The Sum & Substance reports that Gov. Jared Polis signed HB 1065, his final major housing bill of the session, after a year that brought mixed results for Democrats’ housing agenda. The bill allows select local governments to use sales-tax-increment financing for transportation infrastructure within two miles of major transit hubs and offers tax credits for residences built in those zones. In other words, Colorado’s housing crisis now gets transit-zone magic, developer credits, and a fresh round of bureaucratic choreography.
But the bigger story is what died: minimum lot-size reform, lot-splitting, rental tax credits, and land-value tax schemes. After several years of state preemption fights, the Legislature appears to have hit the wall between “we need more homes” and “Denver gets to rewrite your neighborhood from a committee room.”
The Bullet Point Brief
- HB 1065 offers tax credits that could total $50 million annually and $350 million over seven years. That is a lot of taxpayer-assisted optimism.
- Builders say Colorado has a 106,000-unit housing shortage, and land values rose 466% from 2012 to 2024. Supply is not a side quest. It is the quest.
- The failed minimum-lot and lot-splitting bills show local-control fatigue is real. Turns out neighborhoods, cities, counties, water systems, and infrastructure planners do not always enjoy being told to shut up and clap.
- Local-control absolutists are not innocent either. You cannot complain that homes cost $560,000-plus and then defend every zoning rule that makes land untouchable.
- Polis gave us “livable and workable spaces” language, because apparently every housing bill must come wrapped in TED Talk burlap.
My Bottom Line
Colorado Democrats are discovering that housing policy is easy when you are cutting ribbons and hard when you are telling everyone else to absorb the tradeoffs.
Families are getting crushed by housing costs. That is real. But the Capitol’s answer is still too often complicated incentives, transit-zone mythology, tax credits, subsidies, and policy machinery that moves puzzle pieces around while pretending it built a house.
Some of this may help. Fine. But the adult questions remain: who benefits, who pays, and will this actually produce attainable homes, or just another consultant-fed machine with a “housing affordability” sticker slapped on the side?
Conservatives should be honest, too. More housing means fewer dumb barriers, faster permitting, and letting private builders build. But water, roads, infrastructure, and neighborhood expectations are not imaginary.
Colorado does not need more housing theater. It needs permitting sanity, local accountability, real infrastructure planning, and the courage to let people build. If lawmakers want affordability, stop treating supply like an optional accessory.
Source: The Sum & Substance
Share your thoughts...