What’s city of Boulder’s housing strategy all about?

At its retreat in January 1998, the City Council directed the development of a Comprehensive Housing Strategy as one of four goals for the next two years along with revising the budget process, addressing transportation issues and redeveloping the Crossroads Mall.

Housing became a council goal due to recent trends in housing prices that have limited the housing choices in Boulder to increasingly higher income groups. Incomes have not kept pace with the price and rental value of homes and apartments.

A broad sector of people who once had the opportunity to make Boulder their home no longer have that choice. The result of this limited choice in housing stock severely impacts our employment base (employers are having an increasingly difficult time attracting employees for moderate- and lower-wage positions), our level of service with respect to transportation routes and the diversity of the community.

Housing is a regional concern; Boulder does not face this issue alone. Boulder County is witnessing escalating housing prices accompanied by unsightly urban sprawl and increasing congestion along transportation routes. A regional approach to the “affordable” housing issue must be developed immediately, in light of the county’s rapidly expanding job growth. We are initiating discussions at the regional level to this end.

The city of Boulder, however, has immediate needs that must ensure that a broad diversity in our housing stock be maintained and developed, making the best of what remains for new development within our borders. Time to address this pending and serious housing crisis is running out. Among other measures, we recommend significant changes to Boulder’s development review process and fostering partnerships with the business community as well as the University of Colorado and others in Boulder who are threatened by the current housing situation.

Recommendations for a Comprehensive Housing Strategy, summarized in the accompanying chart, were made by a five-member “planning group” comprised, in addition to ourselves, of Beth Pommer and Thom Krueger of the planning board and Louise Smart of the Boulder Housing Authority and former director of Off-Campus Housing at the University of Colorado. The planning group synthesized public comment from two, well-attended, large public forums; two meetings directed specifically to the Residential Growth Management System (which addresses the rate and type of residential growth in Boulder); and several meetings with the “strategy group,” composed of about 40 individuals with diverse interests. Several leaders from Boulder’s business community participated.

The charge of the planning group was to develop and make recommendations to the city council on a comprehensive housing strategy that addressed the needs of four groups, for which there is some overlap: low and very low income households (up to $35,000 annual income), Boulder’s work force, moderate income households ($35,000 to $75,000 annual income), and University of Colorado students, faculty and staff.

For example, the University, the city’s largest employer, is experiencing recruiting problems with 25 percent of faculty and staff positions vacant. More than 50 percent of CU’s faculty and staff now live outside the city. Statistics suggest that as many as 3,800 students commute daily into Boulder, primarily because housing has not been adequately addressed in the past by CU. Furthermore, the lack of adequate on-campus student housing has immediate impacts on those who need entry-level housing in Boulder. If additional housing was provided by CU, an entry-level house now occupied by students could become available for a moderate or low-income household with one or more Boulder workers. Boulder businesses are increasingly facing similar problems.

The Planning Group developed a strategy that addresses the needs of the four groups comprehensively and effectively. Our recommendation recognizes the complexity of our community with its competing interests and different ideas about how to approach housing without negatively impacting our present quality of life. As such, we recommend a strategy that examines how to do best with what we have left for residential development in Boulder while achieving the housing needs of the four groups.

Three primary recommendations deserve further explanations. First, we recommend major changes to the Residential Growth Management System that give incentives to housing developments that provide a significant percentage of housing affordable to low and moderate-income households. We recommend that these developments not go through our current allocation process for their “market-rate” units. This also would apply for mixed-used development, which are strongly encouraged in our recommendation. For smaller developments and single lots, we recommend provisions be made for a wide range of options that would contribute in some manner toward affordable housing.

Second, we recommend that the five-year update to the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan (due to begin this spring) be housing-directed. Up-zoning existing undeveloped land for higher minimum densities will lead to a reevaluation of our current build-out population projection of an additional 3600 housing units and will require fuller dialogue with the community at large. Furthermore, we recommend more mixed-use development (such as Crossroads and other neighborhood centers), higher densities along transit corridors, and any additional annexation to provide affordable housing as a broad community benefit.

Third, we wish to capitalize on Boulder’s existing quality housing programs with increased funds to do more of the same as well as accelerating acquisitions of existing housing. To this end, we recommend a broad-based task force be formed to evaluate the fairest and most efficient manner to further fund these efforts.

We ask for the community’s continuing input and involvement as the process unfolds. Housing is not an isolated issue but profoundly affects our ability to have a strong economic and employment base, to have transportation corridors with an acceptable level of service, and to have a diverse community where our teachers, retail and restaurant workers, and others vital to our community can live. We need to know the level of community support for housing the four targeted groups. These issues are critical to our future. Please contact us for further information or call the Boulder Planning department at (303) 441-3270.

Dan Corson and Lisa Morzel are members of the Boulder City Council and subcommittee for a comprehensive housing strategy.

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