Is a bill requiring Front Range communities to set up transit-oriented development the 2024 version of a land-use bill that went down in flames in 2023?

Not exactly, but there are several major similarities between House Bill 24-1313 and last year’s Senate Bill 23-213.

Chief among them: another effort by the Polis administration and the same Democratic lawmakers who sponsored the 2023 bill to dictate to local governments how they develop housing. HB 1313 comes with a pretty big stick: any local government that refuses to go along jeopardizes their share of state funding for local transportation projects.

The bill has drawn opposition from a long list of cities and counties as well as Colorado Counties, Inc. and the Colorado Municipal League. 

HB 1313 is currently camped in the House Finance Committee, where its $35 million general fund cost could become an issue, given the most recent state revenue forecast from last Friday that informed the Joint Budget Committee they had a $160 million hole to fill before introducing the 2024-25 state budget, slated for next week.

The measure intends to turn that $35 million into tax credits, and that has a TABOR impact, according to the fiscal analysis.

HB 1313 is sponsored by Reps. Steven Woodrow of Denver and Iman Jodeh of Aurora, the same duo who sponsored SB 213 last year.

During a March 6 hearing in the House Transportation, Local Government and Housing Committee, Jodeh said the bill’s incentives, which amounts to about $30 million in tax credits, could provide an opportunity for new investment in affordable housing along the planned bus rapid transit corridor on Colfax, in her district.

Jodeh said “local government stakeholders” wanted the bill to tie housing goals to state funding. The measure is innovative and integrates incentives, goals, and accountability to ensure that all jurisdictions with frequent transit services work together to build more housing, she told the committee.

She also claimed the bill is flexible in how communities can meet the goals. “We recognize this is challenging, but we really do believe with all of the stakeholder input we’ve received over the past nine months, we have struck a good balance of setting ambitious but reasonable goals and providing state support to achieve them.”

The 2024 bill requires housing constructed adjacent to transit to be affordable. That means supported by public subsidies, “inclusionary” zoning ordinances and deed restrictions, and which restricts or limits maximum rental or sale price. The bill also requires a specified period when only low- or moderate-income households can qualify.

The measure applies to about 31 municipalities and those that are part of a metropolitan planning organization (MPO). There are five MPOs in Colorado: the Denver Regional Council of Governments, the North Front Range MPO, the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments, the Pueblo Area Council of Governments and the Grand Valley Metropolitan Council. That limits the impact of HB 1313 to the state’s largest metro areas, largely along the Front Range, and excluding mountain and rural communities that don’t have transit centers. 

Rep. Lisa Frizell, R-Castle Rock, noted the bill would require Lone Tree, which has no light rail or any mass transit, to be subject to the requirements, and asked how that would work. Woodrow responded that communities would get “credit” for the work they have already done, but would need to expand zoning capacity. Woodrow explained the bill doesn’t say the state is coming in and telling a local government where they’ll draw their transit-oriented communities, what their housing goals should be and how to meet it and the consequences when they don’t.

HB 1313, he said, says a local community can identify where its transit oriented communities will be based on the bill’s criteria, and how to meet that housing goal.

Woodrow acknowledged the bill hasn’t won support from municipalities for its density requirements during the committee hearing. “The feedback has been mixed,” he said. HB 1313 is about increasing total zoning capacity, he added. The bill dictates a housing density of 40 units per acre, which Woodrow said is a minimum to make the development feasible. 

Woodrow told the committee there are communities already working toward compliance with the measure’s objectives. “We’re here to provide a long runway of carrots and sticks,” he said.

Will Toor, director of the state’s energy office, said housing near transit means less emissions and reduces the pressure to develop agricultural land for housing projects. Residents who live close to transit take on average 44% fewer vehicle trips, he said. This bill is a critical solution for reducing emissions across multiple sectors, will lower housing and transportation costs, and reduce water use, Toor claimed.

Nathan Lindquist from the Colorado Department of Transportation addressed the bill’s zoning requirements for local governments. Local governments would have the ability to tailor the zoning for their communities.

Zoning alone doesn’t create housing, Lindquist said; it must align with funding for affordable housing and for infrastructure. HB 1313 aligns all of these elements to help create more housing in Colorado. He also noted ‘zoning best practices,’ the 40 units per acre requirement, which he said easily fits into a three-story building. 

Rep. Don Wilson, R-Monument, noted his community built housing to take advantage of mass transit, but the transit didn’t last. “We’ve overbuilt that area to accommodate for the bus line” that no longer exists, he said. “Nothing is ever for certain and things can change,” said Lindquist, and that is why the bill’s housing opportunity goal targets are so flexible.

The Colorado Municipal League’s Kevin Bommer has advocated for the past two sessions to involve local government advocates, such as his organization, in the negotiations over housing. Some of those requests have fallen on deaf ears in the past. 

Bommer said there’s a lot of alignment between what’s in HB 1313 and what municipalities are already doing. The bill intends to put the state into incentivizing and improving safe and reliable transit, Bommer said. But the problem is that “the legislation starts with the presumption that local governments and municipalities are the problem and must be told what to do by the state.”

He also addressed the conversations taking place between sponsors and those opposed to the measure. One of the sponsors said early in the year, “if you lean into meeting with stakeholders, you get the best results.’ Bommer said he agrees with that, but just six weeks later, the same sponsor, who he didn’t identify, said “at a certain point, we can’t let residents of the community fall by the wayside because their leadership wants to thumb their nose at the state,” and that’s what the legislation is about, Bommer said.

He, along with municipal leaders and other organizations have been begging for partnership instead of pre-emption for over a year, Bommer said. “We are at the table, and I only hope that the goals that are largely unattainable can at least be amended to a point where it might work.” 

While they are in an amend position, Arapahoe County has concerns about how the bill will work in their community, according to Commissioner Jessica Campbell Swanson. Her community has seven transit areas to plan for. The county faces a threat of losing the its entire state transportation allocation of $9 million, which is used for 1200 miles of roadways, and represents 47% of the county’s total road and bridge budget.

“This bill is very much in line with what I would love to see in my district. We want to make sure we are able to meet these goals, but as written, we are not confident that we may be able to do so,” she said.

The notion of the state imposing regulations on home rule and local government authority, a signature part of the opposition to SB 213, also came up on HB 1313, a point brought up by Centennial Mayor Stephanie Pico. Her community would lose about $4 million per year in transportation funding, she said. There are already 1,800 units that are under construction and another 8,200 units in the pipeline, Pico said.

The right locations for those development include having access to grocery stores, restaurants and office buildings, Pico explained. “If we give up all of our space along our light rail corridor to housing, there is no place for offices and no place for those people to go to work,” she said.

HB 1313 is scheduled for the House Finance Committee next Monday.