2024 Could be a ‘Robust’ Year for Affordable Housing in Boulder but Challenges Remain

More money becomes available for new developments, but there are still several issues preventing the county from achieving long-lasting solutions, advocates say.

Boulder County is often seen as a microcosm of the affordable housing issues that are plaguing Colorado, and many other parts of the United States. Some cities in the county have strict zoning ordinances that limit where affordable housing projects can be built and stringent building codes that make it difficult for some of the most creative developers to bring new housing units to town. Developers are also grappling with increased costs of borrowing money and construction materials. While nonprofits and community-based organizations across the county have been working overtime to build enough affordable housing to meet demand, there’s still plenty more work to be done, according to Boulder Housing Partners Executive Director Jeremy Durham.

“Next year is going to be robust, but we need more funding for affordable housing at the local level,” Durham said.

High cost of construction

One issue that several cities in Boulder County, like many others across the state, are trying to overcome is that their affordable housing construction pipeline has been decimated by economic factors such as high interest rates and construction prices. For example, the City of Boulder’s affordable housing dashboard shows the city built just 127 affordable units in 2022, which represents a 54% decrease in units built per year since 2020.

That decline also occurred at a time when the city updated its building code to require more wildfire hardening measures after the Marshall Fire in 2021. The city also adopted new building electrification and affordable housing regulations, all of which can increase the cost of construction outside of material prices. Other cities like Louisville adopted similar measures in response to the Marshall Fire, but chose to make them optional for fire victims, CPR reported.

Durham said Boulder Housing Partners has more than 1,000 affordable housing units in its development pipeline and expects to bring approximately 250 of those units to market in 2024. That includes the 60-unit Hilltop Senior Living Community in Longmont and a 100-unit, 1.86-acre infill development known as Rally Flats in Boulder, he added.

Those units will help Boulder and Longmont meet their affordable housing goals, although the impact of their delivery may be muted. The City of Boulder has a goal to preserve 15% of its overall housing stock as income-restricted affordable housing by 2035, or about 7,100 units altogether, according to its affordable housing database. However, the city has only restricted over 3,900 units as of December 2022.

A similar story can be told about Longmont and Lafayette. Longmont’s latest housing needs assessment shows the city is about halfway to meeting its 15% affordable housing production goal with about 2,700 income-restricted units. Lafayette’s assessment shows it has just 752 publicly assisted rental units in the city, which is roughly 6% of its housing stock.

Durham added that one way to solve the problem is for local policymakers to consider affordable housing projects as a capital asset that provides a community benefit instead of a one-time investment. He said BHP analyzed the City of Boulder’s investment in one of their projects and found the development provides approximately $720,000 of community benefits over a 20 year period, primarily driven by BHP’s below-market rents.

“I think getting folks to understand that the investment in community-owned capital assets that can be used for our shared community values and objectives should be the highest priority,” Durham said.

County programs come up short

For its part, Boulder County has launched several initiatives to increase the number of available affordable homes. Voters approved Measure 1B in November, which will provide roughly $17 million of funding for affordable housing developments in 2025. The county received approximately $63.3 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act in 2022 and spent roughly one-fifth of that total to create and preserve about 400 affordable units.

One development that is being supported by Boulder County’s ARPA funds is Willoughby Corner, a 400-unit community for people aged 55 and over. Boulder dedicated about $12.8 million to support the development, which should be completed in the summer of 2024, according to Jim Williams, a spokesperson for Boulder County’s Department of Human Services. Roughly 320 units will be income-restricted, according to the plans.

Boulder County has also stepped in to help some mobile home park residents purchase their lots. In early December, Boulder County extended a 30-year forgivable loan of $1.1 million to help residents of the Mountain View Mobile Home Park in Lafayette purchase the park. The transaction preserved about 34 units of affordable housing.

“Boulder County values the role of mobile home park communities in maintaining affordable housing opportunities, and we know it takes a lot of cooperation from mobile home park residents to organize and move towards housing stability,” Commissioner Claire Levy said in a press release.

But there are other areas where advocates say cities in Boulder County need to improve. One area is the housing voucher lottery system, which often rejects more people than it helps. For instance, Durham said BHP received roughly 2,200 applications for its 350 housing vouchers during its most recent lottery between late October and early November. For comparison, about 2,000 people submitted applications to BHP’s voucher lottery in February, Durham said.

Boulder County could also do more to encourage cities to allow a diverse array of homes to be built on their land. Colorado has about $40 million available from Proposition 123 to support new home types like modular housing, but some residents have pushed back against bringing new construction to the county.

“I know things need to be built, but this just seems like a real incursion on people in my neighborhood and on me, that they would just go ahead and do this without really telling anybody,” Kate Meyers, a City of Boulder resident, told Yellow Scene Magazine in November when asked whether she supports bringing a modular housing factory to the city.