Mark Wallach: Co-ops won't solve affordability…
Mark Wallach: Co-ops won't solve affordability crisis
By Mark Wallach |
Housing affordability is probably the most pressing public policy issue facing the city of Boulder today, and rightfully so. With the average price of a detached home just shy of $1 million, and with small, starter homes commanding in excess of $600,000, Boulder is at a crossroads. If we continue down our current path, Boulder will be exclusively a refuge for the wealthy and those who were lucky enough — and old enough — to have bought in when housing was cheap. For the young, for service providers, and for those who serve our community as police, firefighters and first responders, the official housing policy of Boulder will be: "Try Longmont, it's a pretty nice town."
At first glance the solution would appear to be simple: if there is a shortage of housing, build more. Much more. But Boulder is unusual in several respects. It is a largely built-out municipality with relatively little undeveloped land. Boulder is surrounded by open space, but most of it is not eligible for annexation. And while Boulder cannot grow out, it also cannot grow high, restricted by height limitations.
The City Council appears to have no appetite to accelerate housing growth by considering a revision of either the annexation process or height limitations, or even rezoning some commercial districts to permit residential development. Instead, since all actions that might actually impact the housing shortage in Boulder are off the table, but with an apparently infinite appetite to engage in social engineering, they have decided to promote housing density within long-established residential neighborhoods by loosening restrictions on housing coops.
This misguided policy change will create little permanent affordable housing suitable for low-income families, where the need is greatest, and damage the quality of life in established neighborhoods that are the heart of what makes Boulder a desirable place to live. Inserting housing co-ops into Devil's Thumb or Chautauqua will degrade property values (I know, it's a retrograde concept), put more cars on the street, create noise issues and ramp up tensions among neighbors.
The city's unwillingness to enforce its existing regulations regarding occupancy limits is a clear indication of what lies ahead if this new policy is instituted. If illegal co-ops are now tacitly approved (and they are), of what use are the proposed limitations on the number of new co-ops or the density and parking limits proposed by the statute? Put another way, how many complaints has the city received in the past five years regarding illegal co-ops, and against how many of those illegal coops has the city taken action? In fact, relative to the first draft of the legislation, the current draft actually weakens the city manager's enforcement powers with respect to co-ops, stripping all criminal penalties from the statute, even for repeated, intentional and egregious violations. How reassuring for the residents of Martin Acres and University Hill.
The affordability crisis is real, and the solutions will require difficult and contentious debate. What is the proper size of the Boulder? Should we consider higher buildings in the downtown area or more aggressive annexation of land for the purpose of creating affordable and middle-income housing? Reasonable people will have different views on these issues, and in the end the community may elect to accept high housing prices as the cost of keeping Boulder a low-rise, low-density community.
However, the proposed co-op law is a sideshow to this debate, not a serious solution to a serious problem. It will not provide affordable housing for families, it will be unenforced and unenforceable, and will be little more than a boon for those developers who will game the system to pack buildings with a transient population with no roots in the neighborhood they are diminishing. The City Council should abandon this effort, heeding the ancient Latin dictum primum non nocere: First, do no harm.
Mark Wallach is a recent émigré to Boulder from another place with an affordability crisis: Brooklyn.
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