More on the ‘housing crisis’ and what Coloradans think

My thanks to both the Daily Camera and the Denver Post for publishing my opinion piece in last Sunday’s editions. It was quite long; their indulgence was much appreciated. Also, apologies to former Denver Mayor Hancock; I misspelled his name.

I received many emails on this, almost all in support of limiting growth in Colorado. One raised the concern that the “buy-down” program (exchanging down payment assistance for limiting future price increases) would add more housing units. I should have made it clear that this program targets existing units, so it won’t add more. I thought I’d expand on what the 1,024 Coloradans said in the survey I discussed. The full survey is at https://coloradosprawl.com/polls/ and the article on it is at www.snowbrains.com entitled “Survey finds majority of Coloradans are unhappy with the state’s rapid population growth.”

Here are some of the survey’s questions:

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture calculates that Colorado, over the last four decades, has turned more than 1,250 square miles of Open Space, natural habitat, and agricultural land into housing, shopping malls, streets and other urban development. On balance, has this made Colorado a better place to live, a worse place to live or did it not have much effect?” Sixty-one percent said, “Worse.”

“If recent trends continue, Colorado demographers project that the state’s human population of 5.8 million will grow by another 1.8 million by 2050, joining Colorado Springs, Denver and Fort Collins together into a single

“mega-city.” Do you find this prospect to be more positive or more negative?” Seventy-six percent said, “More negative.”

“If Colorado adds another 1.8 million residents, do you expect traffic to become much worse or would the government be able to build enough extra transportation capacity to accommodate the extra residents without more congestion?” Eighty-one percent said, “Traffic will become much worse.”

“Colorado is a mostly arid state with limited water in its streams and rivers. Is it more important for the remaining level of water in streams and rivers to be used to support wildlife habitat, fish and birds, or is it more important to use the remaining water in Colorado streams to support the projected increase of residents in the state?” Seventy-six percent said, “Water should be kept in streams to support wildlife.”

“A study of government data found that 86% or more of the depletion of Colorado’s Open Space, natural habitat, and farmland in recent decades was related to Colorado’s rapid population growth. Would continuing this level of population growth into the future make Colorado better, worse or not much different?” Seventy-five percent said, “Worse.”

Relative to this, there was a citizen vote on Tuesday in Steamboat Springs on the development of recently annexed land to build 2,264 affordable units for workers. The voters rejected the project, even though the project did not densify existing areas inside Steamboat Springs. Apparently, it was too big, the voters didn’t like subsidizing it with taxes rather than extracting developers’ profits, and, no doubt, other issues.

So, this election loss again raises the issues of whether citizens support more overall growth, and of growth not paying its own way. (Note that a lot of Steamboat’s existing housing has become shortterm vacation rentals; over time, worker housing is even less available/affordable.) Our legislators and governor seem to be totally ignoring Coloradans’ concerns about excessive growth. It seems like every housing bill is based on adding as much marketrate housing as anyone can come up with an argument for. The perfect example is the proposed massive densification within a half mile of transit corridors, irrespective of the data which shows that only a small fraction will use transit, that transit requires huge (and potentially increased) subsidies, and that our quality of life will likely be significantly negatively impacted by all this growth. And, of course, given the very high demand, prices won’t be materially affected and so the housing will still be relatively unaffordable.

Also, at least in the version of the bill I saw, there was zero attention paid to the obvious point that transit users need destinations to go to. So displacing jobs, shopping, public facilities, etc., with more market-rate housing makes no sense.

One email I got summarized it all with the suggestion that we should put up “NO VACANCY” signs at Colorado’s borders. Maybe we should add “No more housing bills” until the proposed policies are based on a sophisticated evaluation of all the costs, benefits and impacts. And, critically, that Coloradans are given a say in how many people we really want here.

Steve Pomerance is a former member of the Boulder City Council. Email stevepomerance@ yahoo.com.