Gov. Polis’ authoritarian effort to scrap local zoning rules and mandate cookie-cutter state law in its steed saw some tweaks in committee Tuesday but the underlying problem remains. The so-called affordable housing measure provides no instruction on affordable housing.
Republican State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer’s effort to replace the measure with an alternative was defeated, and the original bill with some amendments passed on a party line vote in the Senate Local Government and Housing Committee.
And yet for all the tweaking applied by lawmakers, the bill does zip, nothing, nadda, towards its purported goal of creating affordable housing throughout Colorado, Kirkmeyer said.
“Senate bill 213, as it stands right now, … is never going to get us to affordable housing,” she said. “All it’s going to do is preempt local governments.”
The Colorado Sun described the amendments as a complete overhaul of the bill, but Complete Colorado nailed it as merely a haircut.
The legislation must now be approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee before advancing to the Senate floor for a full vote.
Despite hesitancy by even some Democrats to push it through this week, it looks like Polis has his claws in deep to get this measure passed to open the state to cookie-cutter overdevelopment of factory housing, local control be damned.