Residents in the City of Boulder and surrounding areas broadly support allowing more housing density in neighborhoods, according to a recent survey of hundreds of residents. The results reinforce a shift toward expanding the housing supply in a city where most land has historically been zoned for low-density, single-unit detached homes.
The November 2025 survey will shape the update to the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, a long-term policy document that guides land use and housing decisions across the city and parts of Boulder County. For decades, the plan has set strict housing density limits. City officials told members of the Boulder City Council and Planning Board last week that they intend to loosen those restrictions and draft a new plan with a commitment to increase the city’s housing supply.
The survey’s findings suggest many residents want that change. About 82% of respondents supported adding duplexes in low-density neighborhoods that historically have allowed only single-family homes. Roughly 70% backed allowing townhomes and multiplexes with three to six units in those areas.
Respondents who were younger, lower-income or renters were more likely to support density. For instance, about 74% of renters said they supported higher-density housing types, such as apartments and condominiums, compared to 41% of homeowners.
Most respondents said they did not want to raise the city’s height limits. Even so, residents in the lowest income bracket showed significantly more support for allowing buildings up to six or seven stories than respondents in the highest income bracket.
The Boulder City Council has already adopted land-use reforms aimed at making neighborhoods slightly more dense, including easing rules for accessory dwelling units and allowing certain single-family homes to be divided into duplexes or triplexes. These steps marked a shift from prior councils, which focused on limiting residential density through zoning and occupancy limits. Residents who oppose efforts to increase housing density still attend city council meetings to warn of increased noise, parking pressure and crowding.
During a council meeting last week, Councilmember Tara Winer said she appreciated the survey because it provided a broader view of how residents think about housing density.
“You have your group that speaks to you all the time and so it’s hard to know what everybody is thinking,” Winer said. “It gives you more of a sense of what the community as a whole is really thinking.”
The survey was conducted by Polco, a Madison-based polling firm, for the City of Boulder and Boulder County. About 5,000 surveys were mailed to households across the Boulder Valley in September 2025, and 688 were completed.
The survey was designed to reflect the demographic makeup of the area’s population, among other characteristics. About half of respondents were renters and half were homeowners, which roughly aligns with the city’s population. Councilmember Taishya Adams said the sample still obscured the perspectives of certain racial and ethnic groups. Only seven respondents were Black, a proportion similar to Boulder’s overall population. But she suggested the city should have oversampled some communities or included qualitative research to capture the voices of people who are often excluded from policy conversations.
“I’ve heard the word equity used, and it makes my ears burn when the science is not backing it,” Adams told city officials.
The current Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan includes two housing categories labeled low density, which are intended to primarily allow only single-family homes. Those categories cover the majority of the city’s land area.
A draft of the new plan released by city officials this month would largely eliminate those density restrictions. The lowest-density category would call for a mix of single-unit homes and small-scale, multi-unit housing types, allowing up to eight units on a single lot, according to a city official.
Zoning rules could still restrict how many homes are allowed on a single lot. However, some councilmembers raised concerns about managing density inside the city’s wildland-urban interface, where neighborhoods border flammable landscapes.
“If we have six homes on fire in the city, our resources are taxed,” Councilmember Rob Kaplan said. “Fifteen homes, we lose our water supply.”
The city plans to release a draft of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan in March 2026. Approval by the Boulder City Council and Boulder County is scheduled for June and July.
This report and survey did not consider quality of life issues such as increased traffic, crime, environmental degradation, etc., that come with increased density.
Might I suggest that you actually read the text of the survey and follow up report linked in the body of the article? The survey very much did include concerns around those topics.
Agree with Mark J Stangl.
Low density housing causes traffic by requiring daily trips to be taken by car, makes me feel less safe by reducing the number of people around, and is a huge harm to the environment by requiring higher heating costs per person, more roads per person, more car travel per person, more land per person, and more plumbing per person. My quality of life is certainly worsened by Boulder’s low density and I hope increased housing variety quickly comes to Boulder.
688 respondents is statistically representational for a population of 100,000-ish?! & ecven so, the parking issues def need to be taken into consideration, like increased density ONLY if there’s adequate parking, like one space per housing unit.
I think it’s wonderful that Boulder is taking steps to increase density in SFH zoned areas. For decades, this city has listened exclusively to the vocal minority of wealthy homeowners, and what did we get for that? An acute cost of living crisis, major increases in traffic from L-town commuters, declining BVSD admissions, obscenely high taxes, out of control homelessness, and so on. Boulder has, for better or for worse (I think for better), decided to become a major employment center in the front range region. The priority for city council and the planning board absolutely should be to ensure that those who work here can also live here, and it is heartening to see that the majority of residents surveyed agree.
Hear, hear! I think the vocal minority of wealthy, elderly homeowners that want to prevent any and all changes simply do not understand the crisis that BVSD is facing from declining enrollments – let alone the other knock-on effects that our cost of living crisis is causing.
It’s good that they got an almost even amount of renters and homeowners to respond to the survey. Boulder has always catered to homeowners and their strong desire for a country club-like environment that gives small city vibes — even though renters make up half the population. This is one small step forward to a more equitable city. But I hope council can now actually take the harder steps to figure out how to build housing that is affordable to median income families, and not just cater to wealthy tech bros by building expensive duplexes no one else can afford. Do the hard part now.
Erasing single family houses East of Broadway from Baseline down to South out of town will not help BVSD – that’s a false talking point of people with agendas. People with kids do not move into high density housing. They just move out of town even faster. It is also going to widen the income gap in this town. There will be more renters, less middle income families (granted middle income by Boulder standards), and the town dominated even more by the wealth west of Broadway, because that high density housing will never replace those homes.
Who is going to own these higher density housing units? People that can afford to live East of Broadway cannot afford to build a tri-plex. People west of Broadway wouldn’t except for a passive income via renters. And out of town housing corporations/developers are the going to explode. Maybe Tebo can start owning most of the residential properties too!
People, including myself, do support infill – but smart infill (Boulder Junction/28th&Diagonal for example) and not at the cost of the people who actually call Boulder home. Everything this town is doing with these blanket policies is to increase transient residents and grow the number of young single tech/bio professionals that will move out as soon as they have a family.
I always feel like the Progressive Party feels feels anyone with a home is their enemy and getting older is a crime.
The population of Boulder is dropping and the city implements the same solutions as Denver, Portland, and Austin like one size fits all. Even if that size is 5 to 10 times smaller.
One reason the tax base goes down and our property taxes go up or are not allowed to sunset is the erasing of affordable commercial space for small businesses and creating over priced / parking challenged spaces no business wants or can stay in business with. Even with all this wealth, small business in Boulder must go out of business at a much higher rate then the rest of Boulder County. The amount of commercial space available is ridiculous.
Point is – plan Boulder for Boulder – smartly. Not for developers/corporate housing conglomerates/CU/the Boulder Progressive Party. It’d be okay if middle income families had a back yard for their kids and dog.
Blanket policies and Black and White thinking gets you unwanted consequences. This housing crisis was not made by past Boulder City Councils. If it was – it wouldn’t be country wide!
I see the comments concerns BVSD. I’d be curious as to “why” this is happening. Is it cost of housing? is it kids are not getting married (national statistics point to this)? Is it the actual housing prices? Is it that Boulder is moving a lot of industry OUT of Boulder so the jobs are in L-towns and hence that’s where the young people go?
I’m not so sure it’s the housing costs in total. I can tell you that bringing in Sundance does not help, that letting CU grow from 13,000 undergrads when I went in 1978 to 38,000 today does NOT help …in fact it may be the biggest reason for a lack of housing at an affordable price. Could it be the “15 minute ” neighborhoods that City Council wants which I think is a terrible idea? There are many reasons but to blame the old line Boulderites like myself is off base. I do not want 20 cars parked on my street all. of the time like I have on the hill, but I see a lot of apartments with For Lease signs on them. If I was the City I would be contacting these people and trying to lock up 10 units in each for a 10 year period to help fill them up. I think there is more open housing then we know and if in fact the thinking that University’s enrollments are going to go down in the next 15 years we actually could have too much housing !! That to me is a real possibility.
South Boulder needs pressurized water from Boulder City, at the Marshall intersection along hwy 93 to avoid another extensive Marshall Fire. Residents living in the area and Fire trucks could then put out fire starts. This area is full of ditches and grassland and is at the El Dorado canyon mouth with 20-30 mph more winds than other areas. The city of Boulder surrounds these areas with open space, so share the utilities that make sense to expand so other communities to the east are not so impacted.