Denver City Council’s Land Use, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Tuesday passed bills intended to expand housing affordability in the city.

The bills now head to the full council for consideration. Should the Expanding Housing Affordability guidelines – which include proposed amendments to city code and legislative mapping – pass the full council, the program would ensure that developers create affordable units along with market rate condos and apartments.

The proposed guidelines would allow builders to either build more affordably priced units as part of any construction or to pay a fee to offset construction of affordable units elsewhere. Builders in higher priced markets such as downtown and Cherry Creek would be required to build more affordably priced units, or pay higher fees, than builders in lower priced areas.

To comply, new units would need to be priced to fit the budget of a tenant or buyer below the area’s median income. The guidelines would require that 8% of a project’s units be priced at 60% of AMI for apartments and 80% of AMI for ownership units. Builders can price units closer to market price in exchange for building 12% of their units as affordable.

In higher priced areas, the city would require developers to build 10% of their units as affordable, or 15% for units priced closer to the market rate. Builders of smaller scale projects, nine units or fewer, would pay a “linkage fee” to support the city’s affordable housing fund in lieu of adding units to the project.

The proposed plan would allow some wiggle room for special arrangements that would align with the city’s goals as alternatives to full compliance, such as offering parking exemptions for projects that exceed the requirements. Project concept plans filed before June 30 could avoid the proposed requirements if they receive final site development approval from the city before September 2023.

Developers have expressed concern over whether the program will achieve its goals or further exacerbate the affordable housing problem. They also fear a rush to get developments approved before this deadline will become a problem due to limited city staff to process requests.

The committee’s voting members adopted two amendments to the project: One removing a requirement for parking if a new affordable housing project is within a quarter mile of a high-capacity or medium-capacity transit corridor, and the other making a technical fix around grandfathering.

Council member Candi CdeBaca proposed other amendments, all of which were voted down by the rest of the committee. She was the only committee member who voted against advancing the proposal to council, but nonvoting council members of the committee had concerns, which could mean additional discussion and debate when the proposal comes before the full council.

Mark Samuelson contributed to this report.