Boulder County is considering loosening zoning restrictions to allow smaller and temporary housing on agricultural land, a response to years of complaints from farmers that high housing costs have made it difficult to hire and keep workers.
Single-family homes are the main housing option allowed under current agricultural zoning. Boulder County officials are studying whether to permit housing for seasonal workers, including RVs, tiny homes and modular units, along with easing restrictions on accessory dwelling units, or ADUs.
About 25,000 acres of Boulder County’s open space are leased for agricultural use to about 125 producers.
The 2022 Census of Agriculture counted 588 hired farmworkers in Boulder County, down from more than 1,200 five years earlier, underscoring concerns about recruiting and retaining workers.
Lauren Kelso, director of the Boulder Center for Food and Agriculture, said the vast majority of producers do not own the land they farm, and few can afford to build homes on it.
“What a lot of producers, I think, would benefit from is temporary housing solutions,” Kelso said. “Those are going to be really important because of the seasonal nature of this work. That’s how most ag communities house a seasonal workforce.”
For years, local farmers have said Boulder County’s high housing costs have made it difficult to recruit and retain workers. Agricultural advocacy groups describe the lack of affordable housing as a major threat to the future of the county’s farms and ranches.
But the issue has gone largely unexplored until now. In 2024, the county’s Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee told county commissioners it intended to study housing for farmers on open space. Commissioners told the committee to drop the effort because they said the issue fell outside the committee’s jurisdiction.
The agricultural community has since organized around the issue through the Boulder Center for Food and Agriculture, an advocacy organization focused on strengthening local agriculture.
The effort grew out of the Flatirons Foodshed Partnership, a coalition formed in 2021 that published a report in April 2025 recommending policies to support agricultural producers in Boulder County. The Boulder Center for Food and Agriculture was established later that year to carry the partnership’s work forward as a permanent advocacy group.
With the formation of the center, Kelso said the agricultural community feels better equipped to tackle problems that once felt too complex.
“One of the first meetings we had as the Foodshed Partnership, we put up everything on the board and said, ‘Okay, which of these problems do we want to try to tackle as a group?’” Kelso said. “Ag worker housing was one of the options. Everybody said, ‘That’s super important, but it’s just too big of a thing for this ad hoc group of people to tackle.’”
The county’s next steps
This spring, county commissioners directed Community Planning and Permitting staff to explore whether Boulder County’s land-use code could support more farmworker housing.
Staff have said in recent reports that they are looking to other agricultural communities for ideas and that updating the county’s zoning rules could take six to 10 months.
County staff are also weighing longer-term land-use changes that could allow small housing communities for agricultural workers, groups of mobile homes or shared housing models. For now, however, staff are recommending that commissioners focus on quicker changes.
County planner Sabrina Torres said it’s too early to estimate how much housing the zoning changes could add.
The county’s next step is to survey farmers and other stakeholders in August. The results will inform the policies staff recommend to commissioners late this year.
“One of the primary goals of our outreach process is to better understand both the scale of need and the range of housing realities across Boulder County’s agricultural community,” Torres said.
The Boulder Center for Food and Agriculture is helping the county reach ranchers and farmers for the survey.
“It’s too hard to grow food for your community,” Kelso said. “We’re just really excited to have more options, and hopefully affordable options, for farm workers and farm owners to live in this community where they do their work.”
Kudos to the county! There are lots of people of all kinds who would love to live modestly without being in multi-housing units, so they have some privacy and maybe garden space. Tiny homes are perfect for many.
It’s worth noting that in in the City’s online survey last fall to gather public opinion about the new Comprehensive Plan the very first question was, “Which of these types of housing would you like more of?” One could select any number of the multiple choices given, like accessory dwelling units, duplexes triplexes quadriplexes, stacked flats, etc. but they left out important popular choices: tiny homes, single family housing, and none of the above!
I brought this up at a city council meeting and staff said that they have a consultant called Polco, which vetted the questions. But but these were errors of OMISSION, if indeed they were errors. Polco would have been unaware of the missing choices , or could say they were. This seems a reason the city constantly uses expensive consultants, to avoid accountability. Former long-time councilman Steve Pomerance and PLAN Boulder have for years have said that the city uses push polls.
This sounds very promising but they have to get it right. Good thing they have a well informed advocacy group supporting this effort. And hopefully the county is more competent than the city when doing anything related to housing. I hope staff’s recommendation for “quicker changes” isn’t at the expense of the bigger picture. Changing zoning for such a clear cut and important need shouldn’t take a year.
I see the need and think it’s potentially a good approach. I just wonder what the county will do to make sure the dwellings themselves and the relationship between the boss and the workers doesn’t become abusive. There are many places and times where agricultural workers have been provided housing where they work. In many cases, the housing is unsafe, unhealthy, derelict, etc. Also, keeping workers on the land can lead to a relationship where the workers receive little money for their work, instead their “income” goes to pay for basics like housing, food, and clothing. It seems there would need to be oversight to make sure this isn’t happening.
The agricultural producers are the caretakers of our vast open space, which otherwise would become scrub grass, weeds, leaking irrigation systems, and broken fences. It is in the self-interest of the urban dwellers to support them.