Housing in Colorado has become a hot button issue. With limited housing leading to high costs and a dramatic increase in property taxes, Governor Polis and the Colorado legislature attempted to do something about it this past legislative session, which ended Monday night. 

A whole slew of housing bills were introduced this session but the most consequential was the Land Use Bill, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Moreno and Reps. Jodeh and Woodrow, all democrats. The bill was heavily supported by Governor Polis.

The bill, as introduced, would have eliminated housing occupancies, allowed for ADU’s to be built anywhere, would have allowed for manufactured homes to be treated the same as regular homes and would have directed local governments how development should take place.

The sweeping Land Use Bill also promised to at first get rid of U+2 and similar occupancy limits throughout the state. This was eventually changed to allow cities with a quarter of their population being college students to limit occupancy to five unrelated per house.  

The bill went through a lengthy legislative process and took many different forms throughout its journey in the state legislature. Ultimately, not enough stakeholdering was done when the bill was written and there was too much to fix in a short amount of time. 

Stakeholdering is the process that legislators go through to include affected parties, known as stakeholders, to get a better understanding of how they should write the legislation. 

Local governments worked hard to lobby the bill to get what they saw as important changes into the bill. Many of these amendments made their way into the bill in the Senate and made many folks more comfortable with the bill.  

However, when the Senate sent the bill over to the House, the House added many of the upzoning and density requirements back in.

This likely led to the downfall of the bill. Many of the very things that the House added back into the bill were the things that critics were most worried about. 

Another contributing factor to the demise of the Land Use Bill, a key policy proposal of Governor Polis, was time. Since the House made amendments to the bill the Senate passed, the Senate had to consider those amendments. The Senate was given only a few days to do so and simply ran out of time to even vote on it. 

The bill, which was over 100 pages long, was introduced about halfway through the legislative session. Maybe this was because the sponsors of the bill did not expect such heavy backlash but Nonetheless, there just was not enough time to get the bill done. 

Though the Land Use Bill died this legislative session, it is likely that something similar will be back next year. Housing will remain an issue in Colorado, especially since the state’s signature housing policy never came to fruition.

U+2 has been a topic of concern for quite a while in Fort Collins and the change to occupancy limits would have been significant for college students. 

U+2 highlights the complexity of the public policy process. It is difficult to create a policy that will leave everyone somewhat satisfied. CSU students want it gone but many of the established residents in Fort Collins want it to stay to protect the integrity of neighborhoods. 

While a removal of U+2 has been a focus of ASCSU this school year and past, there have also been conversations from City Council about making adjustments to the ordinance or allowing voters to decide via a ballot initiative. 

Some adjustments would be extending the limit to something like U+3 or changing the zoning requirements for where U+2 can and cannot be enforced. Fort Collins is not alone in its housing occupancy restrictions. 

The City of Boulder also has a housing occupancy rule but it is more comprehensive than Fort Collins but even Boulder is looking at how they can update their occupancy limits, according to Karl Guiler, a senior policy advisor at the city of Boulder. 

“We’re actually in the process of looking at changing it,”Guiler said “We have requests to change it to four unrelated occupants.”  

Currently, Boulder’s occupancy limit is set at three unrelated, similar to Fort Collins U+2. If the Land Use Bill wasn’t able to spark change in occupancy rules, perhaps Boulder changing their occupancy limit will. 

Policymakers will have the chance to take the Land Use Bill around the state this summer to further stakeholder it. 

The demise of the Land Use Bill was a surprise to many. It was backed by the Governor, who has significant sway with the legislature. This was Polis’s first big legislative defeat at the state Capitol. 

The bill was eerily similar to the Land Development Code that the City of Fort Collins proposed last year. Much to the demise of Colorado State students, they will now have to wait for the City to make changes to U+2. 

Fort Collins started their Land Use Code updates a few weeks ago and at the time they started, it appeared that the Land Use Bill had a better chance to pass and their Land Use Code updates may not matter.

However, now that the Land Use Bill has died, Fort Collins is on its own to update the Land Use Code and find a better way forward. Fort Collins, which appears to have learned from their alleged mistakes last time,  is hitting community engagement hard. 

The City sent out over 97,000 postcards informing residents of Land Use Code updates. According to the Land Use Code website, the City is transitioning from community engagement to community analysis. 

The last few events in the community engagement portion of the update are walking tours where residents can walk around neighborhoods with city employees to get an idea of how neighborhoods could change under the proposed code. 

As always, feel free to reach me at michael.stella@colostate.edu or @Michaelstella_.