June 14, 2024 | Matt Frommer, Transportation & Land Use Policy Manager
Last month marked a historic milestone for pro-housing and climate-friendly land use and transit legislation in Colorado, as Governor Jared Polis signed several of these key bills into law:
- Increase opportunities to build housing near frequent transit with requirements for affordability and displacement mitigation (House Bill (HB) 24-1313) – Blog post coming June 18, 2024
- Eliminate minimum parking requirements for housing projects near transit and encourage more efficient parking management (HB24-1304) – Blog post coming soon
- Legalize Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) in urban areas and establish minimum design standards to maximize ADU production (HB24-1152) – Blog post coming soon
- Quantify local housing needs and discourage exurban sprawl by requiring local governments to complete Housing Needs Assessments and direct new growth to developed urban areas instead of open space and natural lands (Senate Bill (SB) 24-174) – Blog post coming soon
- Create new state funding for local transit service and rail projects by establishing the first dedicated, long-term grant programs for local transit operations in Colorado (SB24-230, SB24-184) – Blog post coming soon
I’ll be unpacking each of these bills in an upcoming blog series, starting with today’s piece on HB24-1313, the Transit-Oriented Communities (TOC) bill.
Collectively, this package of land use and transit bills will create more affordable, walkable, and accessible communities near transit while increasing the frequency and reliability of our bus and rail service — two key ingredients for successful urbanism and climate-friendly growth in Colorado.
Colorado’s population is projected to grow by 1.7 million people by 2050, bringing the total to 7.5 million. It’s not a question of whether we grow but how we grow, and this legislative package puts Colorado on track to grow in a more sustainable, efficient, and equitable way, while protecting the natural landscapes we love so much.
Many of these policy concepts were bundled into the omnibus housing bill last year, SB23-213, which failed on the last day of the 2023 legislative session. For the sequel, lawmakers took a different approach, splitting up the package into multiple stand-alone bills and investing more time and effort in stakeholder outreach to collect feedback from local governments, land use experts, and advocates. This resulted in better policies that are more workable and flexible for local governments, provide new state funding and support for affordable housing, and complete the picture of “smart growth” with the combination of compact development and expanded transit service. The package of legislation tackles two of the biggest threats facing Colorado: housing affordability and climate change.
Colorado’s untenable housing affordability crisis. The primary motivation behind this year’s pro-housing legislation is our state’s relentless housing affordability crisis. Colorado is now the second most expensive state for housing in the western half of the United States, behind only California, and recent polls have found that “cost of living” and “housing affordability” are the top two issues facing Colorado.
Since 2017, Colorado home values have increased by 60%. Over half of renters are now housing cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing. An even greater share of low-income families are severely housing cost-burdened, spending over 50% of take-home income on housing, which often forces residents to choose between critical needs like rent, utilities, medical bills, food, and transportation.
Every Coloradan is impacted by the housing crisis in some way. High housing costs not only dissuade people from moving to Colorado, limiting the state’s economic potential, but they also push younger and less-established residents out of the state, especially low- and middle-income essential workers like nurses and teachers. Rising rents have led to record rates of eviction and homelessness.
A leading cause of the housing affordability crisis is the housing shortage. Over the last 15 years, Colorado’s housing production has failed to keep up with population growth, and according to the state demographer, the state is now 65,000-90,000 homes short of a stable market.
Common Sense Institute’s Colorado Housing Blueprint (2021)
The largest deficit in housing availability is for low-income households making less than 60% of the area median income. The market will never deliver housing that’s affordable for these households without subsidies.
To solve the housing affordability crisis, Colorado needs to apply a two-pronged strategy:
- Increase the supply of market-rate housing by legalizing more housing choices near jobs, transit, local businesses, and schools, and
- Expand affordable housing opportunities by increasing investment in the production and preservation of affordable housing for low-income Coloradans.
Colorado is also struggling to meet its climate and air quality goals. As we continue to experience record-high temperatures and more frequent and intense climate disasters, Colorado must double down on its efforts to reduce planet-warming pollution. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Colorado, and currently adopted policies will only get us 46% of the way to our 2030 transportation GHG targets. To close this gap, Colorado must pursue additional policies that improve access to low-carbon transportation options like public transit and build more walkable, mixed-use, and accessible communities that don’t require as much driving to access daily needs.
Building more compact, walkable, and convenient places to live cuts GHG pollution in several ways: by reducing household driving, allowing more energy-efficient buildings, lowering the embodied carbon from the built environment, and protecting undeveloped land, our natural carbon sinks. To further quantify the environmental benefits of multifamily housing types:
- Transportation efficiency: Compact and transit-oriented development reduces household driving by 20-57%, depending on the proximity to and quality of transit.
- Energy-efficient buildings: Household energy use is 70% lower for multifamily housing units than single detached units.
- Water conservation: Compared to single-detached units, ADUs use 22% less water, small multifamily homes 63% less, and larger multifamily homes 86% less.
According to a recent analysis from Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), urban land use reform could reduce as much GHG emissions as the most ambitious electric vehicle policies, such as California’s 100% Zero-Emission Vehicle target for 2035. In Colorado, RMI’s conservative estimate is 2.3 million metric tonnes of GHG savings by 2033 and even more if combined with policies that improve access to frequent transit and safe walking and biking infrastructure. This is especially important in growing states like Colorado, where failure to enact climate-friendly land use policies and guardrails on growth could result in more exurban sprawl, which leads to more driving, energy and water consumption, GHG emissions, and loss of natural and agricultural lands.
RMI’s 2023 analysis quantifies the environmental benefits of shifting from a business-as-usual scenario to a land use reform scenario that directs population growth to existing urban areas near transit and jobs.
Regional problems require regional solutions. While many of these issues can technically be solved at the local level, no individual local government can solve them alone because housing and job markets and transportation are inherently reliant on regional networks.
In addition, conversations about growth and housing at the local level are often dominated by a small but vocal minority of wealthier homeowners who already live in the community, have time to engage in the process, and personally benefit when housing scarcity drives up home values. Those who would most benefit from the additional housing — the low- to middle-income residents working multiple jobs and struggling to afford housing or live in the same town they work in — are often left out of the process. This can create a disincentive for local elected officials who are genuinely listening to their communities to take bold action on housing and growth.
In some cases, cities have welcomed job growth while blocking the new housing necessary to support workers. The resulting scarcity increases housing costs, displaces renters, pushes new development onto natural and agricultural lands, increases commuting traffic and pollution, and puts pressure on neighboring communities to absorb the new demand while maintaining affordable housing for their own residents. One of the benefits of state legislation is the opportunity to create a regional approach to solve housing, transportation, and environmental issues so that communities coordinate and provide their fair share of housing opportunity.
With this historic package of land use and transit bills, Colorado continues its reputation for original and innovative policy to build more sustainable, efficient, and affordable communities. It became just the third state in the nation to adopt a statewide TOC policy and the second to eliminate parking mandates. As other states struggle to fund public transit, Colorado found a new funding source for transit operations — the holy grail for transit advocates. In addition, the displacement mitigation provisions in HB24-1313 and SB24-174 are some of the most comprehensive in the country. Colorado is not alone in its quest to tackle climate change and housing affordability, and these bills provide models for other states to solve their own challenges.
With that context, we’ll be diving into the details of each of these important bills in the coming weeks to explain what they do and how they will benefit Coloradans.
The post A deep dive into Colorado’s 2024 housing, land use, and transit legislation first appeared on Southwest Energy Efficiency Project.