Zoning Updates and Housing Affordability Are Headed to the Ballot in Lakewood

Lakewood passed zoning updates last year after a two-year community process. Zoning might sound obscure, but it largely shapes our city landscape by defining what can be built where. The zoning code updates aim to help meet our desperate need for more affordable housing. Housing costs are a problem across the entire state, and what is happening in Lakewood will set the tone in many other cities taking up zoning reform, including Denver.

The main change is simple – more strict building size limits in residential areas, while those small buildings are newly allowed to be used in ways that match the types of housing we currently lack. Starter homes like duplexes and townhomes will be allowed on lots where previously only a single-unit detached house could be built.

Height limits and setback distances are unchanged, and a 50 percent green space requirement was implemented for every lot. This flexibility unlocks different home-buying options while the size limits ensure large apartment buildings and McMansions are not mixed in among modest houses where they do not belong.

Our housing affordability crisis looms large. Half of current Lakewood residents, my family included, are “cost-burdened” by housing — which means over a third of our income goes to meeting that basic human need. One in four people living in Lakewood are “severely cost burdened” and pay over half of their income on housing.

Renters comprise 43 percent of Lakewood. Many of them would love to buy a starter home, put down roots and start building personal equity instead of dumping their wages into the balance sheet of a corporate landlord. I was a renter for two decades before barely managing to buy a home, despite having a high level of education and a successful career. I want my two young children to have an easier path to housing stability when they are adults than what my wife and I faced.

Change is scary. Sometimes I wish I could enjoy my children being little forever, the way some people want to stop all new housing. Both desires are misguided. We must enjoy the way things are while also fostering healthy growth, whether it be children or city planning.

Even modest reforms can spin up the misinformation machine in echo chambers like Facebook and NextDoor. Yard signs with “Don’t bulldoze our neighborhoods” appeared as falsehood spread about tall apartment buildings allowed everywhere. That fueled a signature gathering effort which forced the updates to a citywide vote. On April 7, Lakewood must vote “no” to a rollback on four confusingly-worded ballot questions if they want to keep the zoning updates in place.

Some opponents of zoning reform doubt the affordability benefits. Nonetheless, two or more dwellings with a shared lot and a shared wall, built as a single project, will clearly be cheaper than a standalone single-unit house. Real-world data support this common sense.

Neighborhoods will obviously not be bulldozed as a result of these modest code updates. We know that change will be slow and gradual, because Portland made similar zoning changes and saw no increase in building demolition whatsoever as a result. Buying a perfectly good house just to level it is not only environmentally unwise, it is simply not profitable. Such “scrapes” only make sense if a building is crumbling, damaged by fire or otherwise of no value. On those lots we need starter homes instead of McMansions.

Some people have nebulous concerns about threats to neighborhood character. If those people want ample green space, careful control of density and a diverse, thriving mix of residents who can afford to live where they work, then they should want to keep the zoning updates. In the recent past, however, neighborhood character often just meant white. Racial covenants and redlining were widely used tools of segregation. Until 1969, Lakewood was unincorporated Jefferson County. At that time, the city was established in large part to avoid a threat of busing programs between Denver and Jefferson County intended to desegregate schools.

Overt racism might have faded since that time, but exclusionary zoning practices still entrench housing disparities between different groups of people. If a particular neighborhood requires that all residents have big lots and big houses, it means that only people with big money can live there and a diverse working class is kept out with an invisible fence. Allowing more affordable home types in more of the city can chip away at those barriers.

I want everyone to have safe, stable and dignified housing. It will take a lot more than a zoning update to make that happen. However, these reforms can have a major positive impact. We owe it to working-class people, marginalized groups and all children in our community to nudge the housing landscape in a healthier direction. I hope Lakewood votes “no” to a zoning rollback so that we do not freeze the city in amber, along with all of its housing affordability problems.

There will be an educational forum on Lakewood’s special election on zoning at 11 a.m. Sunday, March 22, at Lakewood United Church of Christ, 100 Carr Street in Lakewood. Featured speakers include Karen Gordey, Lakewood Citizen’s Alliance, and Sophia Mayott-Guerrero, Make Lakewood Livable. 

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