“We don’t have a free market in housing,” LiFari told Colorado Politics. 

Instead, he said, Colorado labors under a “highly overregulated” market that offers no economies of scale to drive down the cost but all the incentives to maximize it.

To LiFari, one solution to the housing crisis is to lift regulatory barriers, particularly at the local level, and unleash the kind of innovation that has allowed the car industry to supply Americans with an array of affordable transportation choices.

And it’s not like policymakers haven’t hunkered down to offer solutions, he maintained. Indeed, Polis identified the lack of housing as one of the biggest challenges confronting Coloradans today.

“Rising housing costs are pricing people out of neighborhoods they’ve lived in for years,” he said in January as we welcomed the work to “create stronger, healthier, and more affordable communities.”

But it’s a complicated and emotional issue, and what’s clear is the policies currently in place aren’t working, LiFari argued.    

That’s one perspective on one aspect of this labyrinthian system to house Americans. 

There are more.

And that’s why Colorado Politics and The Denver Gazette are hosting a forum on housing affordability. 

In addition to LiFari, the other panelists are Ted Leighty, Chief Executive Officer of the Colorado Association of Home Builders; Elizabeth Peetz, Vice President of Government Affairs for the Colorado Association of REALTORS; Karen Kallenberg, Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity of Colorado; and, Jonathan Cappelli, Executive Director of Neighborhood Development Collaborative.

The forum – another presentation by Colorado Conversations, the Gazette family’s new platform for discussing the state’s biggest public policy issues – start promptly at 8 a.m. on March 31 via Zoom. It’s free to attend. Register here: denvergazette.com/housing.