Colorado and metro Aurora residents even 20 years ago wouldn’t have taken anyone seriously who said that the metroplex would someday be like San Francisco, rife with million-dollar homes and unaffordable apartments.
That was then. The average rent for a 700-square foot, 1-bedroom apartment now is $1,772, according to Rent Cafe. It’s even $200 a month higher in Denver.
And while unaffordable housing has become a national problem, the Denver metro area, and other areas in Colorado, are seeing a housing crisis as bad or worse than anywhere.
The problem of too many people having to spend too much of their money on housing has prompted all kinds of responses from state and local lawmakers.
Aurora has long been a place where seemingly endless land and water have made for lots of sprawling neighborhoods. At the same time, it’s long been a place where apartments, condos and townhomes are mixed among neighborhoods as far east as the city’s border.
Former City Councilwoman Ingrid Lindemann, a Republican, long lamented a city like Aurora that was unable to offer residents places where you could live, shop, work, go to school and more — without a car. She left the city council before light rail stations opened in Aurora, which have proved less than fulfilling of that dream.
Generally, the consensus among Democratic state lawmakers is to build more multi-family housing as fast as possible, prompting the market to push rents down.
The culprit, many legislators point to, is too many communities favoring builders of single-family homes on large lots, snubbing plans for apartments, condos and townhomes.
The theory is an oversimplification of a very complex and sprawling state. It’s impossible to overlook that Colorado, and especially the Aurora-Denver metroplex, is a victim of its own success.
Colorado is a vibrant, progressive state that easily draws good-paying employers. The growth spurred by all kinds of success stories continues to draw even more new residents to the state, and especially to the metro areas.
Other than building all kinds of housing as fast as possible, creating a surplus in the market that will drive down prices, there is no clear or easy answer.
Gov. Jared Polis and a variety of state lawmakers have suggested a variety of “fixes,” most of which focus on either restricting cities and communities from building more single-family homes on sprawling lots and encouraging communities to build primarily high-density housing.
The proposals almost all seem unable to address concerns about the loss of local control and the difficulty in creating one-size-fits-all housing mandates in a state as vast and varied as Colorado.
State House Rep. Iman Jodeh, D-Aurora, is sponsoring a measure, House Bill 24-1313, that seems to offer low-hanging fruit in this treacherous legislative jungle.
The bill focuses only on communities with light-rail and mass transit corridors. Using both a carrot and stick, it would require state and local planners to develop high-density planning maps along light-rail lines and places like RTD bus hubs.
The lure would be as much as $65 million to aid in planning and for infrastructure to entice first builders and then residents to communities that Lindemann and others have long envisioned. The goal is to create more places where you don’t need a car. And with three-to-five stories of neighbors, they would be more affordable.
The stick, suggested in HB 1313, is withholding some kind of state highway dollars from communities who won’t sign up and ensure their light-rail corridors and transit hubs aren’t reserved almost exclusively for multi-family homes.
Critics, such as officials from the Colorado Municipal League, say it’s an unfair repeal of local control, using road dollars as extortion fodder.
While we, too, see the serious problems with comprehensive housing density mandates, HB 1313 is different.
First off, many if not most of these mass-transit corridors in the Aurora metroplex already are zoned for multi-family, In fact, Aurora development plans were created on that principle.
RTD light-rail lines across the metro area are already rife with apartments and condos communities or projects under construction.
The only serious deficiency in the bill, and all of these housing-density proposals, is their silence to the critical issue of available water.
As Jodeh points out, HB 1313, pushing for high-density housing — which requires far-less water per-resident than single-family homes with yards — would use less water per resident, if there’s water available.
This proposal, however, would have the biggest impact on communities not like Aurora and Denver, which have large sustainable surface water systems. Promoting any kind of homebuilding for water-insecure municipalities and counties, such as most of Douglas County, ignores a critical issue and should be addressed, too.
But if state lawmakers see wisdom in passing Aurora and Denver cash to improve the communities served by light-rail lines and transit hubs, local lawmakers should, too.