DENVER — The Colorado legislature is poised to pass a suite of marquee land-use reform measures that promise to reshape housing development along the Front Range, delivering a significant win to Gov. Jared Polis and legislative Democrats a year after their first reform attempt collapsed.

On Tuesday, the penultimate day of the legislative session, the Senate passed House Bill 1313. It requires Front Range local governments to set density goals near transit-rich areas and then demonstrate they’re hitting those targets. The bill is the centerpiece of the five-part land-use package, and — after winning a swift procedural vote in the House later in the day — it’s now headed to Polis for full passage into law.

“This is a tremendous victory for affordable housing in Colorado,” said Rep. Steven Woodrow, a Denver Democrat who was among several sponsors of the bill. “We’ve known for some time that we need denser zoning by transit, and this bill delivers.”

Late Monday night, 12 hours before the transit density bill passed, the Senate also gave final approval to House Bill 1152, which generally allows for accessory-dwelling units like garage apartments and granny flats to be built on single-family properties in Front Range cities. That measure awaited a procedural vote before moving to the governor’s desk.

Polis has already signed House Bill 1007, which bans local residential occupancy limits that aren’t safety related. He’s also expected to sign House Bill 1304, which limits how much parking local governments can require for developments near certain public transit corridors and routes.

The final piece of the land-use package is a bill requiring local governments to undertake regular housing studies. It’s still moving through the House, though that measure, too, was expected to clear the legislature before the session ends Wednesday night.

This year’s legislation still faced a wringer as the bills moved through the House and Senate. But while vocal opponents didn’t back down, they weren’t able to keep the bills from passing.

Kevin Bommer, the executive director of the Colorado Municipal League — which has broadly opposed most of the reforms — said in a statement Tuesday that he was grateful the density bill was pared back. But it “remains to be seen,” he said, “how the program will actually work and how municipalities choose to respond” to the bills.

Polis, zoning reform advocates and environmental groups have backed state-level land use intervention as a broad-spectrum antibiotic for a host of the state’s present and future ills: More housing stock, they argue, will bring down rents and prices. Pairing density with transit ideally will cut down on car use and air pollution.

And denser development, they argue, will maximize water and utility usage in a state that’s expected to continue growing.

...continued

©2024 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at denverpost.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.