The Boulder City Council voted 6-3 on Thursday to advance zoning reforms designed to increase housing density and address the city’s high housing costs. The changes aim to enable the creation of thousands of new housing units over time by easing restrictions on converting single-family homes into duplexes and triplexes. A final vote on the ordinance is still required.
A key goal of the ordinance is to expand options for “middle housing,” such as duplexes and triplexes, which are currently scarce in Boulder. The reforms include reducing minimum lot size requirements in mixed-use neighborhoods like Whittier and University Hill. In lower-density areas — including parts of Newlands, Old North Boulder and South Boulder — homes within 350 feet of a bus line could be converted to duplexes regardless of lot size.
The changes preserve existing restrictions on building height, massing, and setbacks, likely preventing large-scale redevelopments while protecting certain older and more affordable homes. The ordinance also exempts 100% permanently affordable housing projects from site review, streamlining approval to encourage faster development.
City officials estimate the reforms could allow for thousands of additional housing units, helping to address Boulder’s housing shortage, recently estimated at more than 10,000 units.
Mayor Aaron Brockett, Mayor Pro Tem Lauren Folkerts, and Councilmembers Ryan Schuchard, Nicole Speer, Taishya Adams and Matt Benjamin voted in favor of the ordinance. Councilmembers Tina Maquis, Tara Winer and Mark Wallach voted against the measure.
For more details, read our previous coverage on the issue.
It will increase one thing. The cost of housing for ALL levels of income in Boulder.
How so? Would love to see your data on this.
It’s called saturated market. Inelastic. Unlimited demand. Simple.
Relaxing our zoning laws to allow this of gradual growth is long overdue, and might have prevented some of our current challenges if it had been done years ago. I’m glad Council went ahead with this over the objections of a small but vocal segment of town.
For folks who want to understand the intersectional benefits of this housing policy on climate impacts, please see this presentation I presented at council last night for the public and council members to review.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1T4vOpzSMh1flJP-pxWgoZmCwkwFMuWlcTj56VNaPYRo/edit?usp=drivesdk
How can building more, which is carbon intensive, make any difference in the near to mid-term on the climate? I would wager that it makes no difference for a tiny town like Boulder, when the rest of the metro area is building tons of single family housing in far flung areas of the metro area. The build more to reduce carbon is total greenwashing by developer friendlies.
I will eat my house if even one of the new 7,0000 units authorized by this policy change is (1) built within the next five years and (2) is not a luxury property.
Cities and regions are always in a state of flux. Some buildings each year go too far beyond their maintainable life and will be demolished or extensively renovated. When that happens, it will be better to build a multiplex, where folks can reduce their heat/cooling load by sharing walls as well as potentially be closer to their work and daily needs, thus reducing the daily amount they drive, or better, make walking and biking an option they could choose instead.
As you stated though, the rest of the metro is already building large detached homes elsewhere in sprawling neighborhoods around job hubs like Denver and Boulder. People who move here to work will inevitably choose to actually pay more to live in Boulder proper or pay less and have a long, GHG inducing commute from these sprawling neighborhoods. Denver already has multiple initiatives like yesterday’s Family Friendly Vibrant Neighborhoods ordinance to shift more development within Denver as opposed to its suburbs. See the state initiative on Transit Oriented Development or the planned project around the Ball Arena.
Immediate climate benefits are not the likely outcome of this legislation, as building housing, city transformation happens over decades and not within a single year. But this ordinance is more future oriented towards permitting the lower carbon intensive, system level cost of different types of housing such as in Missing Middle. You’re welcome to review the sources cited in my presentation above.
How long have you lived here, Daniel? Because for all these supposed climate benefits and beyond the math, I think you’re rather missing the forest for the trees. As the Middle isn’t mysteriously missing in Boulder, it was (quite profitably) already erased. But by all means, please present some numbers about how the future restoration of this housing segment is going to help to anyone but millionaires and/or investors. Because we’ve has been down this road before, and this “reform” is largely a lobbied effort to unwind rules/regulations that were put into place for good reason……dooming us to repeat the past, all because few remember, admit, or will be culpable later for these mistakes.
It sounds like your interests for creating affordable housing are similar but we recommend different paths. I would also like to see a vacancy tax imposed on empty housing units, and would encourage you to try navigating local politics to get support for a new tax. Keep in mind that getting a new tax to be adopted requires a vote from the citizens if I recall correctly.
I do not think it matters how long I have lived here, about 5 years by the way. I still work and live here and don’t think that discredits me any more than anyone else, including students to assisted living residents who are too old to drive anymore.
Nonetheless, I hear your point that perhaps I am less familiar with prior work from communities like PLAN and the Danish Plan. I largely agree with those organization’s intent and do not want to see development of housing into Open Space or wildland. I am advocating for infill development, as in permitting easy conversions to duplexes, etc, like the home I converted to a duplex with my brother while I was in graduate school in Indiana (in a community which was much more permissive with building regulations by the way). I argue it is better to build those existing units within Boulder, which under the recent ordinance, would only apply using current single family home bulk form limits. You’re welcome to refer to relevant chapters in IPCC reports or other publications like https://rmi.org/why-state-land-use-reform-should-be-a-priority-climate-lever-for-america/ for how climate issues intersect with housing policy in the long run.
As an example to assuage you, a property under this ordinance can only renovate into a duplex using the same home size as what would be allowed if a single family home was built on the lot, ie the same set back, height, and floor area ratio limits will apply to a duplex as also apply to a SFH.
Nonetheless, I imagine you would agree that not changing anything would also not address affordability. If you have better ideas for how to address housing costs, I’d welcome your participation in local advocacy groups to affect this change. Especially so since I see you have a hydrological science background and would be glad to see fellow STEM professionals speak on behalf of issues they are passionate about. If you need some motivation, see the org ESAL (Engineers and Scientists Acting Locally) for advocacy support https://esal.us/.
We definitely need more data based policy making and solutions in Boulder and beyond.
Ugh. This perfectly reflects that for all the virtue-signaling about housing costs and affordability here, our City Council remains concertedly clueless while always best serving the best interests of Developers and the Real Estate Cartel. As THEY shamelessly pop ‘n scraped all of Boulder’s “middle housing” away 15 years ago, which was equally enabled by their cronies on the CC, Planning Board, and City Gov at the time. Even this basic premise there is a shortage here is patently false! But, of course, they’ve provide zero example/evidence/statistics this deregulation is going to help anything….merely provide an opportunity to feign action on this issue while subversely granting another them another bite of the apple to profiteer off a problem they were directly responsible for.
Look no further than all commercial redevelopment going on here, meanwhile upwards of 40% of space is bafflingly unoccupied. Moreover, both the Chamber and City Council refuse to even acknowledge the glut of high-end housing they helped pushed through that remains both vacant and wildly overpriced (e.g. Transit Village); meanwhile consolidated property ownership of both business and residential real estate continue to artificially inflate costs behind-the-scenes and colludingly refuse to reduce rents in order to preserve their ongoing scam of claiming all this lost revenue as a tax write-off. BOULDER NEED A OCCUPANCY TAX, not more overvalued homes and development designed only to serve corporate speculative investment not this Community.
I am going to begin the process of converting 4 commercial suites into 4 bed 3 bath Apartments/Condos in the City of Boulder and right off the bat you need to pay 160k to affordable housing for bringing 4 apartment/condos online so to speak . Keep in mind this conversion requires very little at this location to bring it to residential code but the 160k is more than what it would cost to bring 4 units online within a month or 2. There is alot of smaller offices that would like to take this path but “Affordable Housing makes it unfeasible”