While the main event – a proposal to impose statewide controls over housing on municipalities – won’t be heard in committee until Thursday, the lesser-known of the two bills in Gov. Jared Polis’ proposed solution to the affordable housing crisis won a 9-2 approval from its first panel on Wednesday.

The bill now heads to the full House for debate.

House Bill 1255 seeks to ban growth caps in municipalities and erase those that currently exist in several cities in Colorado, such as Boulder, Golden and Lakewood. 

The sponsors portray the bill as part of the state’s solution to the affordable housing crisis. Critics, including one who testified in committee, say that HB 1255 doesn’t require the housing that could be built as a result of banning the growth caps be affordable.

HB 1255 co-sponsor Rep. William Lindstedt, D-Broomfield, told the House Transportation, Housing and Local Government Committee Wednesday that growth caps limit the available housing stock, keep workers away from the communities they might work in and artificially drive up the cost of housing.

Growth caps in the four to seven communities that have them prohibit development applications, said co-sponsor Rep. Ruby Dickson, D-Greenwood Village. Growth caps make it illegal to increase housing supply, she said, in response to a question on how the bill would promote affordable housing. 

Lindstedt added that HB 1255 does not prohibit municipalities from making decisions about development; they’re just not allowed to say “no” to new development applications under the proposal. 

Among the bill’s supporters is the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, whose representative, Meghan Dollar, told committee members her group supports the bill, along with policies to increase the supply of workforce housing.

The chamber’s members said in a recent survey said the housing crisis should be a top priority, particularly for workforce housing, she said.

“Businesses cannot recruit employees they need if there is no housing stock for those employees, and laws that restrict the growth of residential housing stand in the way of increasing this much needed housing supply in Colorado,” Dollar said.

The Colorado Competitive Council also sees growth caps as an impediment to workforce housing, according to Rachel Beck, its executive director. Growth caps force people to live in more outlying communities that are more affordable and then commute further to work, which also makes traffic worse.

“Growth bans harm middle class and working families the most, and they will exacerbate our housing crisis further if we don’t stop them,” Beck said. 

Kinsey Hasstedt, the state and local policy director for Enterprise Community Partners, which works to increase the affordable housing supply for low-income people through capital investments programs and policy work, pointed to a 2021 report on housing that came from a group convened by U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper that said opposition to growth is one of the main drivers of the state’s persistent housing supply gap.

That report also said anti-growth policies are often driven by opposition to high density housing, which includes the most most affordable housing rental development and new multi-family dwellings.

“Enacting local prohibitions against such development is deeply problematic as our state persistently lacks the number of homes necessary to stably house low-income Coloradans,” Hasstedt said. 

But the bill may create unintended consequences, especially for rural communities, according to Jon Peacock, the county manager for Pitkin County. 

HB 1255 will give “unfettered access to groundwater and unlimited private sector budgets for land purchases and luxury development,” Peacock said, adding, “House Bill 1255 will cause a rural land rush.” 

He warned HB 1255 will result in more scarcity of affordable housing and rural transit and “will create more demand for workforce housing in our community than it will solve.”

“There are no requirements in this bill that the housing created be affordable,” Peacock said. 

Peacock also said HB 1255 will undermine negotiations on Senate Bill 23-213, the major main housing proposal, which is scheduled for public testimony Thursday in a Senate committee.

Local communities should decide where housing is appropriate, Peacock said, arguing that HB 1255 will strip local governments of the tools they use to encourage good development.

“It will encourage luxury developers and out-of-state interests to invest only in the highest and best residential properties, which will be luxury second home development,” he said, adding that’s not what the bill intends to do.

And rural communities on the Western Slope are growth-restricted by something outside of their control – federal public lands.

Richard Orff, representing the Associated Governments of Northwest Colorado, pointed out many northwestern Colorado communities are surrounded by federal lands. They’re struggling with the same affordability issues, but HB 1255 would not allow those communities to match the rate of housing construction to availability of services, including infrastructure for water treatment and delivery, sewer and storm water services. 

Cathy Kentner, co-petitioner for the Lakewood Strategic Growth Initiative, which passed in 2019, said HB 1255 will allow developers to build out their sites in whatever they find to be the most profitable without any regard at all for the community. She also said the bill was crafted by and for wealthy special interests and developers.

Kentner said the 2019 initiative is not anti-growth, but, rather, a way to grow in a reasonable, rational, responsible, and smart way, and a response to people who felt they were ignored by their local elected officials. That initiative included a permit allocation system that controls new development so that needed and wanted housing is prioritized first, and that will make communities more inclusive and affordable, she said. 

The bill would throw 268 municipalities under the bus for four communities, Rep. Rick Taggart, R-Grand Junction, also argued. He said that, in his community, the wastewater treatment capacity is at 85%. Expanding housing capacity isn’t about 10% or 20% more, he said. It’s for 20 or 30 years, and that could result in a $100 million cost to expand the wastewater capacity, he said.  

“Local authority has to be given the benefit of the doubt that not all these things are arbitrary,” Taggart said.

HB 1255 was amended to clarify worries the bill would impede permitting or zoning. It was also amended to allow for temporary caps in the case of a disaster emergency.

Lindstedt, who said the bill is only designed to go after arbitrary growth caps, added that other amendments would surface when the bill is heard in the House.