per unit, which are less of an issue for a million-dollar condo but one that makes the "affordable" condo — in the $400,000 range — unaffordable. Ted Leighty of the Colorado Association of Homebuilders told the committee House Bill 1272 doesn't go far enough to solve the issue it is intended to...
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HB25-1169 would strip local control, override zoning to force housing on church and school property
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Approved, Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

HB25-1169 would strip local control, override zoning to force housing on church and school property

By Tori Ganahl | Rocky Mountain Voice A bill making its way through the Colorado legislature—HB 25-1169, the “Faith and Education Land Use” bill—is under growing scrutiny from local officials, school communities, and everyday Coloradans who see it as a sweeping override of local zoning authority. The legislation, supported by Democratic lawmakers and Governor Jared Polis’s administration, mandates that cities and counties allow residential development on land owned by churches, K-12 school districts, and public colleges–regardless of existing zoning restrictions or community input. Framed as a solution to the state’s housing crisis, critics argue the bill does nothing to guarantee affordability, and instead hands over local land-use control to the state under the guise of housing ...
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$3.2M Denver 17th Street tower deal aims to create 750 downtown apartments
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Approved, kdvr.com, Local

$3.2M Denver 17th Street tower deal aims to create 750 downtown apartments

By Maddie Rhodes | Fox31 DENVER (KDVR) — A block in downtown Denver is converting from offices into apartment spaces after a real estate company bought two towers on 17th Street. The Luzzatto Company, a national real estate firm, purchased 621 and 633 17th St. at the start of April for $3.2 million, hoping to revitalize downtown with the over 973,000 square feet of space in the heart of Denver. Right now, it’s a handful of offices and a grassy area just outside the 16th Street Mall, but company owner Asher Luzzatto said it’s going through a complete renovation that will cost between $150 and $200 million. Within three years, Luzzatto said the company is planning 700 to 750 multi-family affordable apartment units. The company plans to include public and private spaces with a day...
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