Colorado lawmakers are taking a brand new swing at Colorado’s housing affordability disaster by utilizing state energy to reshape native zoning guidelines.
Their goal? Outsized suburban residential heaps mandated in lots of the state’s municipalities. A brand new invoice would require most cities to permit single-family houses on heaps as small as 2,000 sq. toes, a couple of third the dimensions of typical heaps in lots of locales. The measure handed the Home late final month and is now earlier than the Senate.
This effort is a part of a rising nationwide push to interrupt boundaries to housing affordability by slashing minimal lot sizes as a method to decrease property prices. Texas lawmakers made the change final yr, decreasing residential lot sizes within the state’s largest cities to advertise denser growth. Oregon altered its lot dimension laws in 2022.
Not each try succeeds. Utah lawmakers tried an analogous approach earlier this yr together with a give attention to starter houses, however their invoice died within the committee a month after its introduction. An effort two years in the past in Montana met the identical destiny.
Limits on minimal lot dimension
Colorado Home Invoice 26-1114 would bar most cities from setting minimums of two,000 sq. toes for a single-family lot. The cap would apply in areas served by municipal water and sewer. The invoice additionally would block native governments from utilizing frontage, setbacks, open area guidelines or lot protection caps to make a 2,000-square-foot lot successfully unusable for housing.
Supporters say the measure goals to legalize smaller, extra attainable starter houses by shrinking one of many greatest price drivers in building: land. They argue that decrease land necessities may also help carry down the entire worth of a brand new dwelling.
“Our laws would open up extra housing choices that households, younger professionals and getting older Coloradans can realistically purchase,” State Rep. Rebekah Stewart, the invoice’s chief sponsor, stated in a press release. “Open land will be laborious to return by within the Denver Metro space, and it’s getting more and more troublesome for inexpensive housing builders to seek out heaps that meet the minimal lot dimension necessities.”
The Nationwide Zoning Atlas, a undertaking of the nonprofit Land Use Atlas, reported final yr that 98% of land that permits single-family homes has a minimal lot dimension requirement. Some Entrance Vary communities on the Denver aspect of the mountains nonetheless reserve giant swaths of residential land for plenty of an acre or extra. Home Democrats say the two,000-square-foot cap builds on earlier reforms that legalized accent dwelling models and inspired denser infill close to jobs and transit.
Extending the home-rule battle
Whereas it builds on these reforms, the Colorado invoice additionally extends a years-long battle over how far state legal guidelines ought to go in overriding native zoning to spur housing provide. That rigidity mirrors debates throughout the nation, the place state lawmakers typically face opposition from native authorities officers who concern shedding management over land use selections. Native officers against the lot dimension measure have raised related issues in Colorado.
“HB26-1114 is a part of a rising pattern: state mandates changing native land use selections that needs to be made closest to the individuals they have an effect on,” State Rep. Chris Richardson wrote in a social media put up. “When the state mandates the end result, native hearings turn out to be procedural theater with a foregone conclusion.”
Backers counter that the proposal takes a slender strategy. It leaves cities answerable for constructing codes, environmental guidelines, historic preservation and influence charges. It targets solely minimal lot sizes and associated dimensional boundaries.
These supporters argue that present minimal lot requirements – typically 5,000 to 7,000 sq. toes or extra for a indifferent dwelling – now not match present land and housing prices. Permitting houses on 2,000-square-foot heaps, they are saying, would reset the principles for a brand new technology of consumers.
Six home-rule cities final yr elevated the fight once they sued Gov. Jared Polis over an govt order that threatened to chop them off from $280 million in grants, loans and tax credit if they didn’t adjust to main housing reforms signed into regulation in 2024.
The regulation eliminated some boundaries to new building, legalized accent dwelling models, eradicated residential occupancy limits, lowered minimal parking necessities and accelerated growth in transit-oriented areas.
Might the invoice be the final straw?
The lot dimension invoice would take impact in October 2031, giving cities time to regulate their zoning to plan for smaller heaps.
Nonetheless, the latest failure of the Utah invoice affords a cautionary story on the vagaries of urgent deeper into native authorities powers. Over the previous a number of years, the state legislature has handed housing reforms.
These reforms relied on negotiated planning mandates, transit‑oriented zones, and funding incentives. Native governments resisted however didn’t harden right into a full-blown revolt as a result of they had been concerned in shaping the laws.
The most recent invoice collapsed after cities and a few legislators solid it as a prime‑down override of native planning. A quick‑monitor approval course of and fears over parking, site visitors, and infrastructure pressure gave opponents a straightforward narrative of state‑pressured small‑lot initiatives.
Colorado’s measure nonetheless should clear the Senate – with any modifications reconciled with the Home laws – after which head to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk. He has not but stated how he’ll deal with the invoice, however his report of curbing native zoning powers suggests he’s inclined to signal it if it survives.
In the meantime, cities are getting ready for contemporary home-rule fights, and supporters are already signaling they might return with follow-up modifications if this primary step passes.
