Two suburban cities south and west of Denver discover themselves on distinctly completely different tracks in addressing a long-vexing downside — the excessive costs and elevated borrowing prices that field out younger households and renters of all ages from shopping for a house.
In Lakewood, elected leaders spent the summer time overhauling the town’s zoning code and land use guidelines. Their purpose: to encourage the constructing of extra assorted housing sorts, and by extension better density, within the metropolis of 156,000, with the final word intention of decreasing general residence costs.
In Littleton, the same pro-density effort had sparked a livid backlash earlier this yr. Now a citizen-initiated measure is certain for the Nov. 4 poll and, if handed, it should prohibit a big chunk of the town from having something however single-family houses — a stark pivot from metropolis leaders’ prior purpose.
Every metropolis is an element of a bigger density debate that has performed out in communities throughout metro Denver and has dominated housing affordability discussions in any respect ranges, from the Colorado statehouse to neighborhood streets.
Littleton Metropolis Councilwoman Andrea Peters, who can also be an actual property agent, stated the shortage of “lacking center” housing in her metropolis is having a chain-reaction impact on youthful households looking for their first residence in addition to older individuals seeking to downsize. That sort of housing contains duplexes, triplexes and connected townhomes, that are designed to accommodate extra individuals per sq. foot however are much less imposing than hulking residence buildings or condos.
“Now we have an getting old demographic and we don’t have a plan for youthful households,” Peters stated. “If now we have extra smaller-size choices (for downsizers), that frees up that bigger residence for another person.”
Mark Harris, an eight-year resident of Littleton, is a part of a bunch dubbed Rooted in Littleton that’s behind Measure 3A on this fall’s poll. He says the purpose is to cease the town from shoehorning sure housing sorts into neighborhoods the place they don’t match and the place residents don’t need them.
“Our intent is to protect single-family land use — that’s what we’re making an attempt to do,” he stated. “We’re not anti-growth. We’re not anti-affordable housing. We simply don’t need duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes imposed on us.”
As high-level discussions on affordability have taken up a lot of the oxygen in coverage debates in recent times, the difficulty has been tackled within the state Capitol. A set of payments handed in 2024 and signed into legislation by Gov. Jared Polis was designed to extend higher-density dwelling and convey residence costs down.
A number of Entrance Vary municipalities have, in flip, sued the state, claiming its mandate to implement zoning-related modifications encroached on their residence rule powers to set their very own land-use guidelines.
And on the heart of all of it is uncooked emotion.
“This place doesn’t resemble what it was once — in no way,” stated Regina Hopkins, a lifelong Lakewood resident who feels the expansion in her metropolis during the last couple many years has been uncontrolled. “Why are native governments being compelled to repair what’s a state subject?”
Hopkins, 40, and others in Lakewood are exploring whether or not to place their very own measure on the poll to roll again what the town is predicted to finalize on Oct. 13.
However for newcomer Robert Adams, Lakewood is doing the proper factor. At 39, he lastly acquired out of the rental sport by buying a 1,200-square-foot, Fifties-era residence within the metropolis.
“After my years of renting, we purchased 2½ years in the past — and it’s fairly a burden to afford a moderately-priced residence,” he stated.
Whereas residence costs have lastly stagnated throughout metro Denver in latest months, they haven’t come down a lot from their report ranges. The median value achieve of a residential property bought in August in metro Denver was 0.3% in comparison with the identical month a yr earlier, rising to $587,000, in response to a latest report from Houses.com. That was under the two.4% annual value achieve seen nationally, the location stated.
In August 2021, when values have been surging, metro Denver residence costs rose 17.4% in comparison with a yr earlier.
Whereas some consultants say the native housing scene has flipped to a purchaser’s market, excessive mortgage charges are holding issues powerful for these on the hunt for a list. Adams paid $650,000 for his Lakewood home, and he carries a 6.6% rate of interest on his mortgage.
“We are able to handle it, however simply barely,” he stated.
Want for ‘lacking center’ housing
The Lakewood Metropolis Council has already permitted three rounds of updates to the town’s zoning code. These embody measures permitting numerous housing inventory anyplace within the metropolis, limiting new residence sizes to five,000 sq. toes, and inspiring the conversion of vacant or underused business buildings to housing.
Council members will solid one final vote Oct. 13 on a remaining zoning map. The brand new guidelines will go into impact on Jan. 1.
“Proper now, Lakewood is an infill metropolis and there’s not lots of housing inventory coming on-line,” Adams stated. “The provision and demand impact is actual. The core concept of this zoning replace is that it permits extra models to be constructed — it creates extra models for people who find themselves desperately searching for a home.”
Lakewood Mayor Wendi Strom stated the overhaul had taken a lot of the council’s time in latest months. She remembers adjourning one council assembly simply earlier than 3 a.m. in September as its members dissected and analyzed dense zoning code paperwork deep into the evening.
The method, she stated, isn’t going to make everybody within the metropolis pleased.
“That is their residence — these are the roofs over their heads,” Strom stated. “And it may be regarding what’s taking place on the lot subsequent to yours.”
However the mayor has additionally heard impassioned pleas from younger households that simply can’t crack the overinflated market. Supporting the event of extra housing choices will assist these younger households in addition to older residents, academics, firefighters and first-time homebuyers, she stated.
“Now we have seen a degree of concern from younger individuals concerning the modifications not being made,” Strom stated. “Proper now, now we have far more demand than provide.”
In response to the Lakewood Strategic Housing Plan, launched in early 2024, planners estimated that the town would want at the very least 5,800 new houses constructed over the subsequent 10 years to fulfill anticipated demand.
On the metro degree, the Denver Regional Council of Governments concluded in a September 2024 report that an space encompassing barely past the Denver space would want 216,000 new housing models — whether or not homes or flats or different multifamily models — by 2032.
Fifty-two thousand of them would cowl the present scarcity, whereas 164,000 of that complete symbolize new models wanted sooner or later, DRCOG concluded.
Homes now bigger — and dearer
Max Nardo, a housing and good progress senior affiliate with the Southwest Vitality Effectivity Challenge, stated the established order merely wasn’t working. His group has been following the Lakewood code updates intently.
“Cities in Colorado are coping with the identical housing disaster, and lots of are wanting on the similar options — smaller houses on smaller heaps,” he stated.
Lakewood’s housing evaluation report concluded that just about three-quarters of households within the metropolis had only one or two individuals. It additionally famous that the common single-family residence constructed since 2000 had about 2,600 sq. toes of house — a lot bigger than homes constructed many years earlier — and bought for greater than $1.1 million.
“It’s a ridiculous mismatch with what the town actually wants,” Nardo stated.
However Lakewood has seen at the very least one main institutional protest to its plans. The Inexperienced Mountain Water and Sanitation District, which serves 10,000 accounts, accounting for 48,000 residents in Lakewood, wrote a letter to the town in August. It warned that “densification” of the town’s housing inventory might compromise the district’s potential to offer satisfactory service.
Karen Morgan, the district’s president, informed JHB that the district needed to plan for the long run.
“We’re already overcapacity with our sewer pipes,” she stated. “We wouldn’t have the infrastructure to deal with that density, particularly since we don’t know when it’s taking place.”
A possible harbinger of what might emerge within the wake of Lakewood’s replace may exist in Portland, Oregon, the place metropolis leaders undertook the same effort to encourage denser residential building a couple of years in the past, Nardo stated.
A assessment of outcomes from that initiative discovered that between August 2021 and June 2024, the town permitted greater than 1,400 accent dwelling models — which generally embody storage flats and granny flats — and center housing models, which the report described as duplexes to cottage clusters. The commonest center housing unit constructed throughout that interval in Portland was a two-bedroom residence weighing in at a comfy 900 sq. toes.
Most notably, in response to the report, the common sale value of a kind of new market-rate center housing models in 2023 and 2024 was about $250,000 lower than the value of a brand new single-family indifferent home.
Adams, the brand new home-owner in Lakewood, stated right this moment’s housing market is much completely different from what it was when many owners who’re cautious concerning the metropolis’s initiative purchased their properties.
“They purchased in at a time when it was extra reasonably priced, and they’re scared that it’s going to vary in a single day,” he stated. “But when they take a look at different locations which have performed this, it’s a sluggish course of.”
That provides little consolation to people like Hopkins, 40, who took a lead in opposing the development of a five-story residence complicated on the sting of Belmar Park in recent times. That venture, she feared, would destroy the texture of a pure oasis in the midst of Lakewood. The developer overcame that combat and is now continuing towards building.
“One of many causes I oppose the code modifications is {that a} neighborhood’s character will fully change,” she stated. “They’re making an attempt to urbanize and gentrify Lakewood. They’re simply making an attempt to extend density.”
‘All that does is gentrify’
In Littleton, Joe Whitney says constructing extra models received’t essentially translate to decrease residence costs. Costs are struck on extra than simply the provision of housing inventory, he says. Additionally they rely upon building prices and what’s worthwhile for the builder.
He factors to a not too long ago constructed triplex on South Sycamore Avenue that provided little value reduction to these searching for a house in Littleton, regardless of the constructing providing extra dwelling models than the single-family houses surrounding it. In response to on-line information from the Arapahoe County Assessor’s Workplace, the three connected models have been bought for between $980,000 and $1.15 million — costs properly above the metro space median.
“All that does is gentrify — it doesn’t enhance affordability,” Whitney stated of the brand new building. “The very last thing we wish to see is Littleton flip into Lakewood.”
Housing economists and advocates for extra density level out that there’s extra complexity at play within the housing market. They argue that the constructing of high-end models nonetheless reduces general strain on rents and housing costs as residents of lower-cost houses improve, shifting out and making these older models accessible.
However the gentification concern is why Rooted in Littleton selected to try to preempt the town from doing what Harris known as one other “sneak assault” on the town’s residents. That’s the time period he makes use of to characterize the contretemps that occurred in January, when the council deserted an try to welcome denser housing sorts within the metropolis after blowback from the group.
The poll measure, if permitted by voters subsequent month, would hold the council from bringing different varieties of housing to single-family neighborhoods, which Harris stated cowl almost half of Littleton’s land mass.
Nothing, nevertheless, would cease owners from requesting permission from the town to construct nonconforming constructions on their lot.
“We’re not making an attempt to tie the palms of particular person property house owners — we’re making an attempt to tie the palms of a Metropolis Council that simply needs density,” he stated.
Mail ballots for Littleton’s election will exit starting Friday.
Peters, the Littleton councilwoman, worries concerning the fiscal influence on Littleton if the measure finally ends up passing. The governor, in August, signed an govt order that threatened to withhold grants from cities that refuse to observe the brand new state housing legal guidelines.
If Littleton’s palms are tied by the restrictions specified by the poll measure, Peters stated, “it means we’ll be out of compliance with the state and ineligible for grant cash.”
Colorado Municipal League Govt Director Kevin Bommer stated what’s enjoying out right this moment in Littleton and Lakewood strikes on a well-known theme, “particularly when the strain to develop comes head-to-head with the need to protect the character of a group.”
However Bommer, a vocal opponent of state interference in municipal selections, stated “these tough conversations are taking place precisely the place they’re purported to be,” on the metropolis degree.
“Native management — or native decision-making — isn’t at all times fairly, however it’s one of the best ways to unravel native challenges and speak concerning the future,” he stated. “That is exactly how issues have to occur.”
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