Opinion: We can’t build our way out of this “housing crisis” without dramatically reducing quality of life

Jesus Ibarra stops traffic as construction crew work on an apartment building called Edit at River North on May 27, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. Colorado’s “housing crisis” is essentially unsolvable by simply building more market-rate housing, at least if we care about our quality of life here in Colorado.

Some data on Colorado’s alleged “housing crisis:” According to county-level data, the big price hits are limited to the high-demand Front Range cities, suburbs, and mountain resort areas. The rest of the state remains relatively affordable. And census data gives Colorado the fifth highest percentage increase in the number of housing units between 2010 and 2020, with an increase of 10.9%; that’s 86.1% above the national average.

There just isn’t enough water for all that, plus serving many millions more people in the Front Range cities that depend on trans-mountain diversions of the Colorado River. Instituting a policy that would require developers to use renewable water supplies and not deplete groundwater would lead to making some necessary choices about who faces cuts versus how much development could occur.

• Jobs-housing linkage fees – These require developments that add new jobs to subsidize housing so that workers who could not otherwise afford to are able to live relatively nearby. In Boulder, that fee would be something over $130/sq.ft. for office space. Many resort communities already require businesses to provide worker housing.

We need to get real about our limited water supply. The forecasts are that we will have less and less Colorado River water in the future. And, as temperatures rise, all our other watersheds will become drier. We need to face up to these limits on growth, especially on the Front Range, assuming we want to preserve our quality of life.

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