The Boulder County Board of Commissioners voted 2-1 on Tuesday, Sept. 17, to approve a temporary moratorium on the construction of larger homes in unincorporated Boulder County, starting January 17, 2025.
The moratorium will halt site plan review applications for six months for homes exceeding the median square footage in specific neighborhoods. The goal is partially to allow county officials time to develop new regulations aimed at reducing housing costs and environmental impacts linked to large homes, commissioners have said.
Commissioners Ashley Stolzmann and Marta Loachamin supported the moratorium, while Commissioner Claire Levy opposed it.
“This won’t stop building in Boulder County,” Commissioner Stolzmann said. “It is a pause, a brief pause, while we discuss what the regulations will be in six or so months.”
During the public hearing, Commissioner Loachamin said, “there’s a huge opportunity with this text amendment to look at how we might really try and transform some of those old policies.”
The moratorium has raised concerns among property owners planning to build larger homes, as well as builders, architects and real estate and other professionals who may face uncertainty during the freeze. At Tuesday’s public hearing, dozens of residents testified. Most opposed the moratorium. It is scheduled to run from Jan. 17 to July 17, unless extended by another resolution. Lots where homes were lost in the Marshall Fire will be exempt from the moratorium, according to county officials.
“People came in here and they told us what their dreams are: buying land and building in unincorporated Boulder County,” Commissioner Levy said. “I do feel like we are letting them down on what they have been working for and saving for for a very long time.”
One of the original aims of the moratorium — and the upcoming code revisions — is to lower housing costs in Boulder County. Large homes can drive up property taxes for neighboring homes due to the county’s method of assessing property values.
Currently, county code allows homes to be built up to 125% of the median square footage in a neighborhood, though property owners can get special approval to build larger homes. This gradually drives up size limits in certain areas. According to a Boulder Reporting Lab analysis of county records, the average size of homes in unincorporated Boulder County has steadily increased in recent decades.
Critics argue that the moratorium could contribute to inequities tied to how the county determines allowable home sizes. Under the upcoming moratorium, homeowners can still build up to the median home size in their neighborhood, meaning large homes will continue to be permitted in wealthier areas, while neighborhoods with smaller homes will face stricter limits.
“This is, by definition, exclusionary zoning policy that will continue to allow large single-family homes where they already exist, unfairly putting the burden on neighborhoods with smaller homes,” Brian Fuentes, an architect with a local firm, told county commissioners. “This is hypocritical, inequitable and fails to address the largest homes in the neighborhoods that this moratorium supposedly is concerned about.”
However, a few attendees spoke in favor of the moratorium. Jessica Hertzberg, a designer at Boulder-based Land Design, said that large homes have a greater environmental impact due to their energy consumption.
“While this change may not be easy at first, I believe that delaying the necessary action [to address larger homes] to improve Boulder County’s climate resilience will only put more strain on our communities in the future,” Hertzberg said.
Well, Duh. All zoning is exclusionary. That’s its purpose.
There were 45 speakers. 43 were fiercely opposed to the moratorium. Those opposed also included the American Institute of Architects of Colorado, Chamber, Better Boulder and The Boulder/Longmont area Realtor Association. Combined they represent almost 10,000 members. In the world of politics that’s a near consensus.
It also understated the dire impacts of the moratorium laid out by the many local small business that spoke – they stated in no uncertain terms that they would lose their jobs or have to lay people off.
The statement that bigger houses use more energy would normally be generally correct. However, the County’s green building codes effectively create an energy budget for all houses. The bigger the house, the lower allowed energy per square foot. In actual practice, this means that bigger houses have the same energy bill as a smaller house and are built to higher green bulding standards than smaller houses.
Boulder’s sustaianble design requirements are currently the strictest in the entire country. A moratorium does not help Boulder to acheive greater climate resiliancy. To suggest otherwise demonstrates a lack of knowledge about the existing codes. A mortatoium is an extreme action that should be reserved for emergencies. There is no emergency. It simply hurts homeowners and the small local businesses that help people create or renovate their homes.
Despite the overwhelming public outcry, the commissioners did not heed the community’s clear request to abandon the moratorium, and instead simply delayed it. While this will partially mitigate the damage to the local community, it does not respect the will of the people or acknowledge the inapproriateness of using a sledgehammer where the Comissioners coudl have used a scalpel .
Good for them. They need to stop the madness of extreme overbuilding and take the time to figure out rational zoning and land use policies that makes sense for the future. I don’t feel bad at all for the people who want to move here from all corners of the country to build their 6000 square foot dream homes. Those are not the people Boulder should be worried about.
Disagree Scott. There’s a housing crisis perpetrated by large homes. That’s the long emergency.
Mountain homes are not an excuse for extra size. On the contrary, they present a higher fire risk and even if remediated, they add fuel in natural fire zones and break up natural ecosystems. The extra space for live/work doesn’t account for the higher carbon footprint of living distant from commonly used services like grocery, hardware and rec centers.
One story: 76 acres. Horses and hay. Family needed to work the place. Need large space for his “extended family”. When rebuilt, under these “constraints, ” needs will not be met. It to be sellable in the future and multigenerational. Wouldn’t we all like to save institutional elder expense and have gyms, studios, workshops, home theatres, offices AND large spaces for aging parents on our properties? Most of these services are sharable in the community and arguably entitlements when dedicated for exclusive use.
5500 sf. is only big enough to build a 3 bedroom house with a garage. Entitlement for one is depleted value for another.
One person that bought an acre in unincorp. BO CO and wants to increase from 1900 sf. to 3600 sf. for his Mother-In-Law apt. and a 1000 sf. shop he will use that will address food insecurity. What about my housing security? He’s raising my property taxes, yet he says he threatens he will have to sell and go outside Boulder.
How much is enough?
The day of a rising tide lifting all boats has reached it’s limit Scott, it’s time for those taking the highest gains for so many decades to spread it around. Give back.
No Lynn. You fundamentally misunderstand the economics of land planning and real estate. The housing crisis is due to a lack of availability of dwelling units, due to exclusionary zoning that only allows one house on 35 acres. If you want to bring the cost of housing down, we need to provide more Dwelling units per acre. It can come with stipulations such as small size limits or even affordability restrictions, but there is no getting around the fact that constraining the supply of housing is the primary cause of increased prices.
Furthermore, if the county limits the size of all new housing and expansion to existing housing to the median of a neighborhood, it may have the effect of slightly reducing the value of those properties, but it will increase the value of thousands of existing houses that are above the median. The unintended net effect will be to increase the average cost of housing in Boulder County.
Larger houses also have the ability to provide room for for multigenerational housing, room rental, ADU’s, and non-conventional family arrangements Don’t provide a natural occurring form of attainable housing. It also allows for Covid driven Spaces like exercise rooms, greenhouses and home offices – When people don’t have to drive everywhere For their activities, it lowers their carbon footprint.
As Kamala Harris recently said, the United States is short several million units of housing. This is due primarily to exclusionary housing practices, and NIMBY politics.
And finally, just to be clear what we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about an avalanche of 10,000 square-foot homes. We’re talking about the difference between a 3500 square-foot and a 4500 square-foot house On roughly 20 building permits a year. This is a minuscule visual And environmental impact on a 35 acre lot and absolutely not sufficient cause to warrant The radical action of a moratorium. And one of the most fundamental misconceptions of all NIMBY politics is that if you stop development here, it stops development. It doesn’t. It just moves it further away. When we build here in Boulder, we are required build to the highest sustainability rules in the country. A 5000 square-foot house in Boulder County must be LEED platinum or equal. There is no higher level. If we forced that family to build in Weld, JeffCo, Gillpin county, they can build whatever the heck they want. Which will just make their environmental footprint much larger. Climate change doesn’t stop at Boulder County border.
None of those arguments, other than the more units per acre, are compelling. There’s no reason go greenlight mega mansions in Boulder County or anywhere else. There’s no advantage to it and plenty of drawbacks. All these other issues are minor in comparison and those outcomes can also be avoided.
Scott Rodwin has it right. The premise that this moratorium has something to do with affordability, housing availability or climate impact are all easily refuted. Unless and until the Commissioners look inward at what the County bureaucracy is doing to exacerbate housing costs and availability, nothing will change.
They need a wholesale change in leadership in CP&P or, better yet, outsource the function to a contractor that can administer a reasonable set of building objectives across Boulder County. Our current planning and permitting process is a big part of the problem. Overly cumbersome, constantly changing requirements, 2-3X as expensive as comparable communities, slow, recursive and run by people who, as a system, do not work in the public interest.
Ask any builder, architect, developer, realtor, subcontractor or homeowner who has built here and they will tell you NOTHING will change without new leadership, new policies and new success factors. A simple question for the Commissioners or our County Administrator is “how do you measure CP&P?”. Right now, the only thing that they are succeeding at is prevention of ANY development and adding cost to what few projects make it through their process.
BCCFEG –
It is your collective group that is misled. Prices do not decrease when markets are saturated.
Constraints drive creativity.
So you know more about economics, planning and real estate than the thousands of members of the American Institure of Architects, Chamber of Commerce and the Boulder Realtors association who have dedicated their careers to understanding such things? Okay. I’m done.
Architects, real estate agents, and the Chamber. Gee, you think any of those groups might have an agenda designed to benefit their bottom line?
Scott-
Presuming you were addressing me, my answer is this: I absolutely know better. I’m sorry you can’t understand, but you will when reality strikes.
Interesting comments.
I agree with Roxanne and Lynn, and with the position of Jessica Hertzberg in the article. As a 3rd generation landowner in old town Marshall I approve of the moratorium on overly ambitious building projects in our area, even if it is temporary. The county should take time to assess the impact of building too many oversized structures in the Marshall valley, with its limited water supply and undermined landscape.
The moratorium does not apply to victims of the Marshall Fire. Since then the county has at least given residents some opportunities to appeal tax rate hikes. If there had been more non-professional attendees at the meeting, I believe there would have been more votes in favor of the moratorium. Usually these meetings are scheduled without most of us knowing about them until after the fact.
The “people with big dreams of buying land and building in unincorporated Boulder County” have been making offers on our property for decades. They’ll never understand why we don’t want to sell off our family heritage at any price. Since we lost our parents’ home and our grandfather’s 100 year old house in the Marshall Fire, we continue to maintain our property until we can afford to restore it. Meanwhile as new development has accelerated all around us, the cost of materials, builders, permits and taxes keep rising, almost becoming prohibitive.
It’s always corporations, bureaucrats, and the super rich who complain of “uncertainty” when they are faced with any regulation of their behavior. They don’t understand the real financial uncertainty of people who are working hard to make ends meet.
Architects, developers, builders and realtors all have the right to grow their businesses and make money. Regulations are simply safeguards, and without guardrails like this moratorium, unlimited growth becomes mindless and unsustainable. Limitations exist to deter those with money, power and blind ambition from undercutting the rights of ordinary people.
Sustainable growth requires common sense. This temporary moratorium should absolutely go forward.
Ruth – I do support limiting house size equally but so far, this proposal doesn’t do that. It limits size based on what some* of your neighbors within 1500′ have (*only if they’re considered the “same neighborhood”).
My concern is that this disproportionately limits areas that have historically had smaller homes and will have a greater impact on devaluing those properties (this is the intent afterall, keeping values lower). I am glad you are able to maintain your family property & heritage but, in my opinion, your family’s land (and my family’s land) should be able to grow in value equal to those in the area. Under the moratorium, Wildflower Ranch which is in Marshall/area, still keeps the right to build ~8000 sf homes while Marshall is reduced to 2500 sf – and remember that the County counts sheds, basements, garages, it can double count stairs and even counts wall thickness; this is different than how the City counts square footage.
There is an economic loss of value when property rights are removed like this disproportionately. As an example, did you know that if someone in the “big” neighborhoods (again, say in Wildflower Ranch, adjacent to Marshall) chooses to NOT build beyond 2000 sf, they can actually be paid for that decision through Boulder County’s Transfer Development Credits (TDCs)? Property owners can sell TDCs for +$10K / 500 sf. – so if I kept my rebuild in Marshall to 2000 sf, I could sell my 1 TDC for $10K but if I built that same house, just one thousand feet away – in Wildflower Ranch, I could sell my 6 TDC/ rights for $120K…that could go a long way to rebuilding my home but my property is on otherside of the tracks (historically, litterally) I guess.
And finally- do be aware that the new regulations that come from this effort could very likely impact Marshall Fire properties IF those owners don’t rebuild under Article 19 which expires in about 2 years (Art 19 expires 5 years post fire) – if you don’t submit a full building permit under Art.19, this very likely will impact your properties.