Candidates running in the Democratic primary to represent the City of Boulder at the state Capitol gathered at the Boulder Public Library this week to discuss one of the city’s most pressing issues: the housing crisis.
While they all expressed a desire to see more affordable housing and improved mental health and addiction treatment, they differed on hot-button policy questions, such as state control over land-use policies to generate more housing.
These differences underscore the stakes of this year’s Democratic primary, in which three seats to represent the City of Boulder will be decided. Some candidates face Republican challengers, but the political leanings of the districts strongly favor Democrats.
State Rep. Junie Joseph, a family attorney and former city councilmember, is seeking to keep her seat representing House District 10. Her challenger is Tina Mueh, a retired middle school science teacher and former president of the local teachers’ union, the Boulder Valley Education Association. The race for House District 49 is between Lesley Smith, a University of Colorado regent, and Max Woodfin, a mental health counselor. Competing for Senate District 18 are Rep. Judy Amabile, co-founder of Polar Bottle, and Jovita Schiffer, an independent education consultant.
Dozens of people attended the candidate forum on Tuesday, May 21. It was hosted by PLAN-Boulder County, an organization that has advocated for open space and opposed initiatives to increase housing density, and Empower Our Future, a climate advocacy organization.
State control over land-use decisions
During the 2023 legislative session, Gov. Jared Polis attempted to pass a state law that would have forced cities like Boulder to allow denser housing, including in single-family neighborhoods. One goal was to increase the city’s housing supply and drive down costs. The legislation failed on the last day of the session.
With the sole exception of the City of Boulder, local governments across the state opposed the legislation, arguing that zoning rules should be decided by local governments.
The candidates running to represent the City of Boulder appeared split on whether the state should have power to mandate zoning for denser housing. This issue matters because it may surface again.
Amabile, who has represented Boulder since 2019, voted for last year’s land-use legislation, SB-213. After the bill failed, she sponsored a new bill this year to revive a part of it related to accessory dwelling units, or ADUs. Notable provisions in this year’s legislation include the relaxation of off-street parking and owner-occupancy requirements. The governor has signed the bill into law.
“It is a matter of statewide concern that so many people cannot find an affordable place to live,” Amabile said in defense of statewide land-use policies. “We are always trying to strike a balance between what is good for many people, and what is not going to hurt other people.”
Her opponent, Schiffer, indicated she would not have supported the 2023 land-use legislation.
“In deciding whether to take over local land control, I would put in many measures before that,” she said. “There’s no one answer for more affordable housing. There are several options. They don’t all work for every single location.”
Mueh, who grew up in Colorado Springs, indicated she opposes state land-use laws that would override local laws. She referenced statements by former Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, who had argued that neighborhood appearance should be a local issue and suggested that local governments would sue the state if such legislation passed.
“I was a little embarrassed, honestly, that the only mayor of any city in Colorado who supported that bill was our own mayor,” Mueh said. “That was a massive overreach bill.”
By contrast, Joseph, who voted for SB-213, said it was an equity issue and that she supports statewide land-use measures. She suggested the city is losing essential workers due to the lack of affordable housing.
“We need community members who will help us with building roads, keeping our schools open, keeping different businesses open,” she said.
Smith indicated she would have opposed the bill. Having served on the Boulder Valley School Board, said she takes local control “very seriously.”
“I assumed this bill would be dead in the water, and it was,” she added.
Woodfin did not attend the forum. He was away for training with the Colorado National Guard, according to a spokesperson. On housing issues, his website states he supports “forward-thinking property tax policy and an income-based circuit breaker that uplifts livelihoods across House District 49 and allows people to stay in their homes” as well as “community-informed solutions to housing insecurity plus accessibility to reliable public transit.”
Housing affordability
Increasing the housing supply is one way to drive down costs, but some argue the market won’t create deed-restricted affordable housing. The candidates were asked to respond to a broad question about population growth, the housing shortage and regulations to create affordable housing.
On these issues, the candidates offered a range of opinions.
“We’re really going to have to make this affordable community for all the people that we want to live here. Now, does that mean that an infinite number of people can live here? Of course not. Because there is a carrying capacity to this community?” Mueh said.
Joseph, the only renter in these primaries, supports rent control and increased state funding to create and subsidize more affordable housing, stating, “We definitely have to regulate the market.”
Schiffer said the state should address other affordability issues as well.
“The families that are struggling to make it here struggle with childcare costs and also health care costs,” she said. “And of those of us who are making it, many feel like we’re just a crisis away from not making it.”
Amabile emphasized the need for subsidizing affordable housing and building various housing types, not just “monolithic” apartment buildings along transit routes. “Somebody has to pay for it,” she said of affordable housing. “Because by its nature, it isn’t going to pencil out on its own.”
Smith said local governments should regulate affordable housing. As a former member of the city’s Water Resources Advisory Board, she expressed concerns about some communities’ ability to accommodate population growth.
Homelessness strategy
Boulder’s homelessness strategy centers on a “housing first” principle, which prioritizes housing homeless people before tending to other needs like mental health or substance use treatment. It is considered a best practice for addressing homelessness. But this approach has faced scrutiny in recent years due to the rise in addiction to fentanyl, a powerful opioid that is contributing to a disproportionate number of overdoses among homeless people in Boulder.
Many of the candidates said they support the city and county’s housing first strategy but some stressed the need for additional mental health and substance use treatment.
Smith called housing first “critical” but highlighted the necessity for more state mental health and addiction treatment options.
Amabile, whose son has experienced homelessness, believes housing first doesn’t work for all homeless people. “For people who have serious mental illness, for people who have a serious addiction to drugs, like methamphetamines, that is not a solution,” she said of housing first. “We need a continuum of care.”
Mueh supports treatment before housing, saying people with mental health or addiction issues need places for treatment and step-down care. “I absolutely am treatment first over housing first,” she said.
Candidates also advocated for policies to prevent eviction as part of an overall homelessness strategy.
Schiffer said she supports peer-support programs that help people stay housed. Joseph said she helped pass eviction protections for people who are receiving Social Security and disability benefits.
“Prevention methods are extremely important,” she said. “And I do believe that the housing first model in Boulder County is an improvement to the other communities.”
Please stop using the phrase “housing crisis” for Boulder like it’s a natural disaster. The lack of housing in Boulder has been deliberately manufactured and is driven by profit. The university does not provide enough housing for its students, so students are forced to find rental spaces. Looking at a property map of the city shows that most of the properties that could be owned by families and local workers are instead being rented out. No one seems to ever talk about this — just “we need to build more affordable housing” (i.e., squeeze in more big boxes of profit-generating rental units).
The architects/developers in this town need to design mainstream communal housing of multiple unit sizes for multiple generations with adequate storage and open space on site. This needs to be done for homeless as well. Case in point: Bluebird, where I know at least one homeless person, probably a high utilizer, has a whole efficiency unit to themselves when the rest are using Boulder Creek as their latrine. Oh, but there are 40 others accommodated at Bluebird for permanently affordable. These are to offset the additional homeless generated by the disproportion of high rent/multi million owned units to affordable. It’s a continuum, a revolving door. For every 0-30% AMI are a much greater quantity of the higher end AMI’s like the “missing middle” 80-120% AMI at 2206 Pearl for 300 sf. without parking for $1700-$2600/mo., and that was a year ago, so it will cost more by the time it is built out.
The current status is not a functional scalable model. Element, Bluebird’s developer, is putting in another 155 unit box-like high end rental apartment building adjacent to the south, approved on Thur., near the Rally Sport newly added condo development. That’s in addition to Boulder Junction, Diagonal Plaza, Eastpointe (a transformation from affordable to high-end done a decade ago). There are multiple hundreds plus units at : 58th/Arapahoe (a isolated island with car garages for each unit at “Waterview” on the floodplain, now changed to “Weathervane”), the Geological Society of America site south of Iris at the cemetery, TWO more east of Celestial Seasons and another across from King Soopers in Gunbarrel, 600 some units at Darkhorse , 900 some at the Millennium, Peleton (old), Reve (newer) and Papillios at Folsom in the makes. These lie between the 3 sets of condos on Pearl and the two on either side of it on Folsom and the one at Pine almost to 28th.
The worst model was the redevelopment of Shambhala related Marpa House from a communal kitchen/ shared bathrooms and common living/dining patio and other space accommodating 40 at $900/person including food and utilities transformed to 16 units of 3 bedroom, rented by the bedroom for $1700/ mo. without food (and I don’t know about utilities.) Oh – Thrive, the vegan restaurant across the street from BHS – soon to be scraped for 8 condos up to 3 stories. And Western Resource Advocates at the SW corner of Baseline/Broadway. They just got offered an additional 16 K sf. to go residential from commercial.
Well, you decide. These have to be approved and I’m the only one contesting them at Planning Board. Oh, and I thought Boulder’s pop. was going down. I suppose so, since the homeless demographic is not represented in the population figures. But for every affordable unit subsidized by the feds, there are 6 high-end units to match, or is that 7 or 10? That will contribute to the homeless population and deplete the already constrained budget with the infrastructure they are using rent free, not the least of which is trash at $3M/yr.
It would be interesting to know what that ratio is of “high-end” units to affordable units. Is it really 6, 7 or 10? As it is now in Boulder, developers are required to provide one unit of affordable housing for every four units built, or cash in lieu, so it seems the ratio should be closer to 1 in 4. What we really need now is yet more affordable housing to stem the market speculation and rising costs. Building affordable housing is typically only accomplished through HUD Low Income Housing Tax Credits. It’s the only way developers like Boulder Housing Partners can manage it. The state manages the tax credits and they are very competitive so that also limits construction of affordable units. There are not many other options available for financing construction, although there are some innonvative models that state housing finance agencies haven’t been able to figure out yet so they can’t really scale. However, if we don’t build more affordable deed restricted housing, this crisis will continue to grow. Increases
in housing costs in Colorado have even outstripped Florida and California. How many locals can afford a 10% rent increase every single year — meaning their rental costs double every 10 years? Yet, folks from either coast still find Colorado relatively affordable, and private investors are always looking for residential real estate in this still hot market.
Excellent coverage, John.
But this approach has faced scrutiny in recent years due to the rise in addiction to fentanyl, a powerful opioid that is contributing to a disproportionate number of overdoses among homeless people in Boulder. (Housing First).
I spent my entire undergrad intensively studying HUD policy, programs, and funding.
Since, 2018, the nation adopted housing first because HUD shifted the best practice from sheltering to housing first. If we don’t follow along, we don’t get federal dollars. That simple.
The consequence of having a bureaucratic machine like HUD dictate national best practices and consequently, what they’ll pay for, is that it lags reality a solid 5 to 10 years. It’s best practice doesn’t take the influx of methamphetamine and fentanyl into account, it’s not there yet. Perhaps in another 3 to 5 years will it bend. It’s up to states, counties, and localities to identify inefficiencies, complete deficiencies of services, and so on. We have yet to do so. To some, we have no drug problem whatsoever.
The state of Colorado ranks 45th in the country, the lowest percentile, for mental health and addiction. Locally, we have very limited treatment services: 8 to 11 beds with a maximum of 15-day Medicaid billable stay at Mental Health Partners, Transitional Residential Treatment and another 8-11 beds in their Respite program, with two weeks Medicaid billable stay. Even our latest addition, Tribe has an 11 person capacity with the very unknown max length of stay and a goal of reaching high utilizers. Not near enough and only part of the puzzle. We need treatment that builds off our existing programs, offering long-term residential care.
Because housing first funding is faster and politically “less messy”, we cling to this one approach knowing that many aren’t doing well in housing, some are overdosing.
We need to add other options to addressing mental health, addiction, and homelessness. Especially if we intend to continue to prioritize individuals experiencing homelessness who have substance use disorder for housing.
Our former Chief of Police and DA, Michael Dougherty made it abundantly clear that we have a drug crisis, when signs of human trafficking. Both called for treatment. Michael continues to call for treatment.
It’s crazy that we’re in the midst of a national drug crisis, hitting Boulder just as much as Portland, and we have no treatment but next door in Fort Collins, they built a state of the art behavioral health center, and Aurora has over 30 treatment programs ranging from 30 to 90 day residential to sober livings, but here in Boulder and Boulder County, we act as if the drug crisis missed us.
Jenn, I obviously like the connection you have made from these funding agencies and the housing first v. treatment regimes priorities, but I have something else to point out that relates my comment to yours. The feds make the problem worse because the people that lose their housing from the inflated costs resort to despair and these noxious drugs to assuage their angst. Their numbers increase and the cycle repeats.
JG – Absolutely! Look at the latest high end development of 600 students at Darkhorse and 900 plus at Millennium, a takings of housing (and tax revenue) from Boulder.
CU is too much of a good thing.