In a bid to accelerate affordable housing development in Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis signed an executive order Monday to slash the time it takes state officials to cut checks to affordable housing developers while directing a suite of state agencies to prioritize programs to help prepare the state for years of coming population growth.
The order requires the state’s Division of Housing to cut the time it takes to give loans and grants to approved recipients — like affordable housing developers — in 90 days, rather than the current average of eight months. Advocates who’ve long lamented the delays have said the process can sometimes take even longer and push beyond a year, adding time and money to already tight budgets.
The order doesn’t allocate any additional funding, and its impacts will be far less sweeping than what Polis and his allies had sought during the legislature this spring, when they attempted to increase density and development across Colorado. But the move will help boost housing development, and it was a nod to Polis and others’ broader objectives of increasing housing density and availability statewide.
It also underscored Polis’ commitment to the arguments that propelled the land-use fight earlier this year: It included 10 strategic growth goals, like cutting down on sprawl and focusing on efficient development, for state agencies to prioritize in their programs, many of which echoed land-use reform arguments. The governor said at a Monday press conference that he wanted to align the state’s “limited resources” across a variety of agencies to ensure Colorado meets “livability and sustainability goals.”
The governor has previously backed a statewide solution to the state’s housing needs, and on Monday he said that it was important to “show that the state is doing everything that we can to get money out quickly.”
Polis said the state needs to expedite its own timelines and use its “moral authority to remove any state barriers to housing” as it urges local governments to accelerate their own processes. Cutting through red tape and expediting delays on the local level were frequent talking points during the spring’s land-use fight, which ended in a rare legislative defeat for Polis.
Asked at a Monday press conference how he would improve response times, Polis said state officials would prioritize existing resources within the state housing division to get money out the door faster.
The need to expedite timelines is particularly important now, the governor said, given that Proposition 123 will extend hundreds of millions of dollars in new housing funding to local governments and housing providers in the coming years. Prop 123 also requires local governments to jumpstart their own approval processes.
“We hope this can drive more housing quicker to help meet the real-life needs that Coloradans have to find housing options to fit in their budget,” Polis told the Post on Monday. “In addition to reducing red tape, it also aligns our state role around smart growth priorities.”
The order directs several state agencies — including those overseeing public health, transportation and economic development — to catalog a broad swath of their own programs and ensure they’re aligned with the growth goals described in the order, like incentivizing housing development.
Concerns about the state’s future growth are evident throughout the order’s preamble. It warns that the state is short tens of thousands of housing units and will add 1.72 million new residents by 2050.
The state agencies named in Polis’ order have until mid-December to identify and prioritize programs that meet the growth goals.
Monday’s order comes as some Democratic lawmakers have begun to restart talks on how to reform land use statewide, months after Polis’ sweeping attempt to do so collapsed in the final hours of the 2023 legislative session. Those same debates — about whether to reform single-family zoning across the state to allow for more development — are likely to return this coming session, lawmakers and housing advocates say, albeit in a more piecemeal approach.
The first attempt was stifled earlier this year by a coalition of local governments, Republican lawmakers and some Democrats, all of whom broadly argued that cities and towns should be left to make zoning decisions for themselves.
Monday’s ceremony unveiling the order included not only several state agencies but two of the House members who sponsored the land-use reform measure this year: Democratic Reps. Iman Jodeh and Steven Woodrow. The Colorado Municipal League, a staunch opponent of the governor’s land-use reform plans, received an advanced draft copy of the executive order so it could provide feedback.
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