Plans by Gov. Polis and the Democrat legislature to take control of local zoning from towns and cities under the guise of affordable housing is pretty much pissing off every locally elected official in the state.
Polis’s mega power grab would make way for more and more and more development of high-density housing, no matter whether local roads, schools or other infrastructure is equipped to handle the load.
Mountain towns hate it, metro mayors are pushing back, and members of the Colorado Municipal League are grumbling at the heavy-handed, one-size-fits all approach.
“All of a sudden the state legislature in their wisdom is saying, ‘You’re not doing a good enough job, you don’t know what you’re doing, we do, we’re going to tell you what to do,’” said Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, whose city just completed its own land-use reform. “I just resent it. Most large cities have been going through processes very similar to what Colorado Springs has done. But apparently, we’re too stupid to understand the need for affordable housing and only the state understands what we need to do.”
Having a say in what can and cannot be built on the street where you live is the foundation of every zoning rule and regulation put forth by local councils in these here United States of America.
It is our right as Americans to attend zoning meetings and help make those zoning rules that leads to future decisions. It’s the very backbone of our country.
For state government to come bursting through our doors and change our goals, and rules and laws and usurp local government to suit Jared Polis’s agenda for his presidential run WILL NOT STAND.
Hilariously, “Bagdad Bob” over in the governor’s office told KRDO they’re getting less pushback than expected.
“The overwhelming support for making housing less costly in Colorado comes from the people of the state,” the spokesperson said, citing business and special interest groups that profit from housing construction, the teacher’s union, four county commissioners, a handful of city council supporters. Environmentalists who hate single family housing were credited twice.
But other than that, everyone else hates it.
Senate Bill 23-213 reads like an over-developer’s wet dream to build cookie-cutter crap for investment firms to gobble up and spit out as not-really-so-affordable housing.
The bill, however, doesn’t mandate the housing that could be built be affordable.
Wait, what?
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and Denver City Council President Jamie Torres also made mention of that in a joint statement issued Wednesday.
“We have serious concerns about the attempt to preempt local land-use control; the unintended, but very real consequences of broadly up-zoning when it comes to displacement and gentrification; lack of true affordability requirements in the bill; and the potential to undercut extensive community work to develop bold, but appropriate plans and zoning for our residents,” they wrote.
The bill description only uses the word “affordable” once:
Allows a municipality to sell and dispose of real property and public buildings for the purpose of providing property to be used as affordable housing, without requiring the sale to be submitted to the voters of the municipality;
It does say this:
Concerning state land use requirements, and, in connection therewith, establishing a process to diagnose and address housing needs across the state, addressing requirements for the regulation of accessory dwelling units, middle housing, transit-oriented areas, key corridors, and manufactured and modular homes, prohibiting certain planned unit development resolutions, prohibiting a local government from enforcing certain occupancy limits, modifying the content requirements for county and municipal master plans, prohibiting certain municipalities from imposing minimum square footage requirements for residential units, requiring entities to submit a completed and validated water loss audit report to the Colorado water conservation board, prohibiting a unit owners’ association from prohibiting certain kinds of housing, requiring the transportation commission and the department of transportation to modify the state highway access code …
Minimum square footage, gone.
Mobile homes and factory-built homes would be encouraged.
And the state would take charge of setting goals and planning housing.
What’s not to hate?