Colorado Springs wants to hear residents’ experiences with housing to help determine how to expand and improve the housing options.

The city is running a regional housing needs assessment to determine the needs for Colorado Springs and across El Paso County. On Monday, the city launched an online survey to gather public input on the housing priorities over the coming weeks and months.

Housing Solutions Manager Katie Sunderlin said Monday that the assessment will be a more comprehensive and extensive version of the HomeCOS plans the city has run for years. Part of the additional data being sought will come from the public responses to the questions.

“This is a very local issue, and your feedback does matter here because your experience in our housing market is different than any of the experiences across the country,” Sunderlin said.

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The survey asks about where people live in El Paso County and how much they spend on rent and mortgages for their home. Other questions ask if residents give higher priority to “the character of existing neighborhoods” or “housing availability and affordability,” as well as whether they could afford to buy their home again in the current market.

The HomeCOS plan was established by Mayor John Suthers in 2018 to support the goal of creating 1,000 affordable housing units in the city every year. Local housing has remained a priority for Mayor Yemi Mobolade and the specifics of the assessment are required by a state law passed last year with broad bipartisan support.

The Sustainable Affordable Housing Assistance Act enacted in 2024 required local governments across Colorado to regularly produce a housing needs assessment that gathered specific data about local housing and a housing action plan to provide recommendations on how to build more.

“In addition to pulling in these data points, we’re also taking a local lens and applying some additional local data points to the assessment to understand what is really happening here,” Sunderlin said.

The assessment is being paid for by the city, the El Paso County Community Development Block Grant and the Colorado Infrastructure and Strong Communities Grant Program. Matrix Design Group was contracted to manage the creation of the assessment.

Sunderlin said city leadership will use the report to create a plan addressing the opportunities and needs for Colorado Springs and unincorporated areas of El Paso County. Data collected in the surveys will be shared with seven smaller cities across the county, who will incorporate it into their own local housing plans.

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Work on the assessment has been underway for several months as Colorado Springs compiled data from housing providers, developers and other partners in the county. Colorado Springs economist Tatiana Bailey, who publishes monthly economic progress reports for El Paso County through her company Data-Driven Economic Strategies, has been advising the city on data collection and the direction of the project.

Earlier this year the Pikes Peak Housing Network released its own report on the concerns around Colorado Springs’ housing market. The report said the city had a deficit of thousands of smaller homes and affordable options that could be used by seniors or young adults moving to the city.

The survey can be taken at www.coloradosprings.gov/HousingNeedsAssessment. Sunderlin said the city will hold public meetings this summer to share data and collect new feedback. The final assessment will be released by the end of the year.